Tech books are cumulative

[Anders]

Some tech is replaced, but yes, some technology (like the canoe) was basically perfected at a low TL. The only changes would be improved materials.

[ravenfish]

Personally, I've always been rather skeptical of the early start to TL5. I feel like adventuring-relevant gear even as late as the 1770s (a musket or muzzle-loading rifle to fight with, a sailing ship for long distance travel, communication limited to the speed a messanger can travel) is a lot more like that of the 1500s or 1600s (with inevitable improvements, of course) than it is like that of the the mid nineteenth century (multi-shot firearms to fight with, steamships and railway trains, the ability to send messages across continents instantly by telegraph). That a Kentucky rifle made in 1740 uses a different tech-level skill than a seventeenth century hunting rifle and the same one as a civil-war repeating rifle strikes me as grotesque, and similar comparisons could be made regarding ships. I am aware that the industrial revolution was well underway by the mid eighteenth century, but I'm not persuaded that it made a fundamental difference to equipment "in the field" until at least the beginning of the nineteenth century (to the extent a particular cutoff is needed, I might go with 1815 and Fulton's steamboat- steam engines turning looms or pumping water out of mines are a mere setting detail; steam engines that let you travel swiftly against the current mean that the technology has reached adventuring relevance).

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Anders

Some tech is replaced, but yes, some technology (like the canoe) was basically perfected at a low TL. The only changes would be improved materials.

Yes, but the question is how you feel and deal with early technologies not found in later books. Do you, for instance, feel compelled to use both Low- and High-Tech when dealing with a high-tech setting?

Originally Posted by weby

This TL based thing does not trouble me, it is the least of GURPS equipment list problems. What I find annoying is how the equipment and rules for them are scattered over 20+ books and 30+ pyramid articles.

Not the question I'm asking.

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Personally, I've always been rather skeptical of the early start to TL5.

Also not the question I'm asking.

Here's an example of what I'm looking at. Low-Tech has a table of containers. High-Tech has a small section on containers that emerge starting in TL5, mostly having to do with superior materials. If we imagine a game set in TL8 and a GM who has only High-Tech, then that GM won't have the containers for, say, glass bottles. So would you, as GM, feel pressured by this to have Low-Tech so you'd have "missing" items like this?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Here's an example of what I'm looking at. Low-Tech has a table of containers. High-Tech has a small section on containers that emerge starting in TL5, mostly having to do with superior materials. If we imagine a game set in TL8 and a GM who has only High-Tech, then that GM won't have the containers for, say, glass bottles. So would you, as GM, feel pressured by this to have Low-Tech so you'd have "missing" items like this?

Maybe not the best example, TLs 1-4 make glass bottles but they don't mass produce them. The numbers would ahve to be quite broad to deal with so many individually made bottles and exact numbers on glass bottles are a "meh" thing for actual TL8. ATE might care.

An exampel that I did end up nedign multiple books for was when I was stocking a TL9 Life Pod as a thought exercise...

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=158442

(warning there's at least 9 pages)

I ended up needing to go to HT for modern lightweight backpacks and one-man tents. I had to go to Infinite Worlds for solar cells.

It may be unavoidable that UT is a little hit-and-miss with the potential ground it has to cover but 2 pages that updated the 2 pages of gear in Characters would be nice.

[Refplace]

Yes its cumulative, this is why I love the index and good section listings so I can find what Im looking for pretty quickly.Long as I have the right book open.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

To be fair, one doesn't typically run a campaign out of the X-Tech books.

I don't know about that. I previously asked a question in this forum about whether people typically just hand players the tech books, create customized equipment lists out of the tech books, or do something in between. A lot of people seemed to respond that creating lists was too much work, and they just gave players the necessary parameters and let them look for themselves.

So how do YOU use the tech books? Do you use them to build custom equipment lists? Do you find it necessary to use the books from previous tech levels to fill them out?

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I ended up needing to go to HT for modern lightweight backpacks and one-man tents. I had to go to Infinite Worlds for solar cells.

I'm not worried about whether published rules miss something. I'm trying to see whether people consider the tech books as a single catalog — you need the previous one before you can fully stock equipment of a given tech level — or whether people are content just to have the tech book covering the tech level of their game.

To put it yet another way: If someone told you they were interested in running a game set in World War II and wanted recommendations on which books to get for equipment rules, would you recommend just High-Tech or both High-Tech and Low-Tech? And you're not recommending something just because it would be nice to have it. It would be because you thought they needed it to accomplish their goal.

I guess the question just isn't very clear, since most people seem to be drifting off topic. Sorry about that. I'm not sure how else to put it.

[Gigermann]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

So how do YOU use the tech books? Do you use them to build custom equipment lists? Do you find it necessary to use the books from previous tech levels to fill them out?

To answer the OP specifically:

• I use them all as if they were one. If something's missing from a later one, it's covered. If detail is better in an earlier one, use it.
• I don't make a list—too much work. I just look over the PCs' starting equipment and make appropriate corrections/suggestions as needed. After the start, they only get what the GM makes available, so it doesn't matter as much.
• Just like using Low-Tech with High-Tech, we end up using High-Tech with Ultra-Tech. Pretty rare to use all three, but it's possible, I suppose.
• We all use GCA, so most of the time, the player doesn't even know what book whatever-it-is came from.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I'm not worried about whether published rules miss something. I'm trying to see whether people consider the tech books as a single catalog — you need the previous one before you can fully stock equipment of a given tech level — or whether people are content just to have the tech book covering the tech level of their game.

I focus on the needed equipment but as the GM I have all the relevant books so just tell my players the stats for whet they ask for.

A tech book for the right period has most of whats needed, especially combat gear as that changes rapidly.
For much equipment the stats change little except for price so reprinting would be seen was wasted space for most readers.
Long as I have the references of Table of Contents, Index, and with PDF a search function plus I can use the section outline in my left nav bar I am content.
Its Pyramid searches that kill most of my time, luckily thats not a lot of hear though. Pyramid gave us a lot of material we would never have seen though and the themed issues help so worth that to me.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I guess the question just isn't very clear, since most people seem to be drifting off topic. Sorry about that. I'm not sure how else to put it.

It happens a lot and we have lost many good regulars who still play or write for GURPS that visit the forums less or not at all because of it.

[Ulzgoroth]

Considering the order the books were written and published in, historical cumulativism doesn't mesh well. They came out in antichronological order after all...

My view is generally less that you need all of them to fill in the more persistent bits of primitive tech than that you need (or at least want) all of them to fill in the upgrades to basic concepts and previously-overlooked subject matter. Which really generalizes beyond the *-Tech series.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

To put it yet another way: If someone told you they were interested in running a game set in World War II and wanted recommendations on which books to get for equipment rules, would you recommend just High-Tech or both High-Tech and Low-Tech? And you're not recommending something just because it would be nice to have it. It would be because you thought they needed it to accomplish their goal.
.

In your specific example I do not believe you need LT to run a WWII game. Items found in LT but not HT or Basic are few beyond some relatively exotic weapons.

You're also right in the middle of modern industrial warfare. Pretty much all the stuff you need is going to be mass produced in huge quantiies in distant locations and shiped to where you are, also in very large quantities. Sometimes it's going to fall out of the sky as if you were part of a cargo cult.

I can imagine a WWII game where you sort of needed LT but it would be on the margins of the genre. Maybe you're stuck behind the lines in the Phillipines are are cut off from TL6 civilization. You still might spend more time stealing what you needed fro the Japanese or scavenging it from tL5 scrapyards than going back to the Stone age.

People at TL5-8 use _categories_ of things that were invented at TLs 1-4 but specific items are normally highly updated and mass produced as well. No, you don't ned LT as a genral thing for higher tL games.