TL 9 prototypes

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I don't have to watch that today. I watched it when it was new. I find the world of 1972 to be so different socially that it might as well have been another palnet.

I totally agree. In 1972, I had just reached adulthood (I was 22 most of that year, and I was in my final year of college).

I had read Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. It had a character who earned money by having fertilized ova implanted in her uterus and carrying them to term. That was science fiction. It has a computer that counted the votes in an election, and (it is suggested) falsified the count to get its friends into office. That was science fiction; votes were counted by hand. It had that same computer synthesizing an image of itself and talking with people by videoconferencing; that was science fiction too.

I had programmed a computer, in a class, but it was a mainframe; I had never imagined that I might own a computer, let alone be able to use it without writing code myself.

If I wanted to know where something was, I had to look at a paper map. If I wanted to find a business, I looked through a paper phone directory, or checked the classified ads at the back of a newspaper. If I wanted to find out what movies I could watch, I looked at a newspaper. I had a choice of three commercial television networks, one public network, and a local station that broadcast from Tijuana. I watched what they chose to broadcast when they chose to broadcast it; if I was interested in an old program I had to wait till some network chose to rerun it (remember the word "rerun"?). If I wanted to do financial transactions, I paid cash, or wrote a check (it wasn't till much later that I acquired a credit card). And the time delays for all of these things were much, much greater.

Now, I have three people I videoconference with every other week (and one of the three is on a different continent) and four others I talk with that way occasionally. When C was visiting her nephew in Dallas, she called me via FaceTime, and I carried my iPad around my apartment and showed them our wall art, all forty-odd pieces of it.

When I started copy editing, I worked on paper manuscripts. There wasn't a computer on the floor. I marked up the manuscripts, and if I had questions, I could call an American or Canadian author, but with any others, I sent a letter—and if I didn't hear back from a Chinese author for six months, I sent a followup. We had a library with reference books, but if I couldn't find something there, I had to query the author or let it go.

Human cognitive and communicative powers have been enhanced almost inconceivably.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It has a computer that counted the votes in an election, and (it is suggested) falsified the count to get its friends into office. That was science fiction; votes were counted by hand.

The computer being self aware is science fiction but a computer (tabulator) counting votes wasn't. In fact, "Computers were first used in the voting process in 1964, when five counties in the United States made use of them in the November election." It just wasn't common in 1972.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

None of which amounts to any radical change.

Sir, you are so wrong that your wrongness borders upon utter folly.

Out of respect for the rules of this forum I don't intend to argue this matter with you further. If you have ignored what i have already said or even that I am that child taken from 1972 and plopped down in 2022 (admittedly more slowly than most forms of time travel) than I can not convince you of what I see to be an obvious truth.

Please take to heart that i have considered your arguments and I find them severely lacking. Further repetition of them will be fruitless.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Sir, you are so wrong that your wrongness borders upon utter folly.

Out of respect for the rules of this forum I don't intend to argue this matter with you further. If you have ignored what i have already said or even that I am that child taken from 1972 and plopped down in 2022 (admittedly more slowly than most forms of time travel) than I can not convince you of what I see to be an obvious truth.

I can remember 1972 as well. I'm younger than you, but I can remember it.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I totally agree. In 1972, I had just reached adulthood (I was 22 most of that year, and I was in my final year of college)....

From the things you described, are you sure you're talking about 1972 and not 972?

Seriously, The Times They Are a-Changin'.

For thousands of years, the tools your grandfather used the day you were born would be the same type of tools your grandson would use the day you died. (Yes, this is said from a male perspective--it works from a female one as well.)

[Alden Loveshade]

I think we're quite close to the real-life beginning of TL9. Not in every single detail, of course, but overall.

One thing about predicting the future, though: if you predict a lot of things, you're going to be wrong on a number of them.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Human cognitive and communicative powers have been enhanced almost inconceivably.

One example that always strikes me as funny is the bit in H.G. Wells' Outline of History in which he waxes enthusiastically about how much superior the study in his 1920s upper-middle-class home is to the Library of Alexandria, as a place for doing research and writing a book. After describing the use of encyclopaedias and dictionaries and books of which some have indexes and bibliographies, he goes on to describe writing a book longhand on loose sheets of paper and sending the manuscript out to a typist, revising the typescript, having it re-typed…. He concludes that "No doubt a day will come when a private library and writing-desk of the year A.D. 1925 will seem quaintly clumsy and difficult; but, measured by the standards of Alexandria, they are astonishing quick, efficient, and economical of nervous and mental energy." The day has well and truly come. And yet writers' work in the 1970s was very much as it was for Wells, except that most professionals had learned to use typewriters themselves.

That example will speak to you, whswhs, but it remains to be shown that changes to the working life of a writer, of an office worker, of a machinist, or of a mechanic cut Nature at the right joints for a character in a typical RPG.

Not counting Homer and Virgil, I have read adventure stories written between 1844 and recent times, set in settings from Pleistocene Ukraine through Eighteenth-dynasty Egypt to recent Florida, and I have GMed or played in RPG campaigns with settings in the Roman Empire, China under the early Tang, 12th-Century France, 14th-Century Damascus, 15th-Century Italy, 16th-Century France and Japan, 17th-Century England, the 18th-Century Caribbean, Regency Britain, the US West in the 1870s, the Empire and British Imperial Mars in the late Victorian period, and various places (sometimes globe-trotting) in the 1950s, 1970s, and the "contemporary" 1980s to twenty-noughties. Of course my observations are coloured by the kinds of adventures that I like to read, watch, and role-play, and even in part by the fact that I read more than I watch TV or movies. Taking that as my frame of reference, I find that the four areas of tech level that make the most consistent difference are (1) personal weapons, especially civilian ones when there is a difference, (2) personal armour, especially the items that can be worn routinely with civilian clothes, (3) means of transport, especially civilian personal travel, and (4) means of communication.

In respect of the first three of those items, their actual capabilities are often significant, but what they are called is usually most important. As I have remarked before, the Saint, an adventure hero of the 1920 and 1930s, armed himself with an "automatic" that was probably an FN Browning 1910/22 or equivalent; its ammo capacity, damage class, accuracy, and so on would probably be more like those of Dr Watson's service revolver than the sub-compact polymer-framed nine that such a character would be carrying now. The Saint's car is probably a fictional version of the Lagonda M45, which indeed far outstrips any horse-drawn vehicle, but is not a tenth as powerful the equivalent modern Aston-Martin. When I read the Saint story that involves the theft of an experimental warplane from the Hawker factory it wasn't until three-quarters of the way through that I realised it was a cloth-covered biplane. In the matter of what it can do (rather than how quickly and well) a carriage is not much unlike a limousine, nor a horse much unlike a trail bike. But what they are makes all the difference to how a the character's using them looks and feels. There is an important jump in capability from Horatio Hornblower's custom-made rifled percussion-lock pistols that his wife gave him in 1812 to any repeating pistol at all; the threat of shooting the first person who makes a move and the threat of shooting all is tactically qualitative. The difference between a Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolver in 1872 and a S&W M&P 10mm automatic in 2022 makes fewer tactical differences: on a page and in most RP the words "revolver" and "automatic" matter more than accuracy and muzzle energy, and the first six shots are more likely to matter than the next nine.

Transport makes more difference to the world than personal weapons do. For example, much of the charm of the 1930s for raiding lost temples exists because they had much more remoteness and surviving mystery and exoticism then than now. But in my experience and view cars and airliners change the course of adventures (from what was possible with carriages and ocean liners) less often and less profoundly than means of communication do. In The Three Musketeers (written in 1844, set in 1627–28) taking a message from Paris to London and bringing back a small package was a race against the calendar and occasion of high adventure. These days, the Queen's confidante would engage a cut-out to send an e-mail to Buckingham and the studs would be returned by FedEx. When you compare a body of adventures set in the 18-teens with one set in the 1890s, one set in the 1930s, one set in the 1980s, and one set in the modern milieu it is remarkable how much the technology of sending messages, intercepting messages, falsifying messages, cutting off communications, and being where your comms can't reach you matters to the courses of adventures. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes were often driven by telegrams and typed letters with false signatures. In stories of the Saint and Sam Spade it was mimicking voices on the telephone, leaving messages with whomever answered the landline phone, and cutting the phone wires. With e-mail, SMS, and mobile phones all that is different, and many of the old standbys don't work any more.

In short, I agree that the difference between 1982 tech and 1932 tech matters less to RPGs that the difference between 1902 and 1922, and that the difference from 1982 to 2002 is more like the latter. The relevant "ages" are probably the Telegraph Age (with revolvers, trains, and ocean liners), the Telephone Age (with automatics, automobiles, and airliners), and the Cellular Age (still with autos and airliners, now with ballistic vests).

When game and setting designers devise systems of tech levels for RPGs, we often base them on materials, on energy sources, and on the techniques of manufacture — on things that seem fundamental and important to the nature of the economy. For our actual purposes a system based on firearms, flak vests, and phones might serve us better. Homer didn't care about the difference between bronze blades and iron blades, and neither, perhaps, ought we.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Not counting Homer and Virgil, I have read adventure stories written between 1844 and recent times, set in settings from Pleistocene Ukraine through Eighteenth-dynasty Egypt to recent Florida, and I have GMed or played in RPG campaigns with settings in the Roman Empire, China under the early Tang, 12th-Century France, 14th-Century Damascus, 15th-Century Italy, 16th-Century France and Japan, 17th-Century England, the 18th-Century Caribbean, Regency Britain, the US West in the 1870s, the Empire and British Imperial Mars in the late Victorian period, and various places (sometimes globe-trotting) in the 1950s, 1970s, and the "contemporary" 1980s to twenty-noughties. Of course my observations are coloured by the kinds of adventures that I like to read, watch, and role-play, and even in part by the fact that I read more than I watch TV or movies. Taking that as my frame of reference, I find that the four areas of tech level that make the most consistent difference are (1) personal weapons, especially civilian ones when there is a difference, (2) personal armour, especially the items that can be worn routinely with civilian clothes, (3) means of transport, especially civilian personal travel, and (4) means of communication.



Transport makes more difference to the world than personal weapons do. For example, much of the charm of the 1930s for raiding lost temples exists because they had much more remoteness and surviving mystery and exoticism then than now. But in my experience and view cars and airliners change the course of adventures (from what was possible with carriages and ocean liners) less often and less profoundly than means of communication do. In The Three Musketeers (written in 1844, set in 1627–28) taking a

In short, I agree that the difference between 1982 tech and 1932 tech matters less to RPGs that the difference between 1902 and 1922, and that the difference from 1982 to 2002 is more like the latter. The relevant "ages" are probably the Telegraph Age (with revolvers, trains, and ocean liners), the Telephone Age (with automatics, automobiles, and airliners), and the Cellular Age (still with autos and airliners, now with ballistic vests).

A related example that I've cited before: there was an old Doc Savage novel called The Secret in the Sky that was written in 1935. That's 87 years ago now. Another 87 years puts you in 1848.

That story would need a limited rewrite to be set today, a lot of little details would be different. The villains would not be robbing banks, most likely, because of electronic cash transfer, but there are other things it's still worth physically robbing. Cell phones and related modern communications would change a lot of the fine details. But the only post-1935 technology that would require a radical, total story rewrite (as opposed to detail changes) would be radar...which was made practical just shortly after the story was written.

(Actually, Earth orbital observation satellites might also require a radical redo, for the same reasons as radar. But satellites likely presuppose radar anyway.)

But the story would be utterly unworkable, nothing about it would make any sense at all, in 1848. The story might work in 1900, barely. Anything earlier and a radical rewrite is necessary. Probably anything before the Great War wouldn't really work.

[Polydamas]

Whether a society has cities is also important for adventures, and can be orthagonal to what GURPS calls tech level. TL 2 Jutland is very different from TL 2 Attica.

It would probably be possible to subdivide tech levels based on types of story ("cave men, sword and sandals, knights and castles, swashbucklers and gunpowder plots ...") into something with more detail for games in a rational L. Sprague de Camp mode where having a lateen sail can decide a conflict. We already discussed above how dates of introduction can help answer questions about tech from 1870 onwards. Tech levels can be useful models for gamers who are not history of technology geeks, but that is not what they are best for - books which are just about technology will do that side better. But those books won't focus on what developments affect what characters in an adventure story can do.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Whether a society has cities is also important for adventures, and can be orthagonal to what GURPS calls tech level. TL 2 Jutland is very different from TL 2 Attica.

It would probably be possible to subdivide tech levels based on types of story ("cave men, sword and sandals, knights and castles, swashbucklers and gunpowder plots ...") into something with more detail for games in a rational L. Sprague de Camp mode where having a lateen sail can decide a conflict. We already discussed above how dates of introduction can help answer questions about tech from 1870 onwards. Tech levels can be useful models for gamers who are not history of technology geeks, but that is not what they are best for - books which are just about technology will do that side better. But those books won't focus on what developments affect what characters in an adventure story can do.

Also, societal size/wealth makes a big difference in what can and can't be done, for any given theoretical tech level.

When Classical Civilization fell apart, the real world 'tech level' did not precisely regress (though certain technologies were lost), and in sojme ways continued to advance. But the level of wealth and social organization had fallen precipitously, which meant that a lot of things that could be done in theory, and the knowledge for which was preserved by the Church and in the monasteries, couldn't be done in practice because they require too large a labor supply, too much large scale organization, trade networks to supply the necessary materials, etc., and for a couple of centuries that stuff just was not available.

The TL available to the USA and Lichtenstein are theoretically equal, but there are certainly projects and things America can do that Lichtenstein lacks the resources to attempt.

Which means that a society isolated from external trade and commerce might have a very high theoretical TL and still not have some of the stuff that goes with it. In an ATE scenario that left a large chunk of Western society still functional, they might have cars, radio, computer sand microelectronics, but no satellites and little in the way of high-end aircraft for lack of the necessary resources.

Meaning in turn, because of the lack of satellites, that their weather prediction ability might be no better than TL6, even if they had theoretical TL8.