07-22-2018, 12:05 PM | #211 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
I think it's interesting how most are assuming that nearly every part of an entertainment fiction show must have been a hard thought out prediction of the real future. The Rule of Cool has always been an aspect of fiction.
Fiction is about what the general public wants not even necessarily what they expect the future to include.
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07-22-2018, 12:37 PM | #212 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
Mine does. I chose my mechanical keyboard in part because the keys it has make noise when they're pressed.
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07-22-2018, 07:49 PM | #213 | |
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
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TL10 is TL(9+1); it just a TL10 that went down a different path then the "normal" TL10. Speaking Mutoscope (invented 1896) is TL(5+1) because it used mechanical means common to TL5 to link up sound and picture. Its TL6 counterpart is Lauste's 1907 sound on film method which used the electrical means that would be common at that TL. They are both "TL6" but they took distinctly different technological paths to get there and would be -2 due that divergence in technology. A TL(6+2) computer could on par with the TL8 ones we use but it would have be insanely huge vacuum tubed monstrosity. |
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07-22-2018, 08:09 PM | #214 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
TL(x+y) doesn't mean technology that reproduces the sum of x+y TL using the principles of TLx. For example, it doesn't mean that TL(6+2) computers are equivalent to TL8 computers but are based on TL6 components. It means they're TL8 computers, but a different TL8 than the standard one. The difference starts to appear at TL6, when some alternative basis for technology appears. That basis is then developed another two tech levels along with everything else. A TL(6+2) computer might be based on vacuum tubes, but vacuum tubes developed in a way that our TL8 never saw. Or it might not have vacuum tubes at all; if some new circuit that performs some special kind of logic (I dunno, call it a "transtator" for the sake of argument) that isn't a transistor, TL(6+2) computers might be equivalent to TL8 computers but based on transtators instead of transistors and their descendants. Or maybe magic was discovered as a force of nature at TL6, and "magic circuits" (TL^) let you produce computers equivalent to TL8.
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07-22-2018, 08:17 PM | #215 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
Nitpick: the point of divergence for TL(6+2) comes after TL6: the first number in the pair is the last TL where the two progressions are more or less the same.
But yeah; after that, all bets are off. |
07-22-2018, 08:35 PM | #216 | |
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Location: Sumter, SC
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
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As I said before Steampunk and Streamtech really messed up in having actual TL6 inventions labeled TL(5+1) as that muddled the function of divergent TLs. When TL(5+1) is also non divergent TL6 then the whole meaning of "divergent" kind of goes out the window. Why couldn't they just say that TL(5+1) and TL6 can coexist rather then slapping TL(5+1) on every TL6 item in sight even if it made no sense to do so. Worse yet sometimes the equivalent item is not the sum of the numbers. There are several items in Steamtech that are functionally similar to TL7 rather then TL6 but are still called TL(5+1). Last edited by maximara; 07-22-2018 at 08:55 PM. |
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07-22-2018, 09:30 PM | #217 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
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As historical notes: GURPS Steampunk did not define or recognize a category of TL(n+2) or higher. It ONLY recognized "+1" as a concept. The idea of calling real world inventions "TL(5+1)" was that a steampunk campaign would be set in a world that was TL(5+1). If sulfa drugs were TL6, then a pharmacist in that campaign would have to roll at a penalty for crosstime unfamiliarity, because they would be identified as not native to that world—but sulfa drugs were precisely the sort of pharmocological advance that fitted into the style of TL(5+1); such a penalty was likely to be inappropriate. Of course you don't need to use the (m+n) notation at all in your campaign, if you're not doing crosstime exchanges; you can just call everything TL6 and have done. But I don't think this particular decision was devoid of logic.
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07-22-2018, 09:52 PM | #218 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
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07-22-2018, 11:27 PM | #219 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
Location: Melbourne, Australia (also known as zone Brisbane)
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
In GURPS do divergent tech levels stay divergent? Or can they converge again?
To use the Star Trek franchise as an example, could it be that the TL8 and TL9 gadgets missed in the original series are discovered later so that by the time of the Voyager series they have plugged all the gaps up to TL10? Is there a natural point of convergence? Maybe to reach TL12 you have to master all the permutations at lower tech levels.
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07-23-2018, 12:08 AM | #220 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?
Quote:
We have a sequence of TLs, each with its typical inventory of techniques and technologies. Up through TL8, this is based on the West and its precursor civilizations (Egyptian, Greek, Roman, medieval); after that, it seems to be a guess at a fairly likely and plausible series of new technologies. This seems to reflect the idea that a lot of campaigns will be set in something like this, and others will have a few departures from a TL center of gravity. But nothing makes it a rule that a world HAS to be that way. You can come up with your own technological history, your own cultures, and so on. And then, often, you can say "this is TLx with advances in these areas, delays in these areas, and/or superscience of these types," using the TL sequence as a language to express what you've created. But you can also come up with something much more off the wall, and either assign it a TL that provides the social and cultural features you want, or even say that it's not definable by TL at all. "The French don't care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly" (Professor Higgins to Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady).
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