01-08-2014, 01:18 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
A lot of alternate worlds are said to be "advanced" or "primitive", but it seems like a straightforward way to describe the technology available to the populous of an alternate reality (particularly when it's not an ordinary echo, where a date would suffice...) would be useful.
So, do they use straight TLs as described in GURPS rulebooks, or do they have some other system? |
01-08-2014, 01:50 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
I don't think there's a canon answer to this, but I could imagine Infinity inventing an arbitrary indexing system that happened, arbitrarily, to correspond to the GURPS TL system - just for humour and game-level convenience.
Alternatively, you could use a system of adjectives, and see how long it takes the players to notice that there's a one to one map to the GURPS symbology.
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01-08-2014, 02:29 PM | #3 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
Quote:
Codes like this are basically data compression tools, a way to encode information so you can present a lot of it in a small space (typically a table). Other than when you are publishing data on a lot of places in a paper format, it's not really very useful, and Infinity is past the TL that's a really big consideration even if there were a lot more known timelines. I suppose the other application is as a standardized format for a search utility, but you'd want a lot more than one dimension for that to be useful for much of anything - if you go that way I'd expect "standard tech levels" to be at least a 10 or 20 digit code, though I suppose a couple digits of that might well be "century it's most similar to" or something that would sort of map to the GURPS usage.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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01-08-2014, 02:46 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Endor
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
Ditto. I've always assumed that Infinity's index format just so happens to be pretty much the same as a sidebar entry in a GURPS book. Tech Level, Mana Level, Changepoint, Dominant Cultures, etc. While the science boffins continually complain that these are all incredible oversimplifications and that no one ever reads the full briefing packet. I like the sarcastic idea that somewhere in the Infinity bureaucracy, the vast wonder of infinite histories winds up boiled down to a couple of numbers in a spreadsheet for easy reference. The truth is always different on the ground, anyway.
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01-09-2014, 12:58 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Toronto, Canada
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
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01-09-2014, 07:43 AM | #6 | |
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
Quote:
Maybe not 'useful' but certainly 'present' or even 'required'. They'd probably be slightly more complicated than just 'TL8', though - getting into more detail, with something like 'TL8.3.Q', allowing for more detail. But you could probably use the first digit for a rough 'GURPS TL to Infinity Unlimited TL' mapping. |
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01-09-2014, 09:34 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
It certainly sounds thematic to tell a squad of adventurers something like "You're going into an A7.9 with E5.2 power and... scouts say B3.3 medical. You know what that means; slap some gears on your equipment and we should be good..."
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01-12-2014, 11:32 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
I'm now imagining scout teams climbing into the conveyor sarcastically humming "Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk) ".
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-- Phil Masters My Home Page. My Self-Publications: On Warehouse 23 and On DriveThruRPG. |
01-12-2014, 04:09 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
Quote:
"Nah, I don't know exactly what the artist started with before covering it with day-glo plastic and adding radiator fins to turn it into this silly looking prop. But hey, it still works, and I got a really good deal on eBay."
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-- MA Lloyd Last edited by malloyd; 01-12-2014 at 04:13 PM. |
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01-12-2014, 05:39 PM | #10 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Does Infinity Unlimited use "Tech Levels" or something like them?
I suspect the main classifications would be:
Stone Age Bronze Age Iron Age Industrial High-Tech (not in the GURPS sense, but in the sense of being at least close to Homeline in technology) When finer distinctions are needed, references to real-world historical eras are used, though this will get problematic for worldines that diverged long before the local time, leading to awkward constructions like "technology similar to that of Homeline's middle ages" ("middle ages" being a distinctly Eurocentric term without clear definition in terms of technology). I think it's especially hard to imagine Infinity making distinctions between TLs 10+, there being too few of those worldlines to establish any rules. But it might come to be generally known that when someone says "very high-tech," they mean "something like Caliph." |
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infinite worlds, setting, tech levels |
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