Are GURPS Tech Books released in wrong order / badly planned?

[Steven Marsh]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Might. On the other hand, design for ONE class of weapons (bows) took me 11,000 words to get right.

Yes, it ended up consuming 11,000 words . . . along with my soul.

:-)

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

Yes, it ended up consuming 11,000 words . . . along with my soul.

:-)

Sawwy. And yet you agreed to look at Technical Grappling.

At least the Armor Revisited article was less twitch inducing.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Fair enough, but it's still got a much broader area to handle than any other tech book, and with more scope for dramatic differences between different UT settings. This really does limit the thngs that could be done with it's page count.

*Shrug* None of my complaints have anything to do with the scope of the book.

I understand why UT is the way it is, but it comes down to this:

If I run a fantasy, modern, or sci-fi game, the one in which I will have to do the most work, gear-wise, is the sci-fi one. And it isn't because I have to narrow down what has been invented or not, but I have to figure out which things are nonsensical, contradictory, or simply have different values within the same book.

Low Tech and High Tech are both pretty good on the "pick up and play" side of things. UT isn't, in much the same way Magic isn't. I have to look at each stat and say "does this make sense" instead of simply being able to hand the book to a player and say "TL 10, LC 3 or better, anything requiring electricity requires one size larger energy cell."

I understand that it was the first of the gear books that they could get a writer for, and that it underwent some design changes midway through, and all the other hard real-world reasons that it turned out the way it did. But that doesn't make it as useful to me as HT or LT.

[Dammann]

It occurs to me that UT might call for a different approach from that used in HT and LT. Science fiction campaign might be better served by a series of design systems.

Say you want laser guns. The publication (article or UTC or whatever) discusses the implications of different spectra, how they perform in different media, the sort of focusing apparatus called for, and the power draw. The user decides to apply switches like power cell vs chemical reservoirs, realistic cooling requirements vs ignoring cooling considerations, and so on. They plug their assumptions into a sequence that provides a statted out weapon. It should be less complex than world and system design from Space 4e, and maybe less complex than The Deadly Spring. Actually, I feel like The Deadly Spring is a pretty good model for what I'd like, but maybe it is beyond the level of crunch most other people would like. You conclude with a set of worked weapons, so that someone who doesn't want to brew up their own arsenal right away can have a starting set that will be consistent with later variants they produce.

Something similar could be used for anti- and artificial gravity technologies, force fields, and all manner of hard science and superscience constructs.

The difference between The Deadly Spring and the laser gun or a-grav handbooks would be that there is a call for some "fluff." What kind of noise does a laser gun make? What does a-grav do to the shipping industry, or mass transportation? Does it allow storage of antimatter? How does a single technology change how people actually live? This stuff would be pretty speculative, and individuals might want to ignore some implications, but having a more sophisticated appreciation of how beamed power changes the battleground or how ubiquitous terrariums would need to be on a space ship to make a total life support system without replication technology might also inform GMs.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Dammann

It occurs to me that UT might call for a different approach from that used in HT and LT. Science fiction campaign might be better served by a series of design systems.

What kind of noise does a laser gun make? What does a-grav do to the shipping industry, or mass transportation? Does it allow storage of antimatter? How does a single technology change how people actually live? This stuff would be pretty speculative, and individuals might want to ignore some implications, but having a more sophisticated appreciation of how beamed power changes the battleground or how ubiquitous terrariums would need to be on a space ship to make a total life support system without replication technology might also inform GMs.

And the neat thing is that I can see this for GURPS.
I can not think of another system where I would be able to say that.

[Dammann]

I mean, there was a design sequence in place for Mr. Pulver, or he developed one, or whatever. Framing that, along with some adjustment perimeters to individualize weapon designs for different build priorities, would put the tools in the GMs' hands. GURPS GMs seem to like tools.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

*Shrug* None of my complaints have anything to do with the scope of the book.

I understand why UT is the way it is, but it comes down to this:

If I run a fantasy, modern, or sci-fi game, the one in which I will have to do the most work, gear-wise, is the sci-fi one. And it isn't because I have to narrow down what has been invented or not, but I have to figure out which things are nonsensical, contradictory, or simply have different values within the same book.

Low Tech and High Tech are both pretty good on the "pick up and play" side of things. UT isn't, in much the same way Magic isn't. I have to look at each stat and say "does this make sense" instead of simply being able to hand the book to a player and say "TL 10, LC 3 or better, anything requiring electricity requires one size larger energy cell."

I understand that it was the first of the gear books that they could get a writer for, and that it underwent some design changes midway through, and all the other hard real-world reasons that it turned out the way it did. But that doesn't make it as useful to me as HT or LT.

Yeah, but realistically, there's not much in HT or LT that can change the game like AI, Microbot swarms or fusion. And I think a big part of that is the lack of focus a UT supplement has. It has to include psuedo-science "magic" technologies that have vast world shapping effects(teleportation, shields, fusion, swarms, AI), and it has to be generic enough for a wide spectrum of possible games. And there's a lot of space waste on some stuff, imho.

For example, I play hard science Sci-Fi. I might allow FTL travel devices for a story aid, but otherwise, if it's TL^, it's not allowed. So there's about HALF of UT unavailable to me. But some people will want to have ultra scanners, or contragrav, or whatever. And it's hard to really peg future sci-fi campaigns. There's so many possible permutations available that a book UTs size can't cover the subject.

Yes, i do want a new UT book. Want it bad. Want it to be as good as LT r HT. But i also realzie that it may or may not work for everyone who wants to run a TL9+ game. And that's a hard genre to pin down.

Perhaps smaller, more defined books would be better. "Ultra-Tech: Gritty Realism", "Ultrra-Tech: space Opera", etc.

[Dammann]

... and as a guy who runs a space opera campaign, I would buy both (since I want some ^ and some actual relationship with reality).

Really, UT is useful to me, but not as useful as I'd like. I want to be able to customize technologies to my liking (my a-grav probably operates under different constraints than the a-grav someone else uses). I want some idea how technology might work (if some big hurdles that stop it from being HT were overcome).

Catalogs are good for historic period (or modern day) campaigns. Everything there is defined. I mean, for sci fi, I can work something out, but GURPS is strong at providing an approach to generating content.

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Yeah, but realistically, there's not much in HT or LT that can change the game like AI, Microbot swarms or fusion. And I think a big part of that is the lack of focus a UT supplement has. It has to include psuedo-science "magic" technologies that have vast world shapping effects(teleportation, shields, fusion, swarms, AI), and it has to be generic enough for a wide spectrum of possible games.

<snip>

And it's hard to really peg future sci-fi campaigns. There's so many possible permutations available that a book UTs size can't cover the subject.

Yes, i do want a new UT book. Want it bad. Want it to be as good as LT r HT. But i also realzie that it may or may not work for everyone who wants to run a TL9+ game. And that's a hard genre to pin down.

Perhaps smaller, more defined books would be better. "Ultra-Tech: Gritty Realism", "Ultrra-Tech: space Opera", etc.

I think there is much wisdom in what you say.

[Kalzazz]

Having run a sci fi campaign, I can tell you what my setting things were quite easily

1. TL 10, everything primitive (TL 8 or less) is 1/3 price as 'public domain'
and TL 9 things which have superior TL 10 counterpartments count as cheap for 40% off
2. 'Military' type TL 9-10 things are restricted without good excuse
3. Magic items use TL 3 prices, mages get paid more, but industrial enchanting has picked up also so it evens out
4. Cyberware just costs money. 'Vow: No Cyberware' is -15%, and can be used as a Pact

I can't think of anything else I needed to do to make the game work, was really MUCH simpler than my current Steampunk game where had to deal with A - trying to convert 3e items, and B - the fact TL 5 guns are a VERY messy mix of Revolutionary War and Old West type stuff