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Old 05-01-2021, 03:32 PM   #21
Tyneras
 
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

The Star Wars universe has a laundry list of competing corporations and manufacturers, both large and small. The Star Wars Wookipedia has 243 entries with everything from starship and weapon manufacturers to real estate companies. Any monopolies in that universe are local rather than galactic.
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Old 05-01-2021, 08:45 PM   #22
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

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I don't want to get into a TL tangent, but TL5 is when you start needing tools from TLX-1 to build TLX technology, and lacking them will hard stop your TL improvements. This means the difference between TLX and TLX-1 can be TLX has the same principals, but is just better in lots of little ways because of TLX-1 tools and techniques, which were not available to make TLX-1 technology.
Perhaps it is because I am a fan of James Burke and his Connections series but I see needing tools from TLX-y to build TLX technology effectively going back to TL1.

For example, take the printing press (TL4) it is effectively a combination of a mechanical wine press (TL2), linen production (TL1), very simple metallurgy (TL2) and ink (TL2).

The knowledge web demonstrates this system theory of history.
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Old 05-01-2021, 09:30 PM   #23
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

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Perhaps it is because I am a fan of James Burke and his Connections series but I see needing tools from TLX-y to build TLX technology effectively going back to TL1. .
Doesn't follow. Divergent technological paths come about in two ways. Either you give them something we didn't have (psionics, orgone energy, room temperature superconductors, cold fusion) or you take away something we had so they must make do but continue to advance (electrical current, fossil fuels, heavy metals, draft animals).

But here's the thing, particularly with super science. It's likely that technology will advance just the same until you actually discover the bit of technology that revolutionizes your future development. Room temperature superconductors are no damn use before you discover electrical current. They aren't going to change how you made pottery, or hitched an ox to your plow, or milled grain with a water wheel.

In this case you just can't incorporate psionics into your technology before you figure out how to train psionic skills. A few pre-Jansenist witches with unreliable wild talents aren't going to change how people smelted iron.

Incidentally I got a great idea for what the beam weapons should look like. Did this: Beam Pikes. Basically they have crystal pike tips that shoot lasers.

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Old 05-02-2021, 07:05 AM   #24
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

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Doesn't follow. Divergent technological paths come about in two ways. Either you give them something we didn't have (psionics, orgone energy, room temperature superconductors, cold fusion) or you take away something we had so they must make do but continue to advance (electrical current, fossil fuels, heavy metals, draft animals).
IMHO one of the best examples of true different tech is Steampunks' Speaking Mutoscope; TL(5+1) aka Kinetoscope. Invented 1893 with earliest surviving example being from 1896

What makes this Divergent Technology is that the Speaking Mutoscope used mechanical means so common to TL5 to sync picture and sound. Its TL6 counterpart is Lauste's 1907 sound on film method which used the electrical means that would be common at that TL.
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Old 05-02-2021, 07:07 AM   #25
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

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Basically they have crystal pike tips that shoot lasers.
Like this. Five-pointed throwing star optional.
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Old 05-02-2021, 07:53 AM   #26
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IMHO one of the best examples of true different tech is Steampunks' Speaking Mutoscope; TL(5+1) aka Kinetoscope. Invented 1893 with earliest surviving example being from 1896

What makes this Divergent Technology is that the Speaking Mutoscope used mechanical means so common to TL5 to sync picture and sound. Its TL6 counterpart is Lauste's 1907 sound on film method which used the electrical means that would be common at that TL.
Yes. Had we been somehow denied electric current then that and Carnot lines might have been the turn that technology took instead.
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Old 05-02-2021, 12:03 PM   #27
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

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Yes. Had we been somehow denied electric current then that and Carnot lines might have been the turn that technology took instead.
Actually the Kinetoscope was used for a while. The Jazz Singer (1927) used the sound on disk method and that method would last until the early 1930s. One would not need the denial of electric current but the failure of improvements that make sound on film more economically practical than sound on disk.
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Old 05-04-2021, 03:34 PM   #28
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

So what sort of hadrosaur would we be looking at?


Would it be a modern reconstruction of a hadrosaur, with the massive tail held high in the air, and the head and neck coming out of the body low?


Or would it be an older reconstruction, a more bipedal and aquatic dinosaur, the better to navigate the Venusian swamps?



Or are we looking at a gungan riding beast from the First starwars prequel?
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Old 05-04-2021, 03:49 PM   #29
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

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So what sort of hadrosaur would we be looking at?
I think that in this setting, the response “Which would be most cool?” Is always canonically appropriate.
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Old 05-04-2021, 04:58 PM   #30
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Default Re: [IW] What does the world of Cyrano look like?

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I think that in this setting, the response “Which would be most cool?” Is always canonically appropriate.
Even if you're hopelessly literal-minded, actual hadrosaurs lived on Earth 78 million years ago, not on an alternate, habitable Venus in the (more or less) present day. These creatures are likely "hadrosauroid" instead, and the GM is fully justified in deciding what that means.
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