The Tech Level Variant Thread

[David Johnston2]

This is a thread devoted to the various different paths that technology can take. Some initial thoughts:

1. When it comes to future technologies something like a 9+1 technology is only meaningful when you've already picked a baseline culture to diverge from. Your baseline culture is, say the TL 10 conservative hard sf (except for the FTL) Earth Federation but it's neighbours are the 8+2 Shaperate that tries to make all of it's tools living creatures with enough cyborg enhancement to stay competitive and the 2+9 aliens using New Age crystal power nonsense. If your tech is the only tech then it can't be variant because it needs something to be variant from.

2. When dealing with technology that 8 or less what makes a variant is either they lack something we have, or they have something we lack. For example they don't have petroleum so they improve coal fired engines, or they have room temperature superconductors, so they can do more with electricity.

3. Superscience such as, say cavourite the fictional anti-gravity metal can, and probably should eventually produce a variant TL but only when it has been thoroughly developed and incorporated into society. If it can be. Sometimes it's just stuck in to certain fictional settings without influencing the rest of the technology. For example an alternate TL 8 earth that has androids that can pass for human but inexplicably no other applications for the power source and cybernetics, or a TL 4 setting that has knights who fight in magic mecha. But that isn't always the case. Sometime a superscience technology can change how they go about everything

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

2. When dealing with technology that 8 or less what makes a variant is either they lack something we have, or they have something we lack. For example they don't have petroleum so they improve coal fired engines, or they have room temperature superconductors, so they can do more with electricity.

For technology before the 19th century, you also have to address the different paths of real-world technology in GURPS Low-Tech and GURPS Classic Low-Tech. I forget the current mechanics.

The Tech Level system was created with a linear model of continuous progress, and that does not work very well before the 19th century where different societies were good at different things and sometimes advanced technology was lost. So back in GURPS Classic Low-Tech they found a way to patch it.

[mlangsdorf]

One of my fantasy settings was TL 2+2 in general, with extensive use of alchemy to do things like lower the metal point of iron so that smiths could forge large pieces of steel plate over charcoal forges. That had the interesting side effect that meteoric iron couldn't be forged into large pieces of plate, since alchemy didn't work on it.

Almost all my fantasy settings at TL 2+4 or more with regards to medicine, since I really think that minor magic techniques and tools trivially enhanced with alchemy would provide the equivalent of anesthesia, anti-septics, and antibiotics. The main effect is that mundane first aid is more effective.

I'm generally not fond of magitech settings where all aspects of 19th or 20th century technology are replicated via magic, but I do think that even in classic fantasy pseudo-Renaissance game, there's space for figuring out how reliable magic would fill in some of the gaps.