Are GURPS Tech Books released in wrong order / badly planned?

[panton41]

Since so many of the original authors are both active on the forum and accept there are changes that need to be made, as well as former playtesters and simply knowledgeable folk, why work out an "unofficial eratta" document as time allows?

[HANS]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Am I alone in the feeling that Low-Tech, High-Tech and Ultra-Tech were released in the wrong order and/or not properly planned?

This is an insult to the people who planned and wrote these books. I'm not saying that any or all of them are perfect, but on hindsight everything can be done better. I still feel the books represent the best that could be done under the respective circumstances at the time they were written.

What kind of answer do you expect to your "question" anyway? "Yes, you are right, we are morons, please humbly accept our apologies and allow us to rewrite the books." Seriously, WTF?

Cheers

HANS

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by HANS

This is an insult to the people who planned and wrote these books. I'm not saying that any or all of them are perfect, but on hindsight everything can be done better. I still feel the books represent the best that could be done under the respective circumstances at the time they were written.

This was never intended as an insult. Especially given that on their own, HT and LT and BIO are absolutely brilliant. UT doesn't seem to have the benefit of techbook hindsight that LT and HT enjoyed, though*. But the point is, they are not quite compatible when taken together.

Originally Posted by HANS

What kind of answer do you expect to your "question" anyway? [ . . . ]

Kromm gave a good answer which pretty much explain all the reasons behind the books interacting (or not) in the way they are. Also, as I mentioned, it would be interesting to hear the authors' opinions as to how to best reconcile the three/four techbooks. It's not like I'm demanding anything - just asking if maybe there are already some ideas in that direction (based on the fact that there is such a series of reconciling UT/BIO with THS).

* == I don't remember what came first - UT or BIO, so not sure whether BIO enjoyed the benefits or was simply that good.

[Gigermann]

I actually like the "salad bar" approach to LT (take what you want, leave the rest). Maybe it'd be a good idea for someone to work up a UT Compendium X series, which would be a good venue to clear up any discrepancies, and put back in some of the crunch that missed the cut.

At this point, I think I would go with a TL-based approach, rather like the original run of 3e UT (which, rather than a raw equipment list, was broken up into sections based on TL)—FREX, UT Compendium 1 - TL9 (seems best to start closest), which could be used to fold in a lot of TS/HT concepts. Seems like TL9 & 10 would be the most needed.

Just spitballin'

[DanHoward]

Personally I would not have been involved with Low-Tech if it was separated into Tech Levels like the first edition. The separation into broad "technologies" is more sensible: easier to lay out and reference, and is far easier to use when trying to design a world.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Personally I would not have been involved with Low-Tech if it was separated into Tech Levels like the first edition. The separation into broad "technologies" is more sensible: easier to lay out and reference, and is far easier to use when trying to design a world.

I agree with Dan. An UT Companion series should go the same way as the LT Companions.

[Gigermann]

Actually, 3e LT was laid out by "era" as well. YMMV—I happen to like having stuff that doesn't apply to what I'm working on filtered out. Not that I dis-like the catalog approach. It's a shame it'd be too much work vs profit to lay it out both ways and let us decide which we want.

[Kromm]

The "divided by TL" approach of earlier editions had a lot of conceptual problems.

Historical TLs (TL0-8) are averages. For any real culture, you must look at what they actually used on a case-by-case basis. Calling a particular culture "TL4," say, is in a way like summing TLs for some very large number of specific items – let's call it n – and then dividing by n, rounding to two places, and getting a result between 3.51 and 4.50. There may well be some 0s, 1s, 2s, 3s, 5s, and even 6s in there! If n/2 examples are TL2 and the other n/2 are TL6, you could get TL4 without a single TL4 item. That is, putting everything under a TL sends the message that all of that stuff is contemporary, which is rubbish. Sorting tech by type rather than TL removes that deceptive bias by association.

Future TLs (TL9-12) are even worse for this! Really, everything about the future is a guess, and once you start tacking on "^" for superscience, it doesn't even have to be a particularly educated guess. Why should star travel accompany blasters? Who says that this flavor of nanotech will accompany that flavor of fusion power – or indeed, that either will ever be invented? In a generic RPG, that stuff should be left up to the setting creator, not shanghaied by some game designer. Again, there are false associations.

Whereas grouping by category shows a clear evolution in terms of durability, deadliness, efficiency, added functionality, or whatever. The TL numbers are still there to show where the big steps are, but they're only meaningful relative to one another in that one category. There's the weak promise that, on average, most TLn innovations will be somewhat appropriate for a TLn society, but not a prescription that you must have TLn there. And speaking as the guy who answers questions: Many gamers used to think that we were saying, "You have to use all the TLn stuff together." That's why we changed tack.

I think it's a stronger approach when your highest-level divisions – your chapters – are defined by major categories that people can agree have real-life meaning (e.g., weapons, transportation, and medical technology) than when they rely on a mutable, subjective game convenience such as TL. Plenty of customers buy GURPS books for other games or just to read. For them, TL is a quirky and ignorable game stat, nothing more. Really, that's how I feel about it as well. After working for years on GURPS, I've seen no evidence that any real historical culture or well-known fictional one fits TLn perfectly . . .

[Gigermann]

Given the obviously jagged lines that separate cultures/TLs, I wonder if "TL" is really the best mechanism to represent advancement—or better yet, a different way of thinking about the existing rules, maybe as individual tiers of development, to the exclusion of a single, overall score. But that's a separate discussion…

I think the thing I liked about the "era-based" approach was that, at the time, I was worldbuilding, and what it provided was a snapshot of TLn that I could use. Really, either approach can be just as useful to a GM that knows what to ignore or not.

But more to the OP—if we were in agreement regarding the need for some UT Compendiums, what make the best use of the (figurative) paper it's printed on? What might be the easiest to write? A focus on (FREX) personal weapon development, or a snapshot of TLn? Would there even be enough material to justify its own book, or would it make more sense to continue to dole it out, piecemeal, as it has been, in various Pyramid articles?

[Tzeentch]

-- Ultra-Tech would look a bit different if we had the other tech books to look back on. The original UT proposal and draft was significantly different because the format you now see as "standard" in the tech books didn't exist when the book was first being written. And some high-level design decisions were made during the development process that caused radical revisions to the text.

-- Even with all the bumps and issues, I still think Ultra-Tech came out looking signficantly better than the old Ultra-Tech 1 and 2, or 4e Magic for that matter.