Why GURPS gets TL 5 wrong, like every single other RPG

[Antheus]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No they don't. Those weapons are available at TL 8. Also knives. The penalty firstly doesn't apply to DX skills, and secondly only comes into play if the technology in question is actually obsolete, no longer still being manufactured.

Basic set explicitly tells to apply flat penalty of -1 per TL to DX-based skills. Even High-Tech tells you to apply it (but allows you to treat it as additional unfamiliarity penalty, removable with practice). Even then, i find it weird that someone accustomed to shooting snub-nosed 38 would have -4 to shoot Webley mkIV but only -2 to shoot modern magnum revolver.

So DX-based skills with /TL (Guns, but not Melee weapons) suffer from tech-level modifiers; but you are right - they never apply to something that is produced today, or was produced last year.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

Simply put, every single RPG system I've seen put the "industrial" TL at some point in the middle of the 18th century. To be blunt, that's flat out wrong, evidenced by every single time they actually have to deal with technology in that gap.

So what does your TL table actually look like?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Antheus

Basic set explicitly tells to apply flat penalty of -1 per TL to DX-based skills. Even High-Tech tells you to apply it (but allows you to treat it as additional unfamiliarity penalty, removable with practice). Even then, i find it weird that someone accustomed to shooting snub-nosed 38 would have -4 to shoot Webley mkIV but only -2 to shoot modern magnum revolver.

So DX-based skills with /TL (Guns, but not Melee weapons) suffer from tech-level modifiers; but you are right - they never apply to something that is produced today, or was produced last year.

I know next to nothing, but am quite sure that I can fire every gun so far mentioned. Reloading them might take a minute to figure out if completely unfamiliar.
They're designed to be as idiot proof as possible. That should count for something. Even when it doesn't, gun firing isn't really a TL skill itself. Knowing proper stance might be though.
I would suggest that it's more about ubiquity than mere production. One could find nearly anything produced somewhere today.

[Phantasm]

To be fair, GURPS TL5 seems to be "the English Colonial era, which is a step ahead of the Golden Age of Exploration but a step behind the classic Old West/Victorian era in technology." Yes, there are valid arguments for lumping the early part of the era in with TL4 and the later part with TL6, and there are also valid arguments for dividing things into multiple fine-grained TLs. Dates are fiddly things, after all. Overall, people (read: the designers) had to make a judgement call for the era.

We as players have to remember that GURPS is not a reality simulator. I find that people who claim, "GURPS gets X wrong" expect it to be one and fit their perceptions of reality.

[Antheus]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I know next to nothing, but am quite sure that I can fire every gun so far mentioned. Reloading them might take a minute to figure out if completely unfamiliar.
They're designed to be as idiot proof as possible. That should count for something. Even when it doesn't, gun firing isn't really a TL skill itself. Knowing proper stance might be though.
I would suggest that it's more about ubiquity than mere production. One could find nearly anything produced somewhere today.

First of all i was talking about familiarity, removed with eight hours of practice. I do not have any experience at all with handguns, i merely quote GURPS rules. Because of my lack of practical knowledge in this regard i do not have any idea whether -2 for unfamiliarity (and no less than eight hours to remove it) between significantly different revolvers or passes reality check, only the fact that was highly suspicious to me that revolver from lower TL would give worse unfamiliarity penalty.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Antheus

First of all i was talking about familiarity, removed with eight hours of practice. I do not have any experience at all with handguns, i merely quote GURPS rules. Because of my lack of practical knowledge in this regard i do not have any idea whether -2 for unfamiliarity (and no less than eight hours to remove it) between significantly different revolvers or passes reality check, only the fact that was highly suspicious to me that revolver from lower TL would give worse unfamiliarity penalty.

A -2 for we defaulters would be enough to result in many a shot foot. I don't think that's realistic at all.
Actually, I would bet that no simple "outdated" gun can be harder to use than a "modern" one with default.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

...
We as players have to remember that GURPS is not a reality simulator. I find that people who claim, "GURPS gets X wrong" expect it to be one and fit their perceptions of reality.

Time doesn't have discrete units above the quantum level. At our scale, it's a giant wave of continuing events and increasing entropy.
Everything else is subjective aesthetics.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I know next to nothing, but am quite sure that I can fire every gun so far mentioned. Reloading them might take a minute to figure out if completely unfamiliar.
They're designed to be as idiot proof as possible. That should count for something. Even when it doesn't, gun firing isn't really a TL skill itself. Knowing proper stance might be though.
I would suggest that it's more about ubiquity than mere production. One could find nearly anything produced somewhere today.

You seem to equating a TL penalty to DX with an inability to pull the trigger. I'm sure anyone who's fired a gun can fire a different gun. The real question is can you still hit the target.

Any number of factors from weight, recoil, bullet aerodynamics and so on can affect your ability to hit accurately. Since all factors are likely to change with a TL difference a penalty makes sense, and a -1 per TL is as low as you can get.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

You seem to equating a TL penalty to DX with an inability to pull the trigger. I'm sure anyone who's fired a gun can fire a different gun. The real question is can you still hit the target.

Any number of factors from weight, recoil, bullet aerodynamics and so on can affect your ability to hit accurately. Since all factors are likely to change with a TL difference a penalty makes sense, and a -1 per TL is as low as you can get.

I don't think so. Guns differ from each other in those "minor" details, but aren't the same within a TL.
I'm sure two TL 7 guns can be far more different from each other than either may be to its TL 6/5 predecessor.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I disagree. I don't think tech levels breakpoints should be set at the point when technologies are in general distribution that adventurers are likely to be using because a tech level breakpoint is the point at which someone is penalised when studying or starting to duplicate the technologies of that tech level. If you could use or reverse engineer an item of a given technology, then you probably don't have that penalty and you are of that tech level yourself. But well before they actually had railroads in play they had people who could have fairly easily figured out a train engine if they were given an example of one. The breakpoint that bugs me is the one between 6 and 7. The middle of World War II? Really?

(a) Round number bias comes into play.

(b) GURPS is an Americacentric game; here in the USA World War II took place in "the forties."

(c) A lot of key inventions of TL7 either originate in or came into general use during WWII: radar, computers, nuclear fission, rocketry. The war had a technological forcing effect.

Bill Stoddard