GURPS 4 Techlevel scale and GT TL's

[DrTemp]

In GURPS 4, the TL scale has been redesigned. In GT (based on GURPS 3), the former Traveller TL's were assigned for their Gurps TL's, resulting in a loss of the number of Techlevels in the game.

Will future GT products use the old Traveller TL scale, the old GURPS 3 TL scale or the new GURPS 4 TL scale?

[mcv]

Perhaps GT should simply stick to the old Traveller tech levels. GURPS tech levels are about important, fundamental discoveries, while Traveller tech levels are mostly about refinements to existing technology. Better jump drives, faster maneuver drives, that sort of thing. Ofcourse there's still the introduction of anti-gravity and reactionless thrust, but mostly, Traveller tech isn't really all that exotic.

With GURPS 4, this discrepancy becomes even bigger. Look at page 512. TL 9 is manned interplanetary flight, TL 10 is fast interplanetary flight, TL 11 is manned interstellar flight, TL 12 is fast interstellar flight (like all jump drives, presumably). So transportation tech in Traveller basically went from TL 9 to TL 12 really fast, and then stayed there.

GURPS TLs just don't work very well in Traveller, and GURPS 4 TLs seem to be more aimed to time travel or use as basic guidelines from which you can build your own TLs. And that's what GT should do: build its own Traveller-like TL system that is more suited to the Traveller universe. GURPS TLs are meaningless there.


mcv.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by mcv

Look at page 512. TL 9 is manned interplanetary flight, TL 10 is fast interplanetary flight, TL 11 is manned interstellar flight, TL 12 is fast interstellar flight (like all jump drives, presumably). So transportation tech in Traveller basically went from TL 9 to TL 12 really fast, and then stayed there.

I thought that, too, at first, but if you look more closely you'll see that any sort of FTL is superscience (TL ^ by definition). The "interstellar" speeds listed on the table are slower than light.

Now, you could argue instead that this makes OTU staples like the Islands Clusters campaign (manned STL flight at TTL9) inconsistent.

[mcv]

Originally Posted by thrash

I thought that, too, at first, but if you look more closely you'll see that any sort of FTL is superscience (TL ^ by definition). The "interstellar" speeds listed on the table are slower than light.

Fair enough, but then, manned interstellar flight is technically already possible. It's just amazingly expensive and it takes a couple of decades. At least. And what is fast? Ships that can keep accellerating for a long time will always reach significant fractions of c during interstellar flight.

In any case, this means that any SF game needs its own customised TL definitions anyway, just to describe how all the superscience works in that setting. And when you do that, you can easily have GT go all the way to TL 16, like CT did.


mcv.

[pnewman]

Here are my suggestions, as already posted to the Traveller Mailing List:

GURPS 4th Ed has changed the GURPS TL's a bit.
For instance GURPS TL 8 used to start in 2000
AD, and now it starts in 1980 AD. Therefore the
Traveller TL table to GURPS TL table may need
some slight revision. Here is my proposed version.

The first two columns are the official GURPS 3rd ed
conversions, from GURPS Traveller 2nd ed, p 107 sidebar

The numbers in the 3rd column are my own suggestions


Trav GURPS GURPS
TL 3rd 4th
TL TL
0 1 0
0 2 1
0 3 2
1 4 3
2 5 4
3 5 4
4 5 5
5 6 6
6 6 7
7 7 8
8 8 8
9 9 9
10 9 9
11 9 10
12 10 10
13 11 11
14 11 11
15 12 12
16 13 12


Baseline Traveller technologies for a given TL are
from the MT Technology chart. Baseline GURPS
4th ed technologies for a given TL are from GURPS
4th ed p 511. For instance calculus is listed as
GURPS 4th TL 4 and Traveller TL 3, so this suggests
that Traveller TL 3 may no longer be equal to GURPS
TL 5.

Obviously since the TL's have different break
points no conversion is 100% correct, I simply went
with what seemed right. For example Traveller TL 4
includes trains and other things seen at GURPS TL 5, but
also includes the telephone, which is GURPS TL 6. I
decided that since Traveller TL 4 seemed to have a
historical breakpoint of around 1900 and GURPS 4 TL 6
didn't begin until 1880 or so it was probably better
to call TTL 4 GURPS 4th TL 5 and not GURPS 4th TL 6.

The suggestions for Traveller TL's 11 - 16, are probably
the most subjective of all these, since the comparable
GURPS 4th TL's are, as yet, relatively undefined.

OTOH if you are running a GURPS Traveller game using
Ring of Fire or Behind the Claw updating the TL of
some, but not all, of the planets may be more hassle
than it is worth.

[Eljay451]

Originally Posted by mcv

Fair enough, but then, manned interstellar flight is technically already possible. It's just amazingly expensive and it takes a couple of decades. At least.

From what's actually been done (as distinguished by what technically possible / feasible), Voyager would take about 40,000 years to reach the nearest star system.