06-22-2010, 01:32 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
Quote:
Yes, the tech scale has got shorter, but I never found the distinctions between high-TL worlds all that meaningful anyway: they go off in different directions based on their own preferences. |
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06-22-2010, 01:42 AM | #12 |
Banned
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
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06-22-2010, 02:05 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
Despite Kromm's promises of a No-Tech book, it has yet to materialize. I, for one, was deeply disappointed. I was looking forward to the chapter on "pointy sticks."
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
06-22-2010, 05:43 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
I personally think that the Basic Set and Ultra-Tech might have said a little louder that it's perfectly possible for TLs of 13+ to exist, but these will always be highly setting-specific. But anyway, that's very much the case.
I guess that there might be scope for a PDF of various uber-tech levels, from the conventional Trek/B5 "Everything is constructed of stable force fields, including the people, who've left flesh behind", to Vingean cosmic engineering by short-lived gods and Greg Egan insanely precise micro-engineering across cosmic distances - or just "add the following superscience stuff from Ultra-Tech at the following TLs...
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06-22-2010, 09:43 AM | #15 |
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota, U.S.A.
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
TL 0 is stone age, TL 1 is bronze age. No Tech is for when you're trapped, naked, inside a giant plastic cube with no tools at all.
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I have Confused and Clueless. Sometimes I miss sarcasm and humor, or critically fail my Savoir-Faire roll. None of it is intentional. Published GURPS Settings (as of 4/2013 -- I hope to update it someday...) |
06-22-2010, 09:54 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Jan 2010
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
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06-22-2010, 11:24 AM | #17 |
Petitioner: Word of IN Filk
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Longmont, CO
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
In a sense, the new layout is consistent with the rules for using TL-based skills ... namely, the ones that say anything more than 3 TLs beyond the character is equally incomprehensible.
We're currently TL 8. In theory, that would put TL 11 at the very edge of what we could possibly comprehend, and that only for the best and brightest. Anything higher than TL 12 may as well be TL 12 for all intents and purposes.
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06-22-2010, 11:46 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: MO, U.S.A.
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
For what it is worth, Amarillo Design Bureau's GURPS Prime Directive maintains the old TL system, it is however, heavily limited to their version Star Trek the Original Series outline.
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06-22-2010, 01:43 PM | #19 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
GURPS Low-Tech will cover TL0-4; that is, it will address five TLs. GURPS High-Tech is for TL5-8, or four TLs. And GURPS Ultra-Tech covers TL9-12, or four TLs. Number of TLs per supplement had nothing to do with stopping at TL12. We stopped at TL12 because we ran out of extrapolations there and didn't want to set one particular sequence of superscience developments in stone.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
06-22-2010, 01:45 PM | #20 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: 4ed Tech Levels?
True. Tech level is meant for technologies that exist or at least don't utterly defy extrapolation. For other things, use superscience. A particular setting could certainly stratify superscience and assign it levels, even phase in TL13+ as increasing amounts of superscience. It's just that the choice of what goes at each level past TL12, being superscience, would be a campaign-level decision and not a system-level one.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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