GURPS Action 9: The City

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

Sounds like this is a good chance for people to remember that TL is a convenient label and not how real life actually works. (And sometimes not how fiction works, depending on how hard its science is.)

Yep.

The TL of a place is that of most of the stuff they wake up and use all day, or could easily buy for such use if they wanted, and could replace or repair without effort if it failed. It isn't the TL of the stuff they can bring in from elsewhere at great expense.

Also remember that TLs don't end. Thus, TL8 factories and distribution chains still manufacture and disseminate plenty of TL0-7 stuff. So, something can be new and still be TL6 or TL7 – and if the local resources can really only manage to maintain things like that, that place is TL6 or TL7, not TL8.

For instance, I wake up and take third-generation antihistamines while my girlfriend takes immunomodulators that work on the genetic level. We turn on our LED lighting, and check our communications of computers with flat screens and high-speed Internet. Everything around us is made of alloys and synthetics that didn't exist in my parents' adolescence. And when I look out the window, I see hybrid and electric vehicles, and an electric car charging station. That's living at TL8.

But I doubt that people living in Aleppo right now have that experience. So, they're at whatever TL they can reliably get, which might be TL6-7 if they're lucky.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Damn you, Kromm, for making me spend money on Black Friday!

As a man with iron principles I waited till saturday

[Tinman]

Got it. Looking forward to using it in my Psionics campaign.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I liked it. Some obvious stuff in hindsight (isn't it always?), but I really liked it.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Plenty of towns are controlled by non-national forces, and in large parts of the world, these forces use WWII weapons. A good example would be many towns in Syria. My mother works with Syrian refugees . . . a lot of places there might be fairly called "TL5 with TL6 weaponry, plus TL8 cellphones."

Beyond warfare, look at pp. 6-7 of High-Tech. Tech level 6 is a fair assessment of any place where goods are made largely of wood, rubber, and steel instead of plastics and composites; that lacks reliable access to chemical fertilizer; that doesn't have widespread computers; that relies on prop planes rather than jets; and that doesn't see appreciable use of solar or wind power, or have much instance of organ transplants. A few cell phones and TVs aren't really enough to change that.

As the rules say, communities in the developing world might include more TL6 tech in the mix because poverty means that tech has to be kept running . . . but treating a town as TL6 doesn't mean TL7-8 gear doesn't bleed in! It means there's no local production or up-to-the-minute infrastructure for TL7-8 stuff. That's why people from truly TL8 places have penalties to find parts and support for their tech, and bonuses to work around the outdated, poorly maintained local electronics.

Some of what you're saying makes sense but with electronics in particular it's important to distinguish between "outdated" and "cheap". I spent a month in Cambodia in 2013 and when I was there I bought a ridiculously tiny cell phone for $35. It was so small in fact that it probably would have been impossible to make not long prior to my visit (certainly not in the early 90s, though I don't know enough about the history of cell phones to say when exactly a phone that small first became possible). If the heroes are trying to replace their electronic gear in a very poor part of the world, it's likely that if what they want is available at all, it's likely to be at the cutting edge of cheapness. Perhaps rather than penalizing rolls for acquiring kit, the value of the acquired kit should be modified by the multiplier for the city's wealth level?

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I liked it. Some obvious stuff in hindsight (isn't it always?), but I really liked it.

Yes, I really liked it too. I'm looking forward to using it in my psionics campaign soon. The PCs are going to "Chicago" & the write-up of Urbopoilis will be very useful.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Tinman

The PCs are going to "Chicago" & the write-up of Urbopoilis will be very useful.

Be sure to rename it something slightly less generic. I couldn't quite get away with "Generic Big U.S. City," but that's basically what I did there. ;)

• Camp 23 is called that because I researched logging camps and discovered that most big conglomerates number their camps . . . and 23 is SJ Games' lucky number.
  
• Tomorrow is meant to throw back to the hopefully named planned cities of the post-WWII era. I confess that it's supposed to have an updated New Vegas vibe.
  
• Mozli was inspired by various places in film, including the dire African villages in Lord of War.
  
• Ves is just every Bond trope in one place. I'm not even sure you can have skiing and vineyards in the same place. ;)
  
• See above for Urbopolis. It's Gotham meets a Quentin Tarantino film.
  
• And Tazhicheng is a bad translation of "City of Towers," meant to stand in for any crowded SE Asian city seen in action movies. I'm sure Woo could set a film there.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Be sure to rename it something slightly less generic. I couldn't quite get away with "Generic Big U.S. City," but that's basically what I did there.

When a friend and I ran DC Realtime (a campaign where the DC heroes started their careers in the years when they were first published), we decided that the comic book names for cities were pseudonyms for real US cities. We thought that Gotham City had to be New York, so we made Metropolis Chicago.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by whswhs

When a friend and I ran DC Realtime (a campaign where the DC heroes started their careers in the years when they were first published), we decided that the comic book names for cities were pseudonyms for real US cities. We thought that Gotham City had to be New York, so we made Metropolis Chicago.

That's more or less what I always took for granted that they were. Chicago would be the nearest "Really Big City" to a guy who grew up on a farm in Kansas, and IIRC DC's "Kingdom Come" includes the Statue of Liberty or something very much like it in a Gotham skyline panel.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

That's more or less what I always took for granted that they were. Chicago would be the nearest "Really Big City" to a guy who grew up on a farm in Kansas, and IIRC DC's "Kingdom Come" includes the Statue of Liberty or something very much like it in a Gotham skyline panel.

Minor geekfest: There is a real-life Metropolis, Illinois, on the southern tip of the state (situated on the Ohio River across from Kentucky), which has a 15 ft tall painted Superman statue in its town square. (Despite this, Metropolis, IL, only has a population of around 6,000; hardly a "big" city.) I want to say the nearest "big city" to Kansas would be St. Louis, MO - or maybe Kansas City, MO. While I support using Chicago for Metropolis, the one line I heard was "Metropolis is New York City during the day, Gotham is New York at night", which isn't too far from how they're usually portrayed. (Personally, though, I put Gotham in New Jersey across from Staten Island.)

Using "Uberopolis" works for either.


(Out of curiosity, which cities were Central/Keystone, Star, and Opal? I'm ASSuming Coast City was Los Angeles.)