We're gonna have to rethink the TLs

[Ashtagon]

On a personal level, except for my PC, I am living at about TL7 (my mobile phone is technically a smartphone, but I only ever use it for making phone calls and basic texting). The transit system I use to get to work is essentially running on TL7 technology.

There are large numbers of poor people who lack modern tech toys in Britain. I guess they're effectively living at TL6.

But Britain is still a TL8 society.

I think a good rule of thumb is, "what could a Status-0 person with a month's income at his disposal either purchase or rent/hire, and if a licence is required, expect to obtain that with 99% certainty and in under a month?"

[Flyndaran]

TL 7 is pre 1980. I doubt your cell phone is the size of cinder block like those from the 1970s.

TL isn't just about what material goods you own, but skills you could learn and know about.

[whswhs]

If I get sick, the differences in TL8 medical technology from TL7 are going to matter a lot to me. I've seen someone I know well go from late TL7 psychmeds to TL8; the difference is astonishing. TL8 medical imaging has hugely more options. And surgery that TL7 did by cutting your knees open, TL8 does by making tiny little incisions. Not everything has been improved, or fixed, but a lot of medical outcomes are superior. I'm quite looking forward to the emergence of TL9 medicine.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

There are large numbers of poor people who lack modern tech toys in Britain. I guess they're effectively living at TL6.

They have TVs, though, and that's TL7 as a mass-market technology.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

TL isn't just about what material goods you own, but skills you could learn and know about.

Skills your character can learn and have a default for, not just know about.

TLs have always been determined by the relative affluence and advancement of locales. Traveller has lower TL planets, not because the elites there don't know about the existence of higher technology, but because the infrastructure doesn't support the widespread adoption of that higher technology.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by whswhs

In terms of the western end of Eurasia, the primary exemplar of TL3 is probably the Caliphate, with the Eastern Roman Empire coming in second. What used to be the Western Empire, and the Germanic lands adjacent, had some advances, but its tech was pretty shaky. But GURPS Low-Tech already says this.

I assumed it did, the author is skilled. But as far back as GURPS:Terradynne the description of 22nd century India had the cities of India at TL9 and the impovished rural villages at TL5. There are a few hunter/gatherers left (very few) living Stone Age lives, but the nations they live in don't rate a lower TL level.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I would need to see numbers proving that the average or median American citizen is noticeably richer than the equivalent Canadian.

<shrug> Pick the goalposts you want. The claims of Rome being TL3 don't rest on average wealth of citizens. They tend to focus on big projects like aquaducts and other things requiring a large GDP.

I don't think the GDP-dependent measurements are the right ones for Gurps TL but others keep making that claim.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

<shrug> Pick the goalposts you want. The claims of Rome being TL3 don't rest on average wealth of citizens. They tend to focus on big projects like aquaducts and other things requiring a large GDP.

They rest on technologies that are clearly more advanced than those that typical TL2 societies of the Iron Age being in common use and available to PCs.

Supposed TL3 Carolingian armies didn't have mail for every soldier, but late Republican / early Imperial Roman armies did. No medieval army had useful mechanical artillery in the field, but those Roman armies did. Such things as medical technology, most engineering technology and manufacturing techniques were just flat-out better in the large trading cities around the Mediterranean than it was in the rude and rough Germanic world even in the 11th and 12th centuries, let alone earlier.

Our reference society of north-western Europe was extremely slow at developing TL3. I don't see a problem with identifying the fact that the seaborne traiding routes and cultural exchange of the Mediterranean led to societies there advancing from the TL2 Iron Age much faster than the outskirts of the civilised world.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Supposed TL3 Carolingian armies didn't have mail for every soldier, but late Republican / early Imperial Roman armies did..

Buying gear for your soldiers is another factor of GDP and not TL.

Those Roman armies only had mail for every legionary anyway. The auxiliaries didn't have mail.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Buying gear for your soldiers is another factor of GDP and not TL.

Widespread use. Mail was a fantastically expensive foreign import in much of northern Europe for much of what GURPS calls TL3. In the more wealthy and advanced societies around the Classical Mediterranean, it was for a time standard issue gear for professional heavy infantry or heavy cavalry soldiers.

And Germanic warlords of the 7th to 10th centuries not only couldn't afford maille for their men or catapults and scorpions of the same quality as those used in the Hellenic and Roman world. They had no access to anyone who knew how to build such mechanical artillery, no more than most of them had access to Hellenic doctors, natural philosophers experimenting with steam for fun in between calculating the Earth's circumference or marine or civil engineers who could replicate 1000+ ton grain ships, extremely efficient racing galleys or running water and sewer systems.

Those things still existed in the Eastern Med and even to an extent in some remnants of the Western Roman provinces, where wars and civil strife didn't completely bomb the local infrastructure and trade still linked them with the wider post-Hellenic world.

But they weren't in widespread use among Angles, Jutes, Saxons or even any but the ultra-elite elite among Goths, Franks or Vandals.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Those Roman armies only had mail for every legionary anyway. The auxiliaries didn't have mail.

Some did, most didn't. Still makes Roman armies far more militarily advanced than most Germanic armies of what GURPS currently calls TL3.