Thoughts on Tech Levels

[Nicole Massey]

I'm working on my game system, and I've hit the point where I need to
incorporate tech levels into things to better reflect different education
and knowledge availibility for cross-genre skills.

I've seen several tech level systems, ranging from Gamma World to GURPS to
Traveller, but I'm looking for something that is very easy to use and
doesn't plagarize someone else's work while also not reinventing the wheel
too much.

Anyone got any thoughts?

[Ben Finney]

"Nicole Massey" <ny...@gypsyheir.com> writes:

> I've seen several tech level systems, ranging from Gamma World to
> GURPS to Traveller, but I'm looking for something that is very easy to
> use and doesn't plagarize someone else's work while also not
> reinventing the wheel too much.

What effect do you want the tech levels to have?

If you want something generally applicable, you'll need something that
attempts to describe the way technology progresses in a broad range of
real-world and fictional societies (such as GURPS Fourth Edition). But
that means you get the complex system needed to approximate reality to
that extent.

If you want something applicable only to the world system in your game,
you can make it much simpler; but that of course depends on what that
world system is.

--
\ “It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” |
`\ —Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire |
_o__) |
Ben Finney

[Nicole Massey]

"Ben Finney" <bignose+h...@benfinney.id.au> wrote in message
news:87ehv78...@benfinney.id.au...

> "Nicole Massey" <ny...@gypsyheir.com> writes:
>
>> I've seen several tech level systems, ranging from Gamma World to
>> GURPS to Traveller, but I'm looking for something that is very easy to
>> use and doesn't plagarize someone else's work while also not
>> reinventing the wheel too much.
>
> What effect do you want the tech levels to have?
>
> If you want something generally applicable, you'll need something that
> attempts to describe the way technology progresses in a broad range of
> real-world and fictional societies (such as GURPS Fourth Edition). But
> that means you get the complex system needed to approximate reality to
> that extent.
>
> If you want something applicable only to the world system in your game,
> you can make it much simpler; but that of course depends on what that
> world system is.

I have four settings under development at the current time -- fantasy,
science fiction, post-apocalyptic, and modern occult. Other systems are
possible, though, depending on demand.

What I need for it is a system that deals with the progression of
information. For example, a renaissance man with a 50 skill in Advanced
Mathematics will not have the Calculus to work with, as Newton and Leibnitz
hadn't developed it yet.

Tech level will apply to a range of different features, especially in the
Post-Apocalyptic setting where some things have broken down in some areas
while others are less affected by the fall. At this point I'm trying to
figure out how to matrix this -- I need to figure out a scale.

Weapons already have their own tech level system. They're classified as
Primitive, Heroic, Medieval, Medieval war, (for the range of seige weaponry
and pole arms) Renaissance, Modern, Future, and Exotic. (For weapons mostly
from the various Star Trek shows, just because those weapons are neat,
especially the Lirpa and Nu-shan-tor) Leaving out the exotic and medieval
war categories I could probably use something like that. I'll want a number
or letter classification to save space when notating a skill, though.

My preliminary thoughts are something like this:
0 No technology
1 Fire, found sticks and bones as weapons
2 Stone Age tech
3 Bronze Age tech
5 Iron Age Tech
6 Roman era tech
7 Medieval tech
8 Renaissance Tech
9 17th Century tech (ranging to the 1850's)
10 Late 18th-early 19th Century TEch (The main era of the industrial age)
11 Early Computers and space (to around 1975)
12 Information age beginnings
13 Interplanetary age?
And so on. But I'm not married to this idea. I simply want to find something
that will work so I can handle cross-culturation issues.

[narf_the_mouse]

Make tech levels an implicit part of skill checks, maybe.

There's four factors for higher tech I can think of:

1) How fast it takes for *Archimedes to comprehend the computer (or the
'tech up' factor).
2) How likely Archimedes is to comprehend the computer (probably higher
than most would think).
3) How much of a penalty Archimedes would take to using the computer
(this would reduce over time).
4) The mental shock of high tech (probably not as high for Archimedes).

Surprisingly, the same applies for lower-tech; although all of the
penalties/disadvantages would be lower, your average modern person does
not know how to flint-knap or hunt with a spear or bow and thus would
need to learn. Plus, the mental shock of having to kill your own dinner.

This ignores cybernetic mental implants or other effects that could
allow Bob the Normal Person of Their Era to learn things either fast or
effectively instantly.

* Archimedes used for comparison purposes and to make the point that
"primitive" is generally a matter of knowledge, not intelligence.