The Low Tech You want

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I'm tempted to call gunpowder a TL5 innovation showing up way too early - conversion of chemical energy to work through combustion after all.

Forget gunpowder. Bloody toys for the boys. The way-anachronistic TL4 insurgence is movable-type printing*.

Mass production. Technology diffusing power from the centre to the masses. It's practically TL5, innit? With the Reformation as its killer app...



*And, more seriously, quite possibly the biggest marker for the start of TL4. Though "half-decent clocks" are also in contention. So 13th century China gets two out of three of the biggies. And then drops them. Brilliant.

[Frost]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

...more seriously, quite possibly the biggest marker for the start of TL4. Though "half-decent clocks" are also in contention. So 13th century China gets two out of three of the biggies. And then drops them. Brilliant.

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. But then again I would consider the chinese Song (or Sung if you would rather) dynasty society to be a TL3/4 transitional culture c250 years before europe reached this point, after all it had at least two of these technologies.

[Gavynn]

I'll second the idea that I want a Low-Tech book that is just as kickin' on its subjects as martial arts was. Once I have Low-Tech and Thaumatology, I'll be able to run a very serious game. Can't wait.

[Gudiomen]

Originally Posted by Gavynn

Once I have Low-Tech and Thaumatology, I'll be able to run a very serious game. Can't wait.

These are my thoughts exactly. Delay them if you have to, re-edit for a year if you need. But give us 4e quality in these babies like the other grand Basic, Fantasy, Space, Martial Arts and 'Tech books. (Magic excluded offcourse, let me take the oportunity to spit on it again *spit*)

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

These are my thoughts exactly. Delay them if you have to, re-edit for a year if you need. [...]

No! Not a year! Chain the writers and editors to their desks if you have to, but don't make us wait an entire year! The good of the many and all that... ;-p

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by rosignol

Chain the writers and editors to their desks

For pseudo-historical versimilitude, the writers should be chained to a single long oar (which a computer keyboard attached) while the editor beats a large drum and occasionally whips them.



Y'know, per SJ Games standard operating procedures.

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

For pseudo-historical versimilitude, the writers should be chained to a single long oar (which a computer keyboard attached) while the editor beats a large drum and occasionally whips them.

Found the musical accompaniment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXQJS3Yv0Y

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Alternately, you could consider the neolithic part of TL1, bronze isn't really all that important a transition compared to the agriculture and pottery often lumped into the neolithic.

I think that's seriously wrong. Yes, agriculture and pottery are Neolithic. But the secondary products revolution, in which animals are exploited for wool, milk, and traction as well as for meat and hides, is post-Neolithic and makes a big difference technologically. Animal traction goes along with irrigation and fertilizing methods in enabling large-scale agriculture, which in turn enables widespread city-building with all its concomitants, from literate bureaucracies to state-level polities and their armies.

I'm tempted to call gunpowder a TL5 innovation showing up way too early - conversion of chemical energy to work through combustion after all. It certainly isn't hard to believe Earth's TL is often advanced in a science (weaponry), right in character for humans really. Hm, if you look for the TL breaks ignoring military equipment TL3/4 and 6/7 look a lot more doubtful.

Conversion of chemical energy actually covers several different TLs: gunpowder at 3 and 4, coal at 5, petroleum at 6 and 7. The details are pretty significant.

Bill Stoddard

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think that's seriously wrong. Yes, agriculture and pottery are Neolithic. But the secondary products revolution, in which animals are exploited for wool, milk, and traction as well as for meat and hides, is post-Neolithic and makes a big difference technologically. Animal traction goes along with irrigation and fertilizing methods in enabling large-scale agriculture, which in turn enables widespread city-building with all its concomitants, from literate bureaucracies to state-level polities and their armies.

I agree. I can see a fanasty campaign based on the power difference between TL 0 and TL 1. Heck, now I think of it, go and have a look at Runequest...

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Horses. . . . Nearly every fantasy epic has this stuff as background, from just transport to fighting while mounted with hand weapons to lances and pistols and cavalry charges - still done at least once, I believe, in WWI, and certainly through TL5 like the US Civil War and the Crimea.

Actually the Philippine Scout cavalry unit launched a successful charge on a disordered Japanese unit (just made a river crossing) in December 1941. GURPS/WWII: Grim Legions has an account of an Italian cavalry charge on the Eastern Front in 1942 (IIRC).

Long ago I heard a story -- from a friend who supposedly got it from the then-elderly Landser -- that the latter, a Panzertrupp, was most terrified of the Soviet cavalry. My friend expressed some surprise at this as your basic Panzer III is fairly horse-proof while the opposite is NOT true.

The old veteran said he had no fear of Soviet cavalry while he was in his tank with the motor running. "However, young man," he noted, "you can't spend 24 hours a day in the tank and you have to get out to refuel and rearm and maintain the tank."

Apparently it was a standard tactic for the Sov cavalry to infiltrate the usually over-extended German lines and ambush a tank laager at night. Horses, especially well-trained ones, are fairly quiet. The Sov horsemen would send some scouts to take out the sentries with knives, then the cavalry would roll into the camp (where most of the Germans, who had spent all day fighting and half the night maintaining the tanks, would be in an exhausted sleep) and use grenades & submachine guns to savage the dazed inhabitants of said camp.

Especially in winter, you can't just jump into a tank and get it going; it needs minutes to just get the $#%%^&!*! starter turning. If you did jump into a Panzer III and tried to use the co-ax or co-driver's machine gun your field of fire was kinda fixed. You might be able to crank the turret a few degrees a second but in the swirl of this nighttime engagement your chance of hitting was pretty much based on luck. And that assumed you lived long enough to get to your tank.

Being horsemen did solve one problem of a night attack -- identification. For the Sov attackers, anyone on the ground was the enemy and anyone on horseback was a friend (note that there were few horses on the TOE of a Panzer unit) so killing the one and sparing the other was easier.

Then, after a few minutes of havoc, the Soviet cavalry would vanish again into the night.

Now. This account is third (or more) hand, so I can't vouch for it's veracity. One, my friend might have misunderstood the story. Two, the old German might well have been telling a landbound "sea story" -- also not unknown.

Has anyone else heard of this?