Hmm. In previous versions I translated development level from its native scale (the
ForeSight tech level scale) to the roughly-equivalent
GURPS tech levels. But I became concerned that this suggested that people on, for instance, Navabharata were still running steam trains and laying telegraph cable rather than importing cellular telephone equipment and main components for locally-assembled brand-name air-pickups.
So this time I put the
ForeSight TLs in but labelled them "development level". Is it enough to look at the table and see that anything over 8.0 is pretty damned snazzy? Should I get cracking on a key to the tables? Or would it be safe to go back to
GURPS TLs?
For your temporary convenience, the correspondence between
FS and
GURPS tech levels is roughly as follows. Of course the correspondences of future TLs are very rough because of different projections for future technology.
FS TL GURPS TL
0.0 — TL 0 (early)
0.5 — TL 0 (mature)
1.0 — TL 1 (early)
1.5 — TL 1 (mature)
2.0 — TL 2 (early)
2.5 — TL 2 (advanced)
3.0 — TL 3
3.5 — TL 4
4.0 — TL 5
4.5 — TL 6
5.0 — TL 7
5.5 — TL 8
6.0 — TL 9 (early)
6.5 — TL 9 (mature)
7.0 — TL 9 (advanced)
7.5 — TL 10 (delayed)
8.0 — TL 10 (standard)
8.5 — TL 10 (advanced)
The actual tech level of the campaign is TL10 (approximately conservative hard SF, but a little bit liberal and with of course the Eichberger device and the warp encapsulator). There are some poor people in backward hell-holes who can't afford the good stuff, but they aren't really living in Iron Age economies.