We're gonna have to rethink the TLs

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

But how many aspects do you use?

Basic Set: Campaigns lists four aspects which I think cover 75% to 90% of a given tech path: Armor and Weapons, Transportation, Power, and Biotechnology/Medicine. I've used that split in my Renaissance Fantasy setting document to describe the technology available and supportable for each nation, allowing for split TLs in an aspect (for example, one area has access to TL4 weapons and armor, but doesn't have the resources to handle more than TL3 on a local scale, while a nearby area is TL0 but trades for metal weapons).

The only other aspect I can think of is Civil Engineering, but I'm not sure what the examples would be for given TLs. Agriculture kinda spans both Power and Biotechnology.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Basic Set: Campaigns lists four aspects which I think cover 75% to 90% of a given tech path: Armor and Weapons, Transportation, Power, and Biotechnology/Medicine. I've used that split in my Renaissance Fantasy setting document to describe the technology available and supportable for each nation, allowing for split TLs in an aspect (for example, one area has access to TL4 weapons and armor, but doesn't have the resources to handle more than TL3 on a local scale, while a nearby area is TL0 but trades for metal weapons).

The only other aspect I can think of is Civil Engineering, but I'm not sure what the examples would be for given TLs. Agriculture kinda spans both Power and Biotechnology.

Communications is important, and different from transportation once you hit TL5. And marginally earlier; smoke signals and beacon fires are TL0, as are signal drums.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Anders

Here's an interesting talk on science and technology in the ancient world. These people knew the distance to the moon, that the moon had an eccentric orbit, how large the world was... they had a a grain-grinding mill with 16 large water wheels that produced flour for an entire region, they had automata that could perform plays... maybe it would be more appropriate to put them at TL3 and the Dark Ages at TL 2?

Why don't we just ditch some of the Whiggish assumptions and say that the tech level rose and fell in historical times. We could also note that the Romans did things we can't repete today in the same way. If we allow the Helenistic east had a TL3 or even TL4 capassity, which they didn't apply to practical needs, because of their vast supplies of slaves, then we can say these techniques were lost when they became simply outdated luxuries. Luxuries that no one could afford or be bothered to care about. Remember, the first steam engine was just a noisy expensive toy with no practical use. It was the cruder steam engines used to pump water out of coal mines that lead to a technolgical revolution.

[Tiggurix]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

As an aside, where did the "We're gonna have to rethink X" snowclone come from, and why do people willfully use it, in an apparently non-ironic way, since it basically means "I'm wrong about this"?

It's not bad to admit that one thinks that one was wrong. And we all have an in-born desire to meme.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Tiggurix

It's not bad to admit that one thinks that one was wrong. And we all have an in-born desire to meme.

Well, yes, but Anders wasn't the guy who came up with TLs, or the one who wrote the 4/e version of them, or an author of any of the 4/e tech supplements. So his "we" cannot be taken as an admission of his own error; rather it's a way of suggesting that various other people were in error.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

As an aside, where did the "We're gonna have to rethink X" snowclone come from, and why do people willfully use it, in an apparently non-ironic way, since it basically means "I'm wrong about this"?

I just can't resist a meme when I see one.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Anders

I just can't resist a meme when I see one.

But memes don't exist. Tell your friends.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

But memes don't exist. Tell your friends.

If memes didn't exist, someone would invent them. (Like Writing, the Zero, Deities, and other things that come with TLs.)

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

If memes didn't exist, someone would invent them. (Like Writing, the Zero, Deities, and other things that come with TLs.)

So what new features come standard on a state of the art TL8 Deity? Or do you just get better control over Deities rather than the ability to build better ones?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by malloyd

So what new features come standard on a state of the art TL8 Deity? Or do you just get better control over Deities rather than the ability to build better ones?

Well, TL8 deities tend to be a bit weirder than previous. Look at the Church of the Sub-Genius and the Flying Spaghetti Monster for examples. Plus, we've had a bigger spread of previously obscure TL6 and TL7 religions, such as Scientology and Discordianlism.