The GURPS Meta-Tech Hype Thread

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

As a huge fan of Futurama I resisted very hard (and successfully!) adding notes for that form of drug.

Hmmm... on the one hand, the inconvenience of application (for most drugs, you can remove a face mask or use a feeding port and swallow them; injectables you can expose a little skin or use a built-in injection port; suppositories you've typically got to drop your pants) would be worth a price reduction, while the reduced time to have an effect (suppositories get into the bloodstream a lot faster) would be worth a price increase, provided you maintained there being a delay before the drugs start working. It might ultimately work out to +0 CF. I don't know how accurate the joke of the overly-large pill being a suppository is (Futurama certainly isn't the first to make the "I can't swallow that," "That's fine, it's a suppository" joke), but if it is (or if you decide it is for your campaign, as would be appropriate for a more comedic one), that would mean the size of the item can be larger, for a price reduction.

Great, now you have me tempted to create Farnsworth's Anti-Pressure pills once Meta-Tech comes out. As those allowed the crew to survive the ocean depths, they probably at least grant Pressure Support 2 (which GURPS notes is sufficient to survive most of the ocean depths). They are apparently around the size of a goose egg, which are 3" to 4.5" long and should have a +1 to SM for being ovaloid, for net SM -6.

[Steen]

Massively excited to see this one be released. I'm running a cyberpunk West Marches-style game with some 26 players, and they all want cool tech to spend their hard-earned creds on. Ultra-tech has of course been invaluable, but this will give the tech (especially cybernetics!) a sorely needed creative element.

Again, extremely hype for the cybernetics part in particular.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by calmquist

Repricing the elixirs using Meta-Tech would certainly be simpler.

And you can keep the same stats as listed - most of that stuff should be easy to implement.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Hmmm... on the one hand, the inconvenience of application (for most drugs, you can remove a face mask or use a feeding port and swallow them; injectables you can expose a little skin or use a built-in injection port; suppositories you've typically got to drop your pants) would be worth a price reduction, while the reduced time to have an effect (suppositories get into the bloodstream a lot faster) would be worth a price increase, provided you maintained there being a delay before the drugs start working. It might ultimately work out to +0 CF. I don't know how accurate the joke of the overly-large pill being a suppository is (Futurama certainly isn't the first to make the "I can't swallow that," "That's fine, it's a suppository" joke), but if it is (or if you decide it is for your campaign, as would be appropriate for a more comedic one), that would mean the size of the item can be larger, for a price reduction.

Great, now you have me tempted to create Farnsworth's Anti-Pressure pills once Meta-Tech comes out. As those allowed the crew to survive the ocean depths, they probably at least grant Pressure Support 2 (which GURPS notes is sufficient to survive most of the ocean depths). They are apparently around the size of a goose egg, which are 3" to 4.5" long and should have a +1 to SM for being ovaloid, for net SM -6.

No! Bad! *gets spray bottle*

Originally Posted by Steen

Massively excited to see this one be released. I'm running a cyberpunk West Marches-style game with some 26 players, and they all want cool tech to spend their hard-earned creds on. Ultra-tech has of course been invaluable, but this will give the tech (especially cybernetics!) a sorely needed creative element.

Again, extremely hype for the cybernetics part in particular.

The limit is your imagination and/or GURPS limits (i.e., absolute effects). If yo ucan build it, you can gadgetize it. ^_^

[Anders]

Just struck me while looking through Bio-Tech that you could use this to discover a 'fair price' for bioroids and robots.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Anders

Just struck me while looking through Bio-Tech that you could use this to discover a 'fair price' for bioroids and robots.

Yes! The construct section would let you determine that. I also had a box on bio-organs or "wet cybernetics" but I had to take it out for space. Nothing a reader couldn't reverse engineer, but it WAS in there.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

No! Bad! *gets spray bottle*

You cannot stop me!

Originally Posted by Anders

Just struck me while looking through Bio-Tech that you could use this to discover a 'fair price' for bioroids and robots.

Huh... I don't think I had fully considered that, but I think you may be right.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

You might also be able to use Meta-Tech to price out the cost of powers as skills with a little ingenuity. Doing that might let you backward engineer some kind of spell creation system for GURPS Magic. Though that would be a bit of work.

Oh? Interesting. I wonder if we could get a Meta-Tech 2 or a Meta-Tech Pyramid article (assuming we ever see a third round of Pyramid Volume 4) addressing this.

Or is it the sort of thing that's apparent on how to do it in the text of Meta-Tech itself, with the “bit of work” you refer to solely being about putting in the actual effort to do it? e.g., how Sorcery gives a framework for “Spells as Powers”, but thus far has only done the work for actually converting spells into powers for a tiny fraction of them?

[Anders]

Of course, Bio-Tech already has a pricing system.

[Taneli]

Does it talk about limiting generator makers from building everything and anything, besides "the GM can always say no"?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Varyon

You cannot stop me!

Bad! No.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Oh? Interesting. I wonder if we could get a Meta-Tech 2 or a Meta-Tech Pyramid article (assuming we ever see a third round of Pyramid Volume 4) addressing this.

Only if it sells well. :-)

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Or is it the sort of thing that's apparent on how to do it in the text of Meta-Tech itself, with the “bit of work” you refer to solely being about putting in the actual effort to do it? e.g., how Sorcery gives a framework for “Spells as Powers”, but thus far has only done the work for actually converting spells into powers for a tiny fraction of them?

I've tried to do this before and it just is to weird in the long run, but I think we could, yeah. You'd need to do something like assign costs to skill difficulties. Say, 50% of average starting wealth for TL per point or around there. Then you'd need to come up with something like a flat rate.

Originally Posted by Anders

Of course, Bio-Tech already has a pricing system.

True.

Originally Posted by Taneli

Does it talk about limiting generator makers from building everything and anything, besides "the GM can always say no"?

Yes. Several places. Let me check. Five different rules to do this and it's discussed over a couple pages.