The Low Tech You want

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Frost

There is some evidence that china at least experimented with clocks, one of the Yuan dynasty emperors (ok so a few centuries later) was supposedly fascinated by clockworks.

Su Sung's water clock seems to have been one of the great technological wonders of history. It was also a one-off that was forgotten soon after.

That's decent mechanical clocks. Add gunpowder and, as I said, you have two out of three. (Movable type completing the set, for those who aren't keeping track.)

[Victor Maxus]

Caveman stuff. TL0, surviving in the Ice Age. And more detailed rules on survival. I loved the Third Edition rules on that, and still use some of them. One example, that just came up in the last adventure I ran, collecting fire wood. how much you can get, the skills need to collect it and so forth. It was critical to the last time we played, and I had to use the old Third Edition rules to do it. But Caveman tech section would be great.

[Victor Maxus]

Oh, and low tech medical techniques... my areas are very grim and lethal, anything to help or hinder the survival of characters would be great.

[Azinctus]

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

All I want are historical weights for armor... all armor. I don't care if it's just a side-bar, or if it's a whole chapter on how to ajust weights and other game elements accordingly. The "I can barely move!" armored knights simply crap up our historical games.
Hell, I'll settle for a footnote. Just aknowledge and correct this.

I too would like to see accurate armour weights presented as an option.

I don't want any fantasy information. Just give us the current state of historical/archaeological research and the GURPS rules to make it live.

[Bruno]

In general "Everything that was in Low Tech for 3e, and more of the same where possible." Obviously a bunch of what was in Low Tech for 3e has popped up in other 4e books and I wouldn't fault anyone for not reprinting it, but that's the general idea. Loved Low Tech 3e. I will treasure it for always.

Regarding the armor discussion, I think throwing in either tweaked armor weights or tweaked DR to match the given weights (ideally both) is good, but something that seems equally or more important would be going from "generic" suits of armor, fits one human, to optional rules for tailoring or fitting armor for a given person, and adjusting it to fit someone else once inherited/looted/whatever.

You can even hide the adjustments to weight inside the optional detailed fitting rules by noting that the given weights in the basic set are for mountain gorillas or pro wrestlers or something ;-) and scaling everything down from there.

Martial Arts introduced fiddly weapon rules for optional partial-quality (Fine Balanced vs Fine Sharp vs Fine Shiny) and tacking on bits and bobs to your weapons (finally the Glaive-guisarme-volouge lives in GURPS) - that's apparently being upgraded in LowTech. What I'd like is basically an equivalent neurotic-detail system for armor, probably in two tiers of detail - one moderately picky to echo the weapon customization from Martial Arts, and one really fiddly to match whatever the weapon customization rules for Low Tech are going to look like.

Especially if both weapons and armor get gross scaling (SM+1 ogres, SM-2 halflings) as well as fine scaling (My pa, who was 5'7" and broad across the shoulders/long in the arms, vs me, 5'9" and a bit round in the middle and big in the hips compared to Dad, cuz I'm a girl and overweight).

Crafting guidelines, even if it has to be at a pretty general level ("swords", "spears", "other weapons", instead of "longswords vs bastard swords").

[benz72]

Looking at a lot of the posts here it seems like there is an interest in 'cradle to grave' equipment rules for most things, especially armor and weapons. What I mean by that is some kind of ruleset relating to each aspect of manufacture e.g. all of the
mining, smelting, transporting, refining / alloying , designing, forging/shaping/cutting/casting, customizing, selling, repairing (and possibly recycling) for metal goods.
or the
harvesting, separating, spinning, weaving, sewing, mending ... for cloth goods etc.

It would be interesting to see this explained in an example with appropriate skills / numbers

Admittedly the level of detail of the rules would have to vary quite a bit... there is a lot more interese in customizing weps & armor than in carding wool... but the gap free explanation would be worthwhile IMO.

Sort of the equivalent of 'gee mr. GM, where did my sword come from?'

[Xplo]

Adventuring gear is great and all, it's the obvious (and stated) focus of the tech books, and arguably the stuff that the players are more interested in.. but I would like to see some historical information, too. One of the things I thought was awesome about Bio-Tech was the way it laid out a quick primer on genetics instead of just assuming that the reader was already familiar with the subject or perfectly happy to spend hours (days, weeks) studying it. I could see things like farming, metallurgy, currency, maybe early forms of law and government, etc. getting some notes, perhaps a page or two each, including ideas for how to use the information in an adventure or a setting design.

[RyanW]

Material on intra-TL development. When did this TL3 equipment begin to replace that TL3 equipment? Was a particular item used in one area after it was phased out in another?

Also: Cabaret chicks, preferably on ice!

[mortolani]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Material on intra-TL development. When did this TL3 equipment begin to replace that TL3 equipment? Was a particular item used in one area after it was phased out in another?

Cool. It seems to be a good idea to split ALL TLs in two, not just TL 0. Split all of them in Early and Late. And that information could be on the equipment and weapon tables. Example: Late TL 2, Early TL 1...

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by mortolani

Cool. It seems to be a good idea to split ALL TLs in two, not just TL 0. Split all of them in Early and Late. And that information could be on the equipment and weapon tables. Example: Late TL 2, Early TL 1...

Better yet, mid-TL/unspecified, early and late, denoted as TLx, TLx+ and TLx- on the chart (but not in text, where TL8+ means >=TL8).