The more they over think the plumbing.....

[atpollard]

so tech level is defined by two factors: what can be done locally, and what can be shipped in as if it were done locally - virtually local.

consider rhylanor/porozlo, pop 9 tech F adjacent to pop A tech A. why isn't porozlo tech F? any explanation will have to address the lack of trade availability.

I would guess that the reasons would be similar to Mexico and the US sharing a border and not being economically identical (not discussing politics, just geography) as compared to the US Canada border where economy/technology is virtually identical.

There are differences between rhylanor and porozlo that affect the culture and acceptance/availability of technology ... time to start looking at GOV and LL.

 

[flykiller]

time to start looking at GOV and LL.

and ... you touch on it ... culture. if a culture does not bother to set up schools, and finds it acceptable for its children to ignore education and drop out of what schools are available, and if the society is based on the concept of a system of local strongmen (caciques, "little chiefs") who control and effectively own everything in sight, then no amount of technology will transfer, and paying for and importing any technology will be difficult. culturally canada and the united states are not easily distinguished, thus neither is their tech capability. culturally mexico and the united states are notably distinguishable, and thus their tech capability is distinguishable.

in the imperial culture thread I portrayed porozlo as oriented towards the ecological standing of their planet. one may easily envision the upper class of rhylanor owning "country estates" on porozlo and thus having an equal orientation. this may explain porozlo's technolgical gap - they choose it.

 

[creativehum]

so tech level is defined by two factors: what can be done locally, and what can be shipped in as if it were done locally - virtually local.

consider rhylanor/porozlo, pop 9 tech F adjacent to pop A tech A. why isn't porozlo tech F? any explanation will have to address the lack of trade availability.

Mike's examples depend on the analogy of a world economy -- a type of economy that is, frankly, brand spanking new to planet earth.

It simply did not exist at the time Traveller was written (the 1970s). Cars shipped to Viet Nam were built in one country or another at that time. (Viet Name did not have an auto industry of it's own until the 1990s, though there were, of course, automobiles in Viet Nam in the 1970s). Cars built in the U.S. were built in the U.S. forty years ago. That is no longer the case. (And we can see that the changes are dramatic in many ways across the U.S. Things are different.)

This ins't to say people shouldn't puzzle out how their interstellar civilization works with Earth's 21st Century world economy as a model. People should build whatever kind of setting they want.

But I think it is important to bring up this point because I consider it valuable to look at the rules through the lens of what analogies would have been used by someone writing the game back in the mid-70's. To impose an analogy of a type of economy that didn't exist (and would not even be imagined by most people 40 years ago) will, of course, create bumps in the assumptions of the game and the rules. But the question is, should the rules be updated to reflect the sensibilities and reality of 21st Century Earth... or is there value to going back to the assumptions and analogies of the time of the game's creation.

Moreover, the analogy specifically established in the text is that of the Age of Sail. Which means that the analogy of easy trade of today's world is not appropriate for the original tone, feel, and assumption of the original game. Today's world has laws and rules and -- especially -- communion much faster than the speed of trave that has allowed how industry works to rapidly transform how manufacturing works in the last few decades. Again, such means of production and trade on such a scale would have been a strange idea in the 1970s... and an impossible notion in the Age of Sail.

Now, the Third Imperium establishes laws and trade and peace across the stars that would allow for such an economy if the Referee wished.

As both flykiller and atpollard note, there are reason the Referee could introduce to prevent this from happening. But the fact is, ultimately, the Third Imperium, with its peace between worlds, megacorpations, and sped up communication runs counter to the rules and spirt of the original rules. In a setting where mail is carried via the haphazard travel schedules of subsidized merchants, the notion of easy trade between worlds is a non-starter.

Again, I'm making a distinction here between the original logic, assumption, and rules found in Books 1-3 and the Third Imperium that grew up alongside those rules, but often seemed to have no regard for how the logic and assumptions of the Third Imperium didn't mesh with those rules at all.

As Book 4 points out, "Traveller assumes a remote, centralized government..." If the setting really is remote from the centralized government -- not just in terms of geography but influence -- than conflicts between worlds are understandable, trade is complicated and rare, worlds are usually on their own. This is the assumption one finds in books like the Dumarest Saga, Space Vikings, the Van Rijn tales and more that served as the imaginative soil for the game.

The Third Imperium's influence, culture, and society works well for the way we in first world countries see the world.

But when it comes to the setting implied in the rules of original Traveller, I believe that using today's world economy as an analogy for trade and industry misses the mark. Again, not because someone shouldn't do it if that's what they want. But it is to find a problem where none exists if one simply looks through the lens that the game first offered and builds a world with a view that lens offers.

 

[flykiller]

People should build whatever kind of setting they want ... there are reason the Referee could introduce to prevent this from happening

well, they can, sure, and the referee can require and prevent whatever he decrees. but if you force a set of rules in order to "get what you want" you wind up with an unstable setting that requires continuous fiat rulings and interventions to function, each ruling and intervention requiring further rulings and interventions, and after a while it becomes unplayable and unbelieveable. it's better to build up than down.

 

[GypsyComet]

Which of course we might expect on any world. There will be high-tech centers and there will be areas where people simply use that high technology ... and there will be other places where there is very little high tech at all, whether "high tech" is a fusion plant, a smartphone, or a printing press.

Not really "any" world, though. The standard world generation system produces a lot of "small town worlds" that are often going to be monocultures, recently settled (relatively speaking), and built top to bottom at their stated TL, whichever TL they were when they settled, or something in between. Unless they are a dieback of some sort or predate the Long Night (assuming the OTU or a use of common tropes), such worlds are not going to have traditions of really low TLs. They were planted at TL12, they are now TL13, and the only TL8- stuff is in the hobby shed out back.

On racial homeworlds you are more likely to see the full TL range.

 

[creativehum]

One more thing, and the reason I mentioned Viet Nam in the 1970s in the previous post...

Now, I only met Marc Miller once, at the offices of FASA. I thanked him for Traveller. He asked me about the projects I was working on. It was all very pleasant and light. (He seemed like a great guy.)

So, what I'm about to type is unfair, as I am basing this on nothing but my "writer imagination" -- not anything specific I ever heard directly from Marc.

But here's a thing:

Marc served in Viet Nam. He was in a country where, outside of cities, most citizens tended rice paddies and pulled carts with oxen. He was in a country where several nations poured in technology and weapons of war. He was in a country where the wealthy owned cars built in other nations, but most citizens would see a helicopter or a jet fly overhead without anyone in their village perhaps ever seeing a car.

I believe his thoughts about the land he served in provided imaginative soil for Traveller. I really don't see how one could think otherwise.

I think he was well aware a nation might have a "Tech Index" of one level while technology far above that index existed in that nation for one reason or another.

I think these variables fascinated him. I think the implications for drama and wonder and adventure and tragedy were soil that helped him imagine his game of Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far Future a very specific way.

I'm not saying this part of his life was the be-all and end-all of Traveller (not at all). I'm saying that when I read the rules in Books 1-3, and I remember this part of Marc's background, I can easily see how one influenced the other.

I bring this up to point out that such a view of Technology and "levels" won't be built with precision built around a concrete point, but an understanding of fluidity and strangeness in such matters. Such strangeness offers opportunity, in RPG play, for adventure, drama, wonder, and tragedy.

That is, while I admire the folks who try to wrangle the UWP characteristics into some sort of logical, real-world data point system of recording societal information, that wasn't the original point of the UWP. Yes, it became such after GDW introduced the ISS and stated that it was the ISS who assigned UWP characteristics.

But, originally, as stated in the rules and by Marc several times years later, it was a "prod to the imagination" for the Referee. That is, the characteristics were there to help create unexpected, novel situations and environments (much like what Marc, I'm sure, saw in Viet Nam).

While I may be presuming too much, I think I'm on track with the point I brought up in the previous post: I think there is value in seeing the world through the lens the rules create, rather than trying to impose today's assumptions on the rules -- which never seems to work out very well.

 

[creativehum]

well, they can, sure, and the referee can require and prevent whatever he decrees. but if you force a set of rules in order to "get what you want" you wind up with an unstable setting that requires continuous fiat rulings and interventions to function, each ruling and intervention requiring further rulings and interventions, and after a while it becomes unplayable and unbelieveable. it's better to build up than down.

I agree.

Which is why I start with the rules and build a setting from that, rather than trying to shoehorn in assumptions about 21st Century First World Earth industry and trade. Because the rules weren't built with that in mind. They were built with the analogy of the Age of Sail, limited and rare trade, cultures isolated by lack of communication, no uniforms set of laws between worlds or ruling over worlds, and so on.

 

[flykiller]

They were built with the analogy of the Age of Sail

I cited the examples I did as being illustrative, not as templates. and the "age of sail" template shoehorns even less successfully than most templates.

limited and rare trade, cultures isolated by lack of communication, and so on.

really? lbb1 lists "careers" in navy, merchant service, and scout service. scouts would be an expensive indulgence supported only by entire planetary governments devoting considerable resources to "exploration". the merchant service "career" alone implies quite a bit of trade, not to mention skills such as steward, bribery, and forgery, and not to mention high passage, class A ports, etc. and a "navy" implies mass organization for defense in the face of significant threat.

not that all this is to be taken too seriously - marc thought up a game and published it, that's all. that large numbers of people sit around saying "hey what about this" and "hey what about that" and argue over it is beside the point of the game.

 

[creativehum]

really? lbb1 lists "careers" in navy, merchant service, and scout service. scouts would be an expensive indulgence supported only by entire planetary governments devoting considerable resources to "exploration". the merchant service "career" alone implies quite a bit of trade, not to mention skills such as steward, bribery, and forgery, and not to mention high passage, class A ports, etc. and a "navy" implies mass organization for defense in the face of significant threat.

You are absolutely correct.

As the first page of Book 4 states...

Traveller assumes a remote centralized government...

The important word in that clause is, of course, "remote."

And it's all in the assumptions of LBB 1-3: The characters grew up in a powerful, centralized government of exactly the sort you describe. They muster out. They take their skill set to the places at the edge of, or beyond, the influence of that government.

Which is why we have:

• Small traders, scout ships, and mercenary vessels listed in the rules instead of the kinds of ships one would expect to see at the center of an interstellar government
• A mail/communication system dependent on indeterminate schedules of subsidized merchants traveling through space
• Space Lane rules in the 1977 edition that will mandate limited regular trade between worlds
• A couple of high end weapons (laser rifles), but for the most part archaic weapons that suggest many encounters will be with civilizations off the beaten track
• Regular threats to space travel because of unrefined fuel, pirates, and hijackings...

And so on.

I'm only looking at the implied setting drawn from the material listed in Books 1-3, and its all right there.

Again, there is a larger setting -- the "off screen" setting that the PCs came from. But then there is the "setting of play" that the game assumes is where the action is... the cool place the Referee has developed off the beaten track, where fortunes can be made and exotic wonders await. This is a place at a remote distance from that larger government.

not that all this is to be taken too seriously - marc thought up a game and published it, that's all. that large numbers of people sit around saying "hey what about this" and "hey what about that" and argue over it is beside the point of the game.

I agree with you on this as well. Which is why I'm not going to the mat for any of this stuff. Which is why I often point out, "Anyone, can, of course, play any way they want."

Look, I know I'm alone in these waters on this stuff. I look at the actual content of the rules, sift through the text, and instead of being confused or finding "the fundamental problems" of Traveller, what I find is a game and assumed setting for RPG play that makes perfect sense if you accept the rules and material in the game on its own terms.

But, yeah, in the scale of stuff of worrying about right now, this is happy stuff.

 

[flykiller]

civilizations off the beaten track

like trin? mora? rhylanor? glisten? darria? collace? cronor? jewell? efate? lunion? strouden? palique? fornice? not to mention junidy and porozlo, barely spacegoing but spacegoing nonetheless and with the potential for huge yards. not to mention a few dozen pop 8 worlds that are quite substantial but are eclipsed by the megaworlds. it's very easy to view the entire spinward marches (or whatever sector is rolled up by book 3 rules) as one big heavily beaten track, and not easy to view it otherwise.

Traveller assumes a remote centralized government...

The important word in that clause is, of course, "remote."

the important word is "centralized". sure the "centralized" government is remote - to the point of irrelevance - but there's a whole lotta localized government that would make the united states and soviet union combined look like a primitive tribal affair.

ct is a pc game, and it works as long as you stick with pc's on scout ships and far traders and fat merchants and don't look too closely at how those ships came to be or why they exist in the first place. anything beyond that requires massive retro-fitting - and one can't help but go beyond that.

 

[creativehum]

like trin? mora? rhylanor? glisten? darria? collace? cronor? jewell? efate? lunion? strouden? palique? fornice? not to mention junidy and porozlo, barely spacegoing but spacegoing nonetheless and with the potential for huge yards. not to mention a few dozen pop 8 worlds that are quite substantial but are eclipsed by the megaworlds. it's very easy to view the entire spinward marches (or whatever sector is rolled up by book 3 rules) as one big heavily beaten track, and not easy to view it otherwise.

the important word is "centralized". sure the "centralized" government is remote - to the point of irrelevance - but there's a whole lotta localized government that would make the united states and soviet union combined look like a primitive tribal affair.

ct is a pc game, and it works as long as you stick with pc's on scout ships and far traders and fat merchants and don't look too closely at how those ships came to be or why they exist in the first place. anything beyond that requires massive retro-fitting - and one can't help but go beyond that.

I'm not sure this response will satisfy you in any way. But here goes.

First, if you are saying that the rules as written don't work with the setting of the Third Imperium, I agree with you completely. So, there's no disagreement there.

Second, I said I would work with LBBs 1-3 and build up. That means, no Third Imperium, and no official setting material. The Third Imperium is not mentioned in LBBs 1-3, nor anything about any specific setting. As Marc has pointed out, the game was built for people to build their own settings and no official setting was originally planned when GDW first published the game. (The Greyhawk Folio -- the first official setting for an RPG -- was still three years away.) So the list of worlds in your post are of no concern to me.

Three, your focus on "centralized" over "remote" is your choice... though I am sorry I presumed. For me, the remote part is what matters. Although the rules assume such a thing for character generation, as far as I'm concern, it's as far away and as inconsequential as the British Empire might be to soldiers in the East Indian Trading Co. during a revolt in the punjab. (Yes, it's there. At this moment, it really doesn't matter.) But how much it matters is up to the Referee. The key thing is, the subsector he creates is free to have as much interplanetary politics and action (or as little) as he wants.

Four, as the rules clearly state, the rolling up of the worlds is to act as "a prod to the imagination." The rules assume the Referee will make up his own subsector if he wishes, using random method when he gets stuck, or alter any rolls to his own desire, or not use the random rules at all. The rules even make it clear the Referee can alter the odds of world distribution across the subsector map. The same alteration of odds for any of the UWP characteristics could also be altered to provide random world generation that is alignment with the Referee's ambitions for the subsector. There is utterly no reason a Referee would get a subsector or two he couldn't understand or justify -- because they are his to make in whatever manner he wishes.

Five, the 1977 rules state that "one or two sub-sectors should be quite enough for years of adventure." I think there is wisdom in this. Going larger than that does demand a great deal of world-building that might strain the imagination and logic if one ins't careful.

But could a subsector contain one or two very vital world that is very powerful? Absolutely! And if that's what the Referee wants, there it is. And those become the hub of adventures and the campaign in many ways. There will be (at least in a setting I run) conflicts and hatreds between worlds, wars and periods of collapse, as well as intrigue, that have prevented things from going smoothly. After that, I don't know what to say. You seem to think such a thing will never work out or be logical. I know I could build a solid campaign setting in one or two subsectors that would engage players for weeks on end and never cause them to rage off because some bit of logic wasn't working right. If the Referee bakes dramatic situation into the exceptional circumstances of the setting, it will all work.

Six, as you point out, Traveller was never meant to be (at the start) an exercise in building a model train set of an interstellar society. As you wrote:

ct is a pc game, and it works as long as you stick with pc's on scout ships and far traders and fat merchants

Without doubt. Exactly. Just like the pulp SF stories and novels that inspired the game in the first place. We hang with the point of view of the main characters, and never (whether it is DUNE, or the Dumarest books, or Van Rijn tales or whatever) stop and pull back and really try to figure things out... because of course, there's every reason to believe and interstellar civilization makes no sense and would never exist.

But, again, I'm not going to play Traveller to build a realistic model of an interstellar civilization. And if I was going to, I sure as heck wouldn't use the rules in those books. As I pointed out here, Traveller was never meant to be a hard SF setting, but instead mimic the pulp adventures Marc had read. And aramis, upthread, confirmed this in an email from Marc. (As a side note, Marc shared the link from my post onto his FB page. So I must have gotten something right.)

I understand that this kind of play and setting might not be what other people want. But it is what the game was designed to do. And I think it will do it very well.

So, I want to be clear:

In many ways I'm agreeing with many of your points. It's that where you're seeing bugs, I'm seeing features. (That reading of the situation might frustrate you. If it does, I apologize.)

 

[mike wightman]

The Spinward Marches setting diverges from the 'remote central government' paradigm by including TL15 high population worlds.

Those worlds belong off board.

Imperial Navy bases can be TL 15, class A and B starports can be TL15, while the worlds they are on are much lower.

Later library data that the Spinward Marches had been settled for over 900 years was the nail in the coffin for me considering it a 'frontier' as described in LBB4 or LBB5.

Retconning Regina's TL was similarly an example of civilization creep into the setting.

 

[creativehum]

To go back to the start of this thread...

Taking the rule (from TTB) that planetary TL relates to the products of that world, I am wondering how this relates to ship construction and repair.

I am assuming that (for example) a TLA world with a class A starport, and so a starshipyard, would only be able to build vessels with up to TLA components?

Like Mike, I assume that the world and starport do not have be connected.

A starport might be put in orbit over a world or established on a world any number of factions from other worlds: noble houses, military bases, planetary governments, corporations.

What matters at the Tech Index of the owner of the starport. Once that is established, as far as I'm concerned, that's the rule. The starport can only build up to that TL ship, and can only repair ships of that TL or lower.

However, parts can be shipped in (at cost and time) if needed. It might take weeks, it might take months, it might take years.

This is part of my philosophy that space travel in the "setting of play" in Traveller is remote, infrequent, and dangerous (per book 2).

All of this can play into RPG sessions, with the PCs trapped waiting for their ship parts to come in, seeking adventure. Or hired out freelance until the parts arrive. Or stranded and trying to survive till another ship comes in. Or whatnot.

The key is, that for me Traveller is about thinking through the risks, playing the hand your dealt, and facing the consequences when things go wrong.

This also means that it might make sense to consider what TL ship one is going to travel in, per the resources in the subsector, considering how far from an A-Class Port one is traveling from, communication lines of frequent travel between worlds, arranging a pick up if they're missing a certain number of months, and more. I think this is the kind of stuff Players might dig: being smart about how they head off on their journeys, as if the expedition itself were part of the adventure, part of the danger, and handling it well is a win.

As always, I don't see the limitations of tech and communication as being a problem in Traveller. Instead, for me, this is all grist for the mill.

It also, to be clear, makes the PCs special. They are the folks who a) go off and do this stuff; and b) come back to tell the tale. In my Traveller setting, the folks who do this are the folks people talk about. They come back with stories, the way whalers and traders to the Indies or trappers into the Western Territories came back with stories.

 

[welsh]

Within the Spinward Marches, there are some worlds that are on the beaten track and others that are complete backwaters, where ships rarely visit.

And we shouldn't assume that just because a world is on a trade route, that people on that world are connected in any meaningful way to the Third Imperium. Unless you assume that these trade routes are served by massive bulk carriers, the actual volume of goods moving into or out of most worlds is quite small compared to the overall economy. Most of the population of any world lives remote from the starport, unless that population is tiny and the world is an unexplored wilderness ... in which case that world is probably highly dependent on trade just for survival.

My view is that to most of the "citizens" of the Third Imperium, the Third Imperium is essentially irrelevant ... just a remote body to which they must pay taxes. It's not a system in which everyone benefits from high technology, or in which every class A starport can repair a TL 15 ship.

I think it's an error to try to make TL mean one thing ... to me, it's just an index, which you can use with the rest of the UWP to spark ideas and flesh out a full description of a world.

 

[creativehum]

I think it's an error to try to make TL mean one thing ... to me, it's just an index, which you can use with the rest of the UWP to spark ideas and flesh out a full description of a world.

With that in mind, it might be worth a look at this essay by Marc Miller from 1982 in which he talks about the use and purpose of Government types from the UWP.

Choice quotes:

"The reason, in reality, is that they are not omitted or absent; the many varied types of government which can be imagined all fit into the basic scheme given in the Traveller government tables. To understand this, it is important to remember just what purpose the government factor is meant to serve. Traveller players and characters are rarely involved with governments on the international and interplanetary level. That is to say, they do not deal with kings or presidents or heads of state; they deal with individual members of broad government mechanisms , they deal with office holders and employees whose attitudes and actions are shaped by the type of government they serve. As a result, travellers are rarely interested in the upper reaches of government; they want to know what they can expect from the governmental structure at their own level. For example, if a group of travellers were to journey across the United States from coast to coast, they would be interested in the degree of responsiveness they could expect from local governments, in how easy the local court clerk would respond to information requests, or in the degree of difficulty that could be expected in obtaining certain licenses. As they moved through Nebraska, the fact that that state has a unicameral legislature would be of little or no importance....

"By the very nature of the classification system, it is also possible for the referee to create and add additional government types for any specific campaign. Remember that the generation system is intended primarily as a prod to imagination. For example, a referee may wish to define a specific type of government more fully, and to establish a specific factor or code for it. Although it is possible to envision a military government within several of the existing codes, it is also possible to define one specifically – perhaps as the result of a coup, or as the rule of a militaristic society similar to that of Sparta. In such a case, the letter M could be allocated to military or Spartan government. Once such a note is made, the referee can then impose that government where he or she thinks it appropriate; the adventure or campaign effects follow from that point."

[emphasis added]

The document also makes it clear that the use and definition of the UWP are loose and up to the Referee.

These notions line up with a passage found in the 1977 edition of Book 3, but missing from later eiditions.

This procedure for world creation is intended to provide a wide variety of features for worlds to which adventurers will travel. Specific characteristics should be taken as guides rather than strict statistics.

I believe the approach in the essay, and the quote above, can be used to think about the use and purpose of the Technological Index as well.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Spinward Marches setting diverges from the 'remote central government' paradigm by including TL15 high population worlds.

Those worlds belong off board.

In the campaign as described in early CT, they can be. Two subsectors is about typical by that description, and the TL15 High Pops can be avoided. They are spaced, at least in the Marches, such that most two-subsector campaigns (assuming side by side instead of vertical) will only have one. You can certainly play in the Mora-Lunion corridor and still be more than a month from both of them, though.

Later library data that the Spinward Marches had been settled for over 900 years was the nail in the coffin for me considering it a 'frontier' as described in LBB4 or LBB5.

900 years versus 11,000...

 

[flykiller]

For example, if a group of travellers were to journey across the United States from coast to coast, they would be interested in the degree of responsiveness they could expect from local governments, in how easy the local court clerk would respond to information requests, or in the degree of difficulty that could be expected in obtaining certain licenses. As they moved through Nebraska, the fact that that state has a unicameral legislature would be of little or no importance....

would a noble see it that way? an admiral? a mercenary company commander who's trying to figure out if he should that this or that military tasking without triggering imperial intervention? a pirate captain that is trying to avoid attracting the attention of certain nobles for certain reasons or certain corporations for certain reasons?

using little black books 1-3 one may travel from one disconnected world to another in a vaccuum for a while, but eventually the game develops and the need for an overall setting asserts itself.

 

[kilemall]

ct is a pc game, and it works as long as you stick with pc's on scout ships and far traders and fat merchants and don't look too closely at how those ships came to be or why they exist in the first place. anything beyond that requires massive retro-fitting - and one can't help but go beyond that.

The Star Trek Universe IMO has a lot of the same 'don't look under the covers too closely at how it works' going on.

 

[kilemall]

Marc served in Viet Nam. He was in a country where, outside of cities, most citizens tended rice paddies and pulled carts with oxen. He was in a country where several nations poured in technology and weapons of war. He was in a country where the wealthy owned cars built in other nations, but most citizens would see a helicopter or a jet fly overhead without anyone in their village perhaps ever seeing a car.

I believe his thoughts about the land he served in provided imaginative soil for Traveller. I really don't see how one could think otherwise.

I think he was well aware a nation might have a "Tech Index" of one level while technology far above that index existed in that nation for one reason or another.

I think these variables fascinated him. I think the implications for drama and wonder and adventure and tragedy were soil that helped him imagine his game of Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far Future a very specific way.

I'm not saying this part of his life was the be-all and end-all of Traveller (not at all). I'm saying that when I read the rules in Books 1-3, and I remember this part of Marc's background, I can easily see how one influenced the other.

Ahh, so literally ox carts and high tech.

Also explains the combat system, both lethality and the specifics re: weapons and 'too much gun to handle' aspect of the DEX mods.

But, originally, as stated in the rules and by Marc several times years later, it was a "prod to the imagination" for the Referee. That is, the characteristics were there to help create unexpected, novel situations and environments (much like what Marc, I'm sure, saw in Viet Nam).

While I may be presuming too much, I think I'm on track with the point I brought up in the previous post: I think there is value in seeing the world through the lens the rules create, rather than trying to impose today's assumptions on the rules -- which never seems to work out very well.

While I agree with your sentiment, I still look at it as ultimately an economic activity/support level. Whether it is crystal sets or Afghan AKs, someone is making it and someone is buying it, and it either is of a piece of industrialization and perhaps at higher TLs progressing to printer/maker tech, or a local interest/aberration and the aggregate TL is the rating.

 

[kilemall]

What they lack is the acceptance of industrialization. They're some of the worlds' best gunsmiths, if you want one-offs. But they have cultural issues that present impediments to monkey-see/monkey-do with construction. And especially firearms as a mass market factory product.

Nearly 1/5 of the world's people live in a TL 3-4 or so situation as far as local manufacture... due to social and religious values, factories are considered evil, and so, even when they accept that economies of scale are viable, they aren't looking to increase the output per man, because that devalues the man. There's a leather factory in Morocco - everything is done large scale, but still done by hand. Same output per year as one in Washington... that's 1/4 the size, and staffed by 6 guys... and unlike the one in morocco, the Washington one is operating well below peak output due to a lack of both customers and hides; increased production would not benefit them.

Sure, and not surprisingly their TL would likely be rated low.

Meanwhile, with less industry but a lot more salable resources, Saudi Arabia comes at near or equal to fullbore Western industrial nations, without the native capacity for same.

I keep harping on this economic activity level aspect of TL rule use, precisely because it CAN be used for a lot of 'how the heck is that possible' resolution.

For instance, a pop 9 starport B TL 5 world could have happened because there was a fabulously rich strike of valuable minerals, everyone moved in because the times were good.

The world went to a B starport and say TL 10 to handle the trade and exploit other planets in the system, 300 years of good times but the planet never developed alternative economic activity or was possible, the strike ran out or the bottom collapsed in that market, the money went away and now there are a lot of people 'stuck' on the planet with no prospect to even earn money to get off and no industry to provide goods or trade for them.