What Tech Level

[Amber Chancer]

Simple, straightforward question.

What is your favourite tech level in which to set your games and adventures ... and why?

For my HG starship games I'm afraid I tend to default to Tech 15 because there are so many more toys to play with ... but I can't help thinking I ought to explore TLs 12 and 13 a bit more.

For planetary games I like to pull things WAY down the levels. The highest I like to play at is Tech A ... but I like to push it lower still. I like to put players in situations where if their space-age technology gets damaged or malfunctions, there is no way they can get it fixed locally. I like to move players away from simply relying on fancy kit, and force them to start relying on their own ingenuity to come up with solutions.

(Yeah ... I know ... terribly hypocritical, isn't it? I like lots of toys in MY spaceships ... but when I'm a referee I like to deprive the players of THEIR toys. MWAHAHAHAHA)

 

[mike wightman]

I rarely go above TL12 for adventures because I think Traveller has done a really poor job of detailing cultural changes as TLs advance.

My version of the TL15 Imperium is currently undergoing a major revision in order to make them very different to western developed democracy in space with fancy toys

It's getting a lot harder to make excuses to players for why the high tech toys in Traveller can't even do the basics of what their smartphones can do in real life now.

 

[Dragoner]

Frontier zones usually are less than TL 12-13, while most developed areas are TL 15-16 maximum and there is a nemesis out there that is TL 17.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

My TU is currently max-TL 12. And, that is rare. It keeps it a little grittier and makes travelling about a little harder. There are still some mostly-unexplored star systems out there.

 

[Murphy]

My TU uses the same numbers for ease of reference, but my TL15 is way less spectacular than canon TL15. That's because I like hard sci-fi and some tech gaps between OTU worlds are too vast to my taste anyway.

I guess I could just play another milieu, but it would be less convenient, considering how much material there is for Spinward Marches in 1105.

If I were to pick a canon TL it would be 9, where spaceflight is already commonplace, yet I'm not bogged down by lots of high-TL phlebotinum.

 

[selunatic2397]

I use tech 12 as well with ( in my traveller universe) at least 2 other prior human empires...

It's about the year 10,000 ad during the 3rd human empire.

The wreck of a 1st empire starship is well worth going to war over.

 

[HG_B]

Simple, straightforward question.

What is your favourite tech level in which to set your games and adventures ... and why?

I set TL's for individual planets. I set an upper limit for "Known Space", which is TL 15 IMTU.

 

[aramis]

My last TU was TL11.

I like the TL10-12 range.

 

[ShapeShifter]

I follow the depictions of worlds in the Dumarest books, in that the "tech lvl" of a world is really bipartite: the Haves (living in a planet's Hightown) possess material comforts and access to technology that is much, much higher (say, 15), while the Have-Nots must deal with desperately primitive conditions. So, some of the planetary stats would have a dual tech code. Then again, doesn't our Terra have a more complicated tech situation that a single code.

 

[Timerover51]

I guess I view a world's Tech Level as three things.

1. The Tech Level of items that you might be able to purchase there.

2. The Tech Level of items that you might be able to get repaired there.

3. The Tech Level of items that the world can actually produce, based on it size and population base.

The result could be three different levels.

 

[hiro]

I rarely go above TL12 for adventures because I think Traveller has done a really poor job of detailing cultural changes as TLs advance.

This

(with the caveat that i am currently a player and not GMing)

 

[madmike]

Although my group have a TL15 starship and there are a number of TL15 worlds capable of repairing their vessel. The campaign tends to settle around TL12.

This enables me to introduce tantalizing glimpses of higher level technology (gadgets n guns), whilst keeping the lower tech but more gritty nature of frontier trade worlds.

Seems to work.

 

[ian54]

I rarely go to TL 13 as the 9-ton computers get a bit unmanageable.

 

[Hyphen]

It's getting a lot harder to make excuses to players for why the high tech toys in Traveller can't even do the basics of what their smartphones can do in real life now.

There's an easy solution to that. I remember 10 years ago watching an interview with a tech guru. He sid "I have six different IC's on me now", and proceeded to pull out his phone, pager, digital watch, calculator, swipe card... and something else. He piled them all on top of each other and said, "In three years time, this will all be in one device." THEN he said the most significant thing: "It'l take ANOTHER three years for us to work iut whether they SHOULD be all in one device".

The other thin to remember is that most people only use 10 - 20% of the features of their software.

In other words, maybe the Trav device does have extra capabilities, but the casual user doesn't know they're there. Maybe your atmo sniffer has a built-in calculator - well, it has to have SOMETHING to calculate those gas percentages - but you have to know the backdoor hacks or obscure menu pathways to get it to "pop up".

When the players think of some feature that can reasonably be argued should be available, make up two task rolls. First, roll to see if the original device designer was as smart as your players, and added the feature to the device. Second, if it exists, make the player roll to see if their character can find and activate the feature!

Hey, if you don't want them to have it (e.g. it will stuff up your wonderful scenario that's predicated on them needing to get help from an NPC you've decided they MUST meet), you can always say "No".

 

[BlackBat242]

It seems like most here do as I do, and for somewhat similar reasons.

I especially like Shapeshifter's invocation of Dumarest because of our real-world example.

On our planet right now most people actively see and use about TL 4-5, while about half the nations (and less than 1/4 of the population) see and use TL 6-7 (8 for electronics) in their daily lives. Some parts of our world are effectively TL3.



I generally run TL10-11 as "common", 12 as "state-of-the-art", and 13 as "experimental, military prototypes & super-rich availability" technology.


This makes it easier to (mainly because I don't like much of the OTU set-up) run a modified late-1st Imperium setting (actually 2nd-Imperium/Rule-of-Man" time-wise) where there is still a stalemate (and prolonged "cold War") between the Vilani (1st) Imperium & Terran Confederation across a sub-sector-wide "neutral Zone" at the spinward end of Zarushagar & Massila sectors.

I don't like TL 14-15 mainly because of the major changes in even the smallest aspect of daily life and society those would bring... an article in JTAS detailed the introduction (at TL 14) of a computer implant for direct brain-computer interfacing... how do I describe, implement, and make sense of a society where that kind of technology is widespread and affects every aspect of existence?

 

[BlackBat242]

To elaborate something from the previous post, specifically the effect of TL on daily culture and living.


I require all PCs to have on their character sheet their "personal TL"... what TL they grew up within. This determines many things, from whether they know how to use everyday items of tech to whether they can they function in the town/city they find are visiting.

This goes both ways.. yes, a Celt from 5th-century Ireland would have no idea what most items around your home are, much less how to use them... but you wouldn't know how to accomplish most basic daily living tasks in a Greek/Roman level of tech either.


PCs get a "secondary TL" as well... that being the tech level they lived in during their career. They can function well at this level, but if it is more than 2 TLs away from their "personal TL", then there is always a small (2 on 2d6) chance they will find something they struggle with. I normally only have them roll this if there is no time for them to "look up how", and it is important to the game-play.

 

[Dragoner]

IMO, TL is an arbitrary non-scientific classification system, imposed from higher TL systems. So it is really an imperfect assessment; though to show the social effects, there are various reasons. IMTU, historically the Terrans beat the Vilani with cyborg super-soldiers, but then came back around to the Vilani Beer & Barbeque "traditionalist" ideology, similar to the organic foods movement today in philosophy. There is an enemy facing charted space who have embraced a post-human (post-droyneist actually) TL17 society of post scarcity and blurring of the lines between living and non-living which makes them totally alien to people from charted space in many ways. They are at once totally hedonistic, cruel and uncaring; death is just a re-sleeve and a backup, heads of the enemy are harvested for upload to the grid, AI indistinguishable from other people.

 

[ShapeShifter]

Wasn't there one or more articles on a proposed elaboration of the TL rules in the three core LBBs? Something that recommended intermediate steps for the lower, earlier TL stages? I cannot remember if it was in JTAS or one of the many, many fanzines. The TL charts might have been fine for a while in the late 70s, but they are in drastic need of revision and more detailed definition. Frex, we all carry around the modern equivalent of Kirk's communicator, and Spock's tricorder! :rofl:

 

[Murphy]

It's getting a lot harder to make excuses to players for why the high tech toys in Traveller can't even do the basics of what their smartphones can do in real life now.

Hmm? What exactly can modern smartphones do that Traveller communicators and hand comps can't?

My players' characters actually spend quite a lot of cash to buy smartphone-like devices and use them during their adventures. It's not like having communication, computing power and library data access ever seemed to spoil an adventure scene.

That makes me remember a funny moment our group had when one of the PCs, after failing to persuade some clerk for information, decided to sneak in tonight and get it. Instead of getting a taxi to starport and coming back after dark, he decided to snooze a bit on a bench not far away from the installment until it was night. He set his comm to wake him up in time. Guess what, he wakes up in the morning and finds his comm stolen.

 

[mike wightman]

Check the TL of the gear in Traveller needed to mimic the smartphone...