[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Low TL

[johndallman]

Low TL [-5 per TL] is a mundane mental disadvantage. Your personal Technology Level (Basic Set, p. 22) is lower than that of the campaign, which affects the skills you have, and which you can learn. This disadvantage appeared in the GURPS 3e Basic Set, as “Primitive.”

The obvious reason for having this disadvantage is coming from a culture with lower technology than the campaign. You might be from an undeveloped region, a culture that deliberately shuns high technology, a different world, or the past. If you are looked down on because of your low-tech culture, that's a separate Social Stigma disadvantage.

In any case, you have no skills or defaults for equipment or knowledge above your personal TL. You can be taught DX-based skills (learning them by yourself seems to be barred, presumably due to the lack of defaults), but you can't learn IQ-based skills without raising your personal TL, or buying the Cutting-Edge Training perk (Power-Ups 2: Perks, p. 16) for each skill. This is one of the most important differences between DX- and IQ-based skills in GURPS. Raising your TL can be done by living in a higher-TL society for a considerable time, but this probably works much better for one or two TLs above your current TL than it does for larger jumps. You can also trade in five Cutting-Edge Training perks for a TL increase, at the GM's discretion.

In traditional fantasy worlds, it's quite common for some cultures to have a level or two of Low TL, and Discworld and Banestorm both provide plenty of examples. DF provides it for Barbarians, Wildmen, Shamans and ghosts. Fantasy does likewise for “barbarians” and Portal Realms explains the concept of Low TL and the “reference society” in more detail. Horror uses it for some creatures, and Lands Out of Time for especially primitive cavemen. Mars Attacks and PU7: Wildcard Skills usually dispense with Low TL, but Martial Arts suggests it for truly dedicated martial artists. Space offers it for hearty and unsophisticated colonists, as well as inhabitants of uncontacted planets, and Steampunk for native leaders, their warriors and some magicians. Thaumatology points out that long-surviving intelligent magical items may well have Low TL.

The GURPS TL rules work fairly well for different TLs brought into contact, but don't really handle characters in a long-term campaign living through a TL transition. RogerBW wrote some house rules for his WWII campaign that handle this quite well; it helps that some of the players are old enough to remember life before 1980 and the start of TL8 reasonably well.

A suggestion about picking a reference society, where that's a problem: pick the candidate that the GM and players understand best.

My main history with this disadvantage comes from a world-hopping campaign, naturally enough. A TL4 Dutch swashbuckler from the late seventeenth century had no trouble understanding TL2 Arthurian Britain, and coped well enough with TL6 Victorian London. The USS Enterprise (Star Trek, TOS) however produced acute future shock, and nothing made much sense to him until the boss fight started. Said boss had splendid protection against energy weapons, but not against black powder pistols . . .

How has Low TL shaped your games?

[Icelander]

In a Forgotten Realms campaign, where most of the major urban areas are TL4*, one PC is from a Bedu-like culture in a frontier backwater and has TL3. Given that the PCs have spent several years in the faded and decadent semi-ruins of ancient empires with TL1+2 and TL2+1, it hasn't been much of a problem for him, other than influencing his personal power base. Where the other PCs command modern military and naval forces, experts, engineers and thaumatologists, the TL3 PC is instead in the process of building a tribal power, with TL3 desert raider cavalry.

Low TL is also pretty common for humanoid foes, with orcs and goblins generally having TL2, but depending on their level of sophistication, occasional isolated bands have TL1 and even TL0 (i.e. they make no metal tools, but do scavange and steal them). There are also tribes of TL3 orcs in Vastar, survivors of an ancient orcish kingdom, and these are considered considerably more civilized than the average orc. Hobgoblins are generally TL3-4, however.

Oh, and there is a PC in Caribbean by Night who is TL7. 'Nonc' Morel lives deep in the Atchafalaya Basin, without electricity or any modern conveniences, and aside from brief visits to Cajun family, hasn't really left his home much since he fought in Vietnam.

I'm not sure, but there is a possibility that Lucien Lacoste might have Low TL as well. At the very least, he doesn't like computers, doesn't know how to use a smartphone and drives only old cars and motorcycles. Though he's fine with technology up to the late 80s and early 90s, so he could only have Low TL if GURPS would admit already that pretty much all adventuring equipment has fundamentally changed since the 80s and this is because we've lived through another TL change in the past few years.

*Although normal gunpowder doesn't work, but there is an alchemical substitute which is a lot more expensive and thus much less universal adoption. Otherwise, the technology is somewhere around 15th to 17th century levels, with seaborne trade very active and driving economic expansion like in the 19th century.

[newton]

I played in a tl9 game that had degenerated from a tl10/11 society in the past and then we encountered a walled town that was tl7, being able to access a superfine hyperdense vibro katana was pretty cool but also the low tl society served as a sort of regulation. we could buy pretty much everything up to tl7 easily but to purchase any tl9 tech we had to wait for a shipment.

[Phil Masters]

Hmm. Haven't taken this disad much for my own PCs, but have put it on a couple of Discworld demo game character sheets, where it mostly gets used for comedy (strangely enough).

Originally Posted by Icelander

Though he's fine with technology up to the late 80s and early 90s, so he could only have Low TL if GURPS would admit already that pretty much all adventuring equipment has fundamentally changed since the 80s and this is because we've lived through another TL change in the past few years.[/SIZE]

I think it's more that there was still quite a lot of TL7 tech around right through to the mid '90s or so, and in fact quite a lot of "TL8" adventuring gear wasn't available until then. TL boundaries are admitted to be fuzzy, after all, and 1980 really was "first appearance" rather than "ubiquity" for TL8 stuff.

And yes, this does mean that a lot of older people technically had a level of Low TL until well into the new century. Heck, I may not have hit TL8 myself until the late '80s, when I started working on PCs rather than slightly clunky '70s-style minicomputers, and switched from typewriters to those PCs (or rather an Atari ST) for my attempts at writing. I didn't learn to drive until then, and I'd say that I was driving late-TL7 cars (even if they were brand new) until the late '90s or later. Can't remember quite when I first acquired a CD player or a microfiber towel, but it wasn't 1981.

Actually, I may know one person who's suffering mildly from still being at TL7. She's a nice old lady in her 90s who finds not having Internet access noticeably inconvenient from time to time, whereas the 70-somethings I encounter all have e-mail addresses.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

And yes, this does mean that a lot of older people technically had a level of Low TL until well into the new century. Heck, I may not have hit TL8 myself until the late '80s, when I started working on PCs rather than slightly clunky '70s-style minicomputers, and switched from typewriters to those PCs (or rather an Atari ST) for my attempts at writing. I didn't learn to drive until then, and I'd say that I was driving late-TL7 cars (even if they were brand new) until the late '90s or later. Can't remember quite when I first acquired a CD player or a microfiber towel, but it wasn't 1981.

I started working for Academic Press in 1987. There wasn't a computer on the floor, and we had no e-mail; if we wanted to query an author we made a phone call (in North America) or sent a physical letter, written on a typewriter. We got a few computers in the early nineties; I think it wasn't till the late nineties that we all got desktop computers, e-mail, and Web access. But I was corresponding with you about Who's Who before 2000.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Icelander

In a Forgotten Realms campaign, where most of the major urban areas are TL4*, one PC is from a Bedu-like culture in a frontier backwater and has TL3. Given that the PCs have spent several years in the faded and decadent semi-ruins of ancient empires with TL1+2 and TL2+1, it hasn't been much of a problem for him, other than influencing his personal power base. Where the other PCs command modern military and naval forces, experts, engineers and thaumatologists, the TL3 PC is instead in the process of building a tribal power, with TL3 desert raider cavalry.

Low TL is also pretty common for humanoid foes, with orcs and goblins generally having TL2, but depending on their level of sophistication, occasional isolated bands have TL1 and even TL0 (i.e. they make no metal tools, but do scavange and steal them). There are also tribes of TL3 orcs in Vastar, survivors of an ancient orcish kingdom, and these are considered considerably more civilized than the average orc. Hobgoblins are generally TL3-4, however.

Oh, and there is a PC in Caribbean by Night who is TL7. 'Nonc' Morel lives deep in the Atchafalaya Basin, without electricity or any modern conveniences, and aside from brief visits to Cajun family, hasn't really left his home much since he fought in Vietnam.

I'm not sure, but there is a possibility that Lucien Lacoste might have Low TL as well. At the very least, he doesn't like computers, doesn't know how to use a smartphone and drives only old cars and motorcycles. Though he's fine with technology up to the late 80s and early 90s, so he could only have Low TL if GURPS would admit already that pretty much all adventuring equipment has fundamentally changed since the 80s and this is because we've lived through another TL change in the past few years.

The 80s was when that change started though. You're just seeing the fuzziness of the lines in the transitional period

[Black Leviathan]

We do Low TL occasionally to represent savages or barbarians, group who are outsiders from the current society.

Fading Suns has a lot of situations where the majority of the planet is several Tech Levels below the ruling class. We've had characters in those games that had a level or two of Low TL because they grew up in a rural setting or a backwater planet.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Hmm. Haven't taken this disad much for my own PCs, but have put it on a couple of Discworld demo game character sheets, where it mostly gets used for comedy (strangely enough).


I think it's more that there was still quite a lot of TL7 tech around right through to the mid '90s or so, and in fact quite a lot of "TL8" adventuring gear wasn't available until then. TL boundaries are admitted to be fuzzy, after all, and 1980 really was "first appearance" rather than "ubiquity" for TL8 stuff.

If you mean generally I agree but when you dig a little deeper things get fuzzier as certian parts of certain fields hit "first appearance" of TL8 earlier.

For example, the first personal digital computers (TL8) in the form of the MITS Altair 8800 were build-able in 1975. Admittedly it wouldn't be 1977 with Apple II, Commodore PET, and the TRS-80 that the already built PC market started to take off and not until 1980 with IBM that the low cost PC market started getting a head of steam.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by maximara

If you mean generally I agree but when you dig a little deeper things get fuzzier as certian parts of certain fields hit "first appearance" of TL8 earlier.

For example, the first personal digital computers (TL8) in the form of the MITS Altair 8800 were build-able in 1975. Admittedly it wouldn't be 1977 with Apple II, Commodore PET, and the TRS-80 that the already built PC market started to take off and not until 1980 with IBM that the low cost PC market started getting a head of steam.

You’re allowed some prototypes of the next TL ten or fifteen years in advance, let alone five. Hand-build hobbyist creations sometimes show up decades ahead. And the hand-builders can have the Cutting-Edge Training perk, if you wish.

(Actually, I’m not sure that TL7 “really” starts until 1948 or 1950. Fat Man, Little Boy, the Me-262 and the Gloucester Meteor were kind of crudely prototypical, really, and Colossus and ENIAC were downright raygun gothic.)

[ericthered]

Many TL boundaries are prominent as gaming scenarios.

World War II for the TL7/TL6, Wild West for TL6/TL5, And Romans for TL3/TL2. And then a lot of the modern action genre source is set on the TL7/TL8 boundary.