GURPS FUTURE HISTORY and ULTRATECH

hal · 09-25-2021, 12:15 PM

Hello Folks,
Just curious - has anyone attempted to create a future history and positioning the various "things" that are TL 9 (for example) in the near future? When and where might those things be invented - and why?

Hal

hal · 09-27-2021, 02:52 AM

I see that no one responded...

I'm chuckling at this end, largely because of the guidelines within GURPS ULTRATECH for when various Tech levels come into being - but what is interesting to me is this...

If these things listed as TL 9 are supposed to be "common" enough for general use by say, 2020 - then we've already missed the boat. So the "Accelerated" time aspect for TL 9 has been missed.

Page 8 of GURPS ULTRATECH suggests a "Fast" timeline for TL 9 as being 2025. Somehow, I don't think we're going to quite make that deadline either.

So that leaves us with 2030, 2040, and 2050 as being medium, slow, or retarded target dates.

So - first up is the Fission portable power generator (see pg 20). We see from the description that it is supposed to be small enough to be carried aboard a pick up truck's cargo area. At 1/2 a ton, it is worth about 5 years worth of operational time before it has to be put through maintenance. Question becomes one of asking whether we should see that by 2030 or say, by 2050? I'm not asking for a Psionically endowed individual with precognition to jump up and hand me the answer...

I'm thinking more along the lines of...

The first Reactor was tested and developed in China using Thorium based nuclear material and pebble bed technology. Once a working model was deployed, the rest of the world produced their own versions (some good, some bad) in the next five years, that could be described in varying ways as Overly expensive despite being cheap quality, down to expensive but good quality, to the middle of the road versions produced in Korea that give the best quality for the best buck. Export models of the Korean manufacturers can be had for as little as 5x normal costs, but come with a warranty that lasts 10 years.

Now if that were described per GURPS FUTURE HISTORY as happening around say, 2030, what might the ramifications be further down the road in the Future history being developed?

Recently, I was with my wife driving through portions of Pennsylvania and we noted some farms had a few "solar power arrays" that were HUGE (easily the length of a long drive way and easily 10' from top to bottom) that were angled to get the best sunlight possible. So TL 9 Solar panels make perfect sense and could even hit the market within 10 years. Granted - such a level of energy efficiency might not truly appear within 10 years, but what the heck, we're trying to create a timeline for various TL 9 products - possibly even identify them by product name or country of origin.

As for "Beamed power" - I'd have to again suggest that this would not be an American development where we have power satellites beaming microwave power to the surface. Between environmental impact studies and NIMBY organizations, it would be hard to see this being developed by anyone in the world unless they have a functional space agency program or can utilize something like say, SpaceX programs or any of the new budding agencies that may be able to compete with national space programs.

Which brings me to a new point...

Where might one expect the SPACEX program to be in 10 years or even 20 years? Might one be able to create a TL 9 version of spacecraft saying that the spur by Elon Musk to be able to build such TL 9 versions of space craft have carry on effects of spurring metalurical advances and such?

So, as mentioned - the idea of this thread is to sort of fit a framework for TL 9 stuff by say, 2050 and see how well it can be made to fit.

Thoughts? If not, I'll let this thread die the death it deserves. ;)

Anaraxes · 09-27-2021, 07:07 AM

It seems entirely up to the setting, thus the province of the worldbuilder.

The Tech books are not written to define some standard future history for a presumed GURPS setting. They're gear catalogs, with bits and pieces you might want in any number of different games. SF has covered a lot of ground. Not all of that gear is going to be available in every setting in the future. Most of them are going to need to pick and choose to get the feel they're going for.

Even the TLs are just rough groupings. They're clusters of more advanced (or outlandish) tech to separate the engineered and refined chemical slugthrowers from the portable hand-held laser blasters from the flip-phone-sized all-purpose stun/kill/disintegrate-one-object* Phaser I from Star Trek. They're not a chart of required or logically inevitable advancement across the board. They're also very coarse. You'd need decimal points on the TL to plot small changes and progress between advanced and less advanced worlds of the same culture.

So, you could see any specific campaign for one history that one person did. (How about Agemegos' Flat Black? That won't use all the toys.) I don't think anyone's presumed to offer a global future history for all of GURPS.

Infinity Wars might be your best hope for the kitchen sink campaign that has everything somewhere. But even there, it's not a future history; it's a collection of parallel presents, some of which happen to be "advanced technology" so they can mimic various fictional sub-genres.

--
* Knowing what the object boundaries actually are, whether chunk of tech or humanoid body, is the biggest trick there for that little phaser box. Never mind pumping in the energy to vaporize or annihilate the matter, it's got sensors and computing power to rival the starship's main computer.

whswhs · 09-27-2021, 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

It seems entirely up to the setting, thus the province of the worldbuilder.

The Tech books are not written to define some standard future history for a presumed GURPS setting. They're gear catalogs, with bits and pieces you might want in any number of different games. SF has covered a lot of ground. Not all of that gear is going to be available in every setting in the future. Most of them are going to need to pick and choose to get the feel they're going for.

Yeah, that's very much my take on it too. Even a purely extrapolative FH with no miracles depends on guessing at what new developments will show up when. I mean, we've been ten years away from controlled fusion as a power source since I was in college.

Emerikol · 09-27-2021, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whswhs

Yeah, that's very much my take on it too. Even a purely extrapolative FH with no miracles depends on guessing at what new developments will show up when. I mean, we've been ten years away from controlled fusion as a power source since I was in college.

They did make some progress recently
https://www.livescience.com/fusion-e...ng-energy.html

But your bigger point is true. Predicting the future is bound to have tons of mistakes and after a few decades your book is no longer accurate to the real world.

dcarson · 09-27-2021, 02:20 PM

The US military is looking at developing a reactor that fits in a 40' shipping container and can be up and running in three days. Not a pickup but pretty portable.

Alden Loveshade · 09-27-2021, 02:48 PM

I haven't specifically done a campaign set in the near future, putting it at TL9. I do think that sounds like a great start for a campaign, though.

My first GURPS campaign was set in a galaxy I created, and mixed tech levels. In Fourth Edition terms, most things were TL10, but space transportation was early TL11, and most medicine/biotech was TL9.

I see TLs as a guideline, a starting point that makes the process of designing a game world much easier. One thing I've learned from reading works of futurists is that nobody precisely predicts the future. Sure, they might get something right or at least close here and there, but that's about it.

the-red-scare · 09-27-2021, 05:51 PM

I’ve got one as yet unused hard-science setting where I just made TLs 8-11 fifty years each (loosely following Kondratiev waves much as suggested in Future History though it predates the book), then we’re at TL 12 circa 2180 when development pretty much stagnates because we’ve reached the limits of physics.

And then FTL is discovered.

Another slightly more used setting pretty much follows the Fast progression from Ultra-Tech with computers and spacecraft following Accelerated and biotech staying TL9ish.

It’s worth noting that being TL9 doesn’t meant any particular TL9 technology is available instantly. Even if, say, portable fission reactors aren’t developed until 2050, that doesn’t mean we can’t be entering TL9 nowish if VR or tissue engineering or any other technologies are crossing the line. I’m comfortable saying TL9 could be starting around 2020-25 and could be fully deployed by 2075.

09-25-2021, 12:15 PM	#1
hal Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Buffalo, New York	GURPS FUTURE HISTORY and ULTRATECH Hello Folks, Just curious - has anyone attempted to create a future history and positioning the various "things" that are TL 9 (for example) in the near future? When and where might those things be invented - and why? Hal

09-27-2021, 02:52 AM	#2
hal Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Buffalo, New York	Re: GURPS FUTURE HISTORY and ULTRATECH I see that no one responded... I'm chuckling at this end, largely because of the guidelines within GURPS ULTRATECH for when various Tech levels come into being - but what is interesting to me is this... If these things listed as TL 9 are supposed to be "common" enough for general use by say, 2020 - then we've already missed the boat. So the "Accelerated" time aspect for TL 9 has been missed. Page 8 of GURPS ULTRATECH suggests a "Fast" timeline for TL 9 as being 2025. Somehow, I don't think we're going to quite make that deadline either. So that leaves us with 2030, 2040, and 2050 as being medium, slow, or retarded target dates. So - first up is the Fission portable power generator (see pg 20). We see from the description that it is supposed to be small enough to be carried aboard a pick up truck's cargo area. At 1/2 a ton, it is worth about 5 years worth of operational time before it has to be put through maintenance. Question becomes one of asking whether we should see that by 2030 or say, by 2050? I'm not asking for a Psionically endowed individual with precognition to jump up and hand me the answer... I'm thinking more along the lines of... The first Reactor was tested and developed in China using Thorium based nuclear material and pebble bed technology. Once a working model was deployed, the rest of the world produced their own versions (some good, some bad) in the next five years, that could be described in varying ways as Overly expensive despite being cheap quality, down to expensive but good quality, to the middle of the road versions produced in Korea that give the best quality for the best buck. Export models of the Korean manufacturers can be had for as little as 5x normal costs, but come with a warranty that lasts 10 years. Now if that were described per GURPS FUTURE HISTORY as happening around say, 2030, what might the ramifications be further down the road in the Future history being developed? Recently, I was with my wife driving through portions of Pennsylvania and we noted some farms had a few "solar power arrays" that were HUGE (easily the length of a long drive way and easily 10' from top to bottom) that were angled to get the best sunlight possible. So TL 9 Solar panels make perfect sense and could even hit the market within 10 years. Granted - such a level of energy efficiency might not truly appear within 10 years, but what the heck, we're trying to create a timeline for various TL 9 products - possibly even identify them by product name or country of origin. As for "Beamed power" - I'd have to again suggest that this would not be an American development where we have power satellites beaming microwave power to the surface. Between environmental impact studies and NIMBY organizations, it would be hard to see this being developed by anyone in the world unless they have a functional space agency program or can utilize something like say, SpaceX programs or any of the new budding agencies that may be able to compete with national space programs. Which brings me to a new point... Where might one expect the SPACEX program to be in 10 years or even 20 years? Might one be able to create a TL 9 version of spacecraft saying that the spur by Elon Musk to be able to build such TL 9 versions of space craft have carry on effects of spurring metalurical advances and such? So, as mentioned - the idea of this thread is to sort of fit a framework for TL 9 stuff by say, 2050 and see how well it can be made to fit. Thoughts? If not, I'll let this thread die the death it deserves. ;)

09-27-2021, 07:07 AM	#3
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: GURPS FUTURE HISTORY and ULTRATECH It seems entirely up to the setting, thus the province of the worldbuilder. The Tech books are not written to define some standard future history for a presumed GURPS setting. They're gear catalogs, with bits and pieces you might want in any number of different games. SF has covered a lot of ground. Not all of that gear is going to be available in every setting in the future. Most of them are going to need to pick and choose to get the feel they're going for. Even the TLs are just rough groupings. They're clusters of more advanced (or outlandish) tech to separate the engineered and refined chemical slugthrowers from the portable hand-held laser blasters from the flip-phone-sized all-purpose stun/kill/disintegrate-one-object* Phaser I from Star Trek. They're not a chart of required or logically inevitable advancement across the board. They're also very coarse. You'd need decimal points on the TL to plot small changes and progress between advanced and less advanced worlds of the same culture. So, you could see any specific campaign for one history that one person did. (How about Agemegos' Flat Black? That won't use all the toys.) I don't think anyone's presumed to offer a global future history for all of GURPS. Infinity Wars might be your best hope for the kitchen sink campaign that has everything somewhere. But even there, it's not a future history; it's a collection of parallel presents, some of which happen to be "advanced technology" so they can mimic various fictional sub-genres. -- * Knowing what the object boundaries actually are, whether chunk of tech or humanoid body, is the biggest trick there for that little phaser box. Never mind pumping in the energy to vaporize or annihilate the matter, it's got sensors and computing power to rival the starship's main computer. Last edited by Anaraxes; 09-27-2021 at 01:25 PM.

09-27-2021, 02:20 PM	#6
dcarson Join Date: Mar 2008	Re: GURPS FUTURE HISTORY and ULTRATECH The US military is looking at developing a reactor that fits in a 40' shipping container and can be up and running in three days. Not a pickup but pretty portable.

09-27-2021, 02:48 PM	#7
Alden Loveshade Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Hmm, looks like Earth, circa CE 2020+	Re: GURPS FUTURE HISTORY and ULTRATECH I haven't specifically done a campaign set in the near future, putting it at TL9. I do think that sounds like a great start for a campaign, though. My first GURPS campaign was set in a galaxy I created, and mixed tech levels. In Fourth Edition terms, most things were TL10, but space transportation was early TL11, and most medicine/biotech was TL9. I see TLs as a guideline, a starting point that makes the process of designing a game world much easier. One thing I've learned from reading works of futurists is that nobody precisely predicts the future. Sure, they might get something right or at least close here and there, but that's about it. __________________ GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves My first GURPS supplement Top 12 Clues You're a Role-Playing Old-Timer My humorous (I hope) article that also promotes SJGames/GURPS Kerry Thornley: Dwarf Planet Eris, Discordianism, and The John F. Kennedy Assassination Without Thornley, there would never have been the Steve Jackson Games edition of Principia Discordia

09-27-2021, 05:51 PM	#8
the-red-scare Join Date: Sep 2014	Re: GURPS FUTURE HISTORY and ULTRATECH I’ve got one as yet unused hard-science setting where I just made TLs 8-11 fifty years each (loosely following Kondratiev waves much as suggested in Future History though it predates the book), then we’re at TL 12 circa 2180 when development pretty much stagnates because we’ve reached the limits of physics. And then FTL is discovered. Another slightly more used setting pretty much follows the Fast progression from Ultra-Tech with computers and spacecraft following Accelerated and biotech staying TL9ish. It’s worth noting that being TL9 doesn’t meant any particular TL9 technology is available instantly. Even if, say, portable fission reactors aren’t developed until 2050, that doesn’t mean we can’t be entering TL9 nowish if VR or tissue engineering or any other technologies are crossing the line. I’m comfortable saying TL9 could be starting around 2020-25 and could be fully deployed by 2075.