[Basic] Advantage of the Week: High TL

[johndallman]

High TL [5/level] is a mundane mental advantage. Your personal TL is in advance of the general campaign TL, allowing you to have skills at TLs up to your personal TL. This advantage derives from the High Technology advantage from GURPS Aliens for 3e, which cost more, but meant that you actually had possession of higher-technology equipment.

It’s worth remembering that the basis of TLs changed between 3e and 4e. These quotes express it well:

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

I’m not sure how many people realise this, but there was a paradigm shift in the 3e->4e rules change for tech levels. It wasn’t just a mere crunching up of 16 tech levels into 12.

In 3e, tech levels were defined by a mix of how fast you could go and/or how big you could build, with tech that didn’t cleanly fall into that pattern arbitrarily placed according to what sci-fi stories most closely matched the big/fast paradigm.

In 4e, the primary paradigm was how small/finely-detailed you could build, with tech that directly contradicts known science being given the ^ tag.

There’s a subtle but important difference between “We 20th century folk firmly believe this is impossible with any technology,” and “We 20th century folk don’t have the technology to build this yet.” That’s why perpetual motion machines get the ^ tag.

Both versions included caveats that said if you don’t like where a given technology was placed, move it to suit your campaign, and eliminate items you don’t want in your campaign.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Ah, that’s a really good point, and probably reflective of broader trends in sci-fi and futurism. The 4e approach works better for modern hard SF of the Transhuman Space variety, but the 3e approach is probably more appropriate for more traditional Space Opera or super-gadgeteers.

High-TL knowledge can be very useful without equipment, especially in hygiene, medicine and science. Of course, persuading people to follow your advice may be a problem, and a large TL gap may make knowledge unusable: it’s hard to sterilise bandages among cavemen who don’t have the use of fire, or pots for boiling water. The main ways to acquire this advantage are to be from a higher-tech society, to have sufficient skills as an inventor to convince the GM, or to have been trained by someone with High TL. The Cutting-Edge Training perk, from Power-Ups 2: Perks, allows you to buy one skill at +1 TL, and if you accumulate five of them, the GM may allow you to trade them in for a level of High TL.

Acquiring high-TL equipment is a setting-specific problem; Discworld has a rule that works reasonably for neighbouring societies and fairly small differences: double the price for each extra TL above the environment where you’re buying.

This isn’t the kind of advantage you find as an option on templates: If it’s available in a setting, it is fairly much mandatory for some kind(s) of character, such as Diskworld’s Mad Doctors, Banestorm Underground Engineers, or most visitors to Portal Realms. Alien invaders may well have it, as may characters who work for secret high-tech organisations, and Power-Ups 7 offers the option for wildcard skills to include this advantage.

The characters in my Infinite Cabal campaign bought up their personal TLs from 3 or 4 to 7 or 8 over a long campaign, although since they spent a lot of time on the Astral Plane, their adventuring methods and equipment remained mostly TL4. How have TLs influenced your campaigns?

[Prince Charon]

One of my weirder 'Reawakened' campaign ideas has most or all of the PCs being 'preincarnations' - people in a Dungeon Fantasy setting, a Historical Fantasy setting, or a Weird Historical setting, who remember 'past' lives that are in the future (or at least a future). High TL would be a required advantage for those PCs, and would probably be important to how the game would play out.

Depending on how the players want to go (once I have players), the Reawakened lives might be those of the players, or they might not be.

One interesting possibility would be for the PCs to be in a 13th-century Monster Hunters-esque setting, remembering having been a party of 20th-century Monster Hunters.

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

One thought is that, if you have a higher TL than the campaign setting, but no access to high-TL equipment, your high personal TL may impose a penalty on many of your high-TL skills, and thereby essentially be a disadvantage. A comparable disadvantage could be worked out to represent this; perhaps "Too Ahead Of Your Time", to represent somewhat Da Vinci-like characters whose thoughts, ideas, and technological designs are often simply unfeasible, given the materials and tools available. Such as someone who knows how to make hot air balloons - trying to work out how to do so in 1000 BC, when they're from the 1600s AD.

Edit: Also, to give another relevant example, a 1600s metal-worker, trying to work with 1000 BC tools; that would definitely also entail a TL familiarity penalty; although somewhat from the other end of things than the previous example.

[RogerBW]

Most of my games have had a set TL so this hasn't been a major consideration.

In my magical WWII game, it's clear that TL is rising from 6 to 7 over the course of the war, but using the TL rules as written would impose major penalties. So I ended up writing a set of rules which would allow existing characters to upgrade their skills without spending buckets of experience points.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Acquiring high-TL equipment is a setting-specific problem; Discworld has a rule that works reasonably for neighbouring societies and fairly small differences: double the price for each extra TL above the environment where you’re buying.

At some point, I have convinced myself that that rule is canon GURPS, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t invent it. I’d love to have someone remind me where I got it from.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

At some point, I have convinced myself that that rule is canon GURPS, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t invent it. I’d love to have someone remind me where I got it from.

It is canon, I just missed it when researching the piece. See "Tech Level and Equipment" in the box on p. B27.

[ericthered]

I've used this trait fairly often to represent characters with access to magic systems that others don't have access to. Its good fun, and I find it useful to think of a magic system or magic tradition as an extra tech level.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I've used this trait fairly often to represent characters with access to magic systems that others don't have access to. Its good fun, and I find it useful to think of a magic system or magic tradition as an extra tech level.

I think the suggested Advantage to use there would be Unusual Background. Do you have the 'high TL' doing anything other than acting as a UB for access to restricted abilities?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I think the suggested Advantage to use there would be Unusual Background. Do you have the 'high TL' doing anything other than acting as a UB for access to restricted abilities?

Games where I make magic a Tech Level have wildly divergent societies that live separately, often on different worlds. The Tech Level gives access to the equipment and support structure of that culture or societies' magic system. Often, I use the tech level plus a few skills to do everything in that magic system. Sometimes its an alternative to buying expensive and complex traits that will be exactly the same for everyone who uses them.

For example, the people of colors-3 have broad abilities to manipulate the physical properties of the world around them. Using touch, they can change the color, friction, hardness, and elasticity of objects, plus the ability to insulate an object against further changes. I could give them several alternate versions of Control, but instead they simply buy an extra tech level (above their fairly low base TL), and buy a skill for each kind of object manipulation they know how to do.

As another example, the melbronx can use precious metals and exotic stones to make devices that read minds and do some pretty raw and primal energy manipulation/creation. This is closer to a technology system that just happens to run on magic. In that same game I had a different civilization of gnomish-dwarvish people that had access to some fantastic metals and working techniques.

For the standard magic system, the tech level would let you buy power stones and enchanted equipment, consult experts, hire people to cast spells for you, give you a general understanding of what the system can do, and make you a member of a society where that magic system is used regularly.

My magic systems do tend to lean into magic as technology, which might be effecting that decision.

On the other hand, I've been known to let one of those tech levels essentially be a racial package that included DR and a ST bonus, so maybe I'm just abusing TL to be shorthand for "wildly different abilities the GM grants this culture for free". On the other hand, that is pretty close to what High TL is in the first place: you can get some awesome stat increases with those 5 points using the vanilla tech levels, especially once you pass TL4.

[cdru]

Originally Posted by Say, it isn't that bad!

One thought is that, if you have a higher TL than the campaign setting, but no access to high-TL equipment, your high personal TL may impose a penalty on many of your high-TL skills, and thereby essentially be a disadvantage.

Note that it's possible to learn skills of lower TL than your own, and the penalty for TL difference is specificially based on the skill's TL