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

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Truth be told, I've never once bothered with TL. The technology in my game setting is the technology in my game setting.

In many cases this is perfectly sufficient, and it often makes more sense to have one set of cross-TL skills (easily done by filing the TLs off) then to make someone have, say, Guns/TL3, Guns/TL4, and Guns TL/5 to use the variety of guns familiar to them.

Explicit TLs are for world hoppers, time travelers, primitives in advanced worlds, radical inventors, and other situations where TL variation is a major theme. And for worldbuilding, of course, if you need to decide which TL's version of something is available.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

About 1990 I felt that I had was going to have to replace about half of my GMing bag of tricks just because of the mobile phone.

Funny because while I knew they existed back then, nobody I knew owned one before the early 2000s, adults in my family to own one didn't become the majority until the late 2000s, and I still know plenty of people not to have them. There's vast differences between a piece of technology being known, being prevalent, and being universal.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Funny because while I knew they existed back then, nobody I knew owned one before the early 2000s, adults in my family to own one didn't become the majority until the late 2000s, and I still know plenty of people not to have them.

Perhaps I had more foresight than you. To be fair, I had been reading SF and Arthur Clarke's speculations in futurism for fifteen years by then.

There's vast differences between a piece of technology being known, being prevalent, and being universal.

Often what counts is not whether everyone has one but whether a PC can get one.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

(shrugs)

Your post doesn't really explain WHY tech levels are consistently bollixed, just that they are. Of course we're going to disagree about what tech belongs to which date. The whole concept derives from our deep-set need to slap labels and dates on things, and it suits the notion of technological advancement poorly.

Truth be told, I've never once bothered with TL. The technology in my game setting is the technology in my game setting. In some areas it's more advanced than in others. A player doesn't need to know (for instance) where weapons technology falls on some arbitrary continuum: she needs to know that my world's entering the Gunpowder Age, and that effective battlefield and shipboard culverins exist, but that arquebuses are still very rare, very cranky and very expensive.

TL only comes into play when different TLs collide. It matters when the science guy on your Stargate group is trying to figure out with 20th century know-how how to fix and fly a starship from a culture that had tech roughly equivalent to his ten thousand years ago. It matters when Joe Boggs, reawakened vampire from the 19th century tries to drive a Prius. Or when the chieftain of the Indian tribe in the 17th century decides the way to handle the European invaders is to learn how to copy their weapons and farming technology. Or for that matter when a 21st century human tries to fly an Equestrian steampunk airship.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

TL only comes into play when different TLs collide. .

The problem is that while the penalties for dealing with something your culture didn't have at all should be quite severe the penalties for dealing with more advanced versions of things you are familiar with may be going the wrong way.

For example, if we take Driving (Automobile) as an exemplar TL Skill RAW says that going from a TL8 Honda SUV to a TL7 (1950s) Mercury (like my grandmother drove) is a -1 while doing the reverse is a -5.

I strongly suspect from my own experience that it would be the other way around. Old cars did all sorts of odd things. Like you could accidentally "flood" the engine while you were trying to start it. I haven't seen that bug in years.

The sort of fun and games you could get into with a vacuum tube TV were even worse.

It's a general thing I've seen when persons of my parent's and grandparent's generation would have me explain newfangled things to them. The only real problem was that the new tech was too simple and bugproof for their expectations. It was always "Won't you ruin it if you do something wrong?". This actually was possible with older tech and I always had to tell them "No, they fixed that sort of problem years ago.".

Even farther back in TL5 you really could blow up a steam engine if you weren't careful. No automatic relief valves or anything like that at all. These days the Mythbusters have to physically disable 2 or 3 built-in safety systems to get a hot water heater to blow up.

Now some of this might be best represented by doing away with rolls when using higher TL gear or adding more (and possibly many more) rolls to use lower TL gear but the basic point that at least sometimes the TL penalties are going the wrong way remains.

[dagothdoom]

Going off the example( the m1911), remember that people don't use original versions at all now. If you had one produced today, it would be different than one made a hundred years ago. There was a project to make ones exactly like the 1911 1911's, but I think they were still a bit off. If you had to use a genuine 1911 1911, you probably get the penalty. If it was made at tl 8, treat it as tl 8.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by dagothdoom

Going off the example( the m1911), remember that people don't use original versions at all now. If you had one produced today, it would be different than one made a hundred years ago. There was a project to make ones exactly like the 1911 1911's, but I think they were still a bit off. If you had to use a genuine 1911 1911, you probably get the penalty. If it was made at tl 8, treat it as tl 8.

I doubt the differences between a 1914-production version and a 2014-production version justify anything of the sort. It is commonly recommended to ignore the TL penalty for shooting guns that work the same way as guns of the TL you know.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I doubt the differences between a 1914-production version and a 2014-production version justify anything of the sort. It is commonly recommended to ignore the TL penalty for shooting guns that work the same way as guns of the TL you know.

My father in law has a genuine M1911 made in 1914; his father's or grandfather's, I believe. it's fundamentally identical in usage and takedown to my wife's M1991.

[Crzyraccoon]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Yes, this. It's not like you're running GURPS Napoleon and you need to include everything TL 5 and nothing else. You do your homework, you include what was there and you don't include what wasn't. Looking up TL 5 in GURPS High Tech is a good place to start, but that's just it: It's only a start.

World-Building is, quite frankly, no different. If you're going to run a fantasy Ruritanian game set in TL 5 with some fun Steampunk leanings, then you start with TL 5 as your base, and you do your homework and you pepper it with interesting technologies appropriate to your game ("Of course this game needs rapiers and steam-automata!"). TL 5 in GURPS High Tech (and the Steamtech book) is a good place to start, but it's only a start.

This seems more obvious when people run, say, TL 3 games. TL 3 Europe is different from TL 3 China or TL 3 Japan or TL 3 Empire of the Dragon King or whatever. Everyone understands that. But it's no different when fussing with any other TL. Just look at modern militaries. TL 8 American forces are not the same as TL 8 Russian forces, TL 8 Chinese forces, or TL 8 Ethiopian forces, or TL 8 terrorists.

You can always use split technology

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?

In terms of timelines, I see prime TL6 in 1900s and prime TL7 in 1960s. I feel that WW2 was in late TL6, but it could have had TL7 splits.

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.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Here is my muzzle-loading flintlock pistol, and some black powder (in standard and priming grades), wadding, and a lead ball. Have fun.

Bill Stoddard

I think this prove why guns have a /TL.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by dagothdoom

Going off the example( the m1911), remember that people don't use original versions at all now. If you had one produced today, it would be different than one made a hundred years ago. There was a project to make ones exactly like the 1911 1911's, but I think they were still a bit off. If you had to use a genuine 1911 1911, you probably get the penalty. If it was made at tl 8, treat it as tl 8.

Giving someone with Guns/TL8 a penalty to use an M1911 is simply silly.

At most, this might be a familiarity issue. There have been cases of cops (for instance) having their guns taken off of them but the criminal involved couldn't figure out how the safety worked because the only gun they'd ever used was a Glock, which lacks a safety.