Necessity is the mother of invention, and during those first few (hundred) thousand years human population density was very low, which meant that there was very little necessity for invention. And new inventions meant that the population was able to grow more quickly, which in turn meant more necessity for invention, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that lead to the explosion of tech level observed in the Solomani.
Forbidden technology of the Vilani.
- Thread starter mike wightman
- Start date
Necessity is the mother of invention, and during those first few (hundred) thousand years human population density was very low, which meant that there was very little necessity for invention. And new inventions meant that the population was able to grow more quickly, which in turn meant more necessity for invention, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that lead to the explosion of tech level observed in the Solomani.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Ruling classes sponsoring individuals with innovative concepts and the ability to realize them, and war, and war by other means.
mike; in CT I think there was some confusion about TLs, where people thought TLs were licensed or had a cap or ceiling on certain worlds, while other worlds were granted permission to produce items at a given or maximum TL.
I think T5 and GURPS explain TLs as the average TL typically found on a given world or in a given system, but not really restrained by Imperial edict so much as being restrained by trade; i.e. how far off the beaten path is a given world
=> how often do merchies visit said world / system
=> how much tech is sold there
=> how much tech is used; i.e. TL
As for advancing technology itself, which is what you wanted to talk about, I think it's more or less the fact that the Droyne seeded the Vilani, a somewhat more docile breed of humanity than us upstart Terrans / Solis, and as such were not as keen on innovation.
At least that's how I read the flavor fiction in all the Vilani related material.
I hope some of what I wrote makes sense.
I think T5 and GURPS explain TLs as the average TL typically found on a given world or in a given system, but not really restrained by Imperial edict so much as being restrained by trade; i.e. how far off the beaten path is a given world
=> how often do merchies visit said world / system
=> how much tech is sold there
=> how much tech is used; i.e. TL
As for advancing technology itself, which is what you wanted to talk about, I think it's more or less the fact that the Droyne seeded the Vilani, a somewhat more docile breed of humanity than us upstart Terrans / Solis, and as such were not as keen on innovation.
At least that's how I read the flavor fiction in all the Vilani related material.
I hope some of what I wrote makes sense.
My thoughts exactly.
Makes you wonder what kind of insights such a cache of knowledge would provide, who's to say there are not other relatively lower tech paths we have simply not thought of that some other culture/race did?
wouldn't psi-tech clash with Marc Millers "no cyborg stuff" edict?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
What 'no cyborg' stuff?
T5 is chock full of potential for this sort of thing
T5 is chock full of potential for this sort of thing
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
The cybernetics thing is cultural, and mostly a Vilani thing, IIRC, though it has become an "Imperial" thing since. Its origins are Vilani pre-history,and the meta-game desire to keep PCs from going whole-body borg just to get stupid about combat.
Notably, the Lancia Cultural Region has no such compunctions.
Notably, the Lancia Cultural Region has no such compunctions.
Well it has baffled me, and it still does, because cyborgism was addressed briefly in either JTAS or Challenge, but otherwise seemed be a sore issue with Traveller as a whole.
Cybernetics has been addressed in T5, but I'm still not seeing a whole lot of discussion about ... until here, and maybe one or two other topics in the past.
I don't know ... is it a "big thing" now?
Cybernetics has been addressed in T5, but I'm still not seeing a whole lot of discussion about ... until here, and maybe one or two other topics in the past.
I don't know ... is it a "big thing" now?
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
Remember that the Cyberpunk Movement came and went entirely within the lifespan of Traveller, though some seminal works were around before, most notably John Brunner's Shockwave Rider, and The Six Million Dollar Man. Recognizing that this was an element of "the future" GDW wrote the possibility into the early JTAS article on robots, but left details to the imagination. Given the constraints of a 2d6 system, that wasn't a bad choice. Detailing such things later in CT would have looked like hopping on the cyberpunk bandwagon, and aside from the Computer Implant in JTAS, GDW avoided it. DGP certainly made that jump though, first with AB-101 and later with the medical articles in the Digest. The "punk" attitudes toward cybernetics were to manifest in the Lancia Cultural Region, as detailed by the Signal GK fanzine, but Traveller as a whole continued to avoid the social elements.
Now, of course, fiction has passed cyberpunk (while the real world approaches it more closely every year), and Traveller can discuss and make use of cybernetics without the implication of being a Punk wanabee.
Well, this is the thing that I don't get. Whether it was because most of the tech regarding computers and robots was here in the bay area and GDW was "over there" in the midwest, and ergo less exposure to the whole tech scene, I just don't really know.
It just seems like there's a big disconnect between the computer tech the game authors envisioned or wrote down in all those rules and flavor text of the games way back when, and what's been published to date.
Why that is, I don't know. And why it's called "cyberpunk" as a genre also baffles me, because to me I get visions of punk rockers with mohawks and ratty clothes with tubes and electronics coming out of their skulls, when clearly cybernetics is something that's supposed to be much more ingrained or meshed with the human host as a means of enhancing professional ability.
And yes, it was Journal, not JTAS. Thanks for that.
It just seems like there's a big disconnect between the computer tech the game authors envisioned or wrote down in all those rules and flavor text of the games way back when, and what's been published to date.
Why that is, I don't know. And why it's called "cyberpunk" as a genre also baffles me, because to me I get visions of punk rockers with mohawks and ratty clothes with tubes and electronics coming out of their skulls, when clearly cybernetics is something that's supposed to be much more ingrained or meshed with the human host as a means of enhancing professional ability.
And yes, it was Journal, not JTAS. Thanks for that.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Combined with the radical and anarchistic seventies punk culture. Both seemed cutting edge.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
That's the "low tech high tech" vibe, also known as Warhammer 40k.
The "Cyberpunk" feel, as typified by Gibson, Resnick, and Pondsmith, is Style over Substance while still having plenty of the latter. Beyond medical necessity, cyberware is fashion statement, professional necessity, and social rebellion against the powers that have made the world what it is. You wear the chrome proudly, or you conceal the steel beneath cloths and synthetic flesh.
The term was coined after the fiction began to appear.
Maybe the Ziru Sirka wasn't very effective. The result was that every world had to be a member world, but economics was extremely inefficient.
Thus there was lots of room for ships like the Solar Queen, and wanderers such as Dumarest, who really couldn't tell if there was a true hegemony holding worlds together, or not.
Thus there was lots of room for ships like the Solar Queen, and wanderers such as Dumarest, who really couldn't tell if there was a true hegemony holding worlds together, or not.
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
IMTU the reason for the sudden surge and long stagnation of the Vilani grabs some of the OTU stuff and then wanders into speculation.
(IMTU stuff so ignore if you don't like
)
In V&V they mention an ancient war machine that was still quasi-functional (it appears again in 1248 to shoot up the black fleet), but was damaged and trapped for millenia. Now would a super smart AI machine sit on it tracks and idle away for 300,000 years? Not likely.
In the past some of the Vilani found a communicator which allowed contact with this war machine. By this stage the war machine was very low on power and could only remain cognizant for short periods of time, so it formulated plan to advance the Vilani's tech enough to perform repairs and recharge it. Once repaired it would continue on it's original mission (aka Destroy everything).
The downside is that the critical power situation only allowed brief periods of contact and passing on tech advances. The machine would then power down and recharge slowly till it had enough for another 'revelation' for its minions.
To maintain secrecy (other war machines may be listening) and to keep their own power, a semi-religious priesthood was made. The inner circle of the priesthood knew the basic secrets of the tech, while everyone else was monkey see, monkey do. This priest caste evolved into the researcher caste, the inner circle into the 4 bureaux, and the Vilani's aversion to knowing anything about how a machine actually works is a holdover from hundreds of years of enforcement of the secret (do not question or we do nasty things to you).
This plan was puttering along slowly until the war machine suffered a critical power failure, and didn't reboot. The Vilani's benefactor had gone silent.
The researchers scrambled to actually understand the tech they had been given, and any new 'discoveries' came to a screeching halt. At this point the locked down independent research hard as they could no longer be guaranteed the edge in tech development. After long and steady progression the Vilani empire ground to a halt and began to decay.
Then along came the Soli's and the rest is history.
Of course somewhere out there the communicator still exists, and perhaps the war machine has garnered enough emergency power and is awaiting its reboot command.
(IMTU stuff so ignore if you don't like
)In V&V they mention an ancient war machine that was still quasi-functional (it appears again in 1248 to shoot up the black fleet), but was damaged and trapped for millenia. Now would a super smart AI machine sit on it tracks and idle away for 300,000 years? Not likely.
In the past some of the Vilani found a communicator which allowed contact with this war machine. By this stage the war machine was very low on power and could only remain cognizant for short periods of time, so it formulated plan to advance the Vilani's tech enough to perform repairs and recharge it. Once repaired it would continue on it's original mission (aka Destroy everything).
The downside is that the critical power situation only allowed brief periods of contact and passing on tech advances. The machine would then power down and recharge slowly till it had enough for another 'revelation' for its minions.
To maintain secrecy (other war machines may be listening) and to keep their own power, a semi-religious priesthood was made. The inner circle of the priesthood knew the basic secrets of the tech, while everyone else was monkey see, monkey do. This priest caste evolved into the researcher caste, the inner circle into the 4 bureaux, and the Vilani's aversion to knowing anything about how a machine actually works is a holdover from hundreds of years of enforcement of the secret (do not question or we do nasty things to you).
This plan was puttering along slowly until the war machine suffered a critical power failure, and didn't reboot. The Vilani's benefactor had gone silent.
The researchers scrambled to actually understand the tech they had been given, and any new 'discoveries' came to a screeching halt. At this point the locked down independent research hard as they could no longer be guaranteed the edge in tech development. After long and steady progression the Vilani empire ground to a halt and began to decay.
Then along came the Soli's and the rest is history.
Of course somewhere out there the communicator still exists, and perhaps the war machine has garnered enough emergency power and is awaiting its reboot command.
So the Geonee hide some of the tech. They're the ones with the priesthood guarding ancient tech in numerous research missions.
The tech not uncovered by the Vilani Archeology Institute is hunted. The Vilani Psion Division hunts the tech for the megacorps. Moves captured enemies to an extraction village. As a gov't unit they share tech with the megacorps. Its all very planned, official, and organized or clean.
Everything is documented. Ancient battleships are not a mystery well its mutually beneficial.
The tech not uncovered by the Vilani Archeology Institute is hunted. The Vilani Psion Division hunts the tech for the megacorps. Moves captured enemies to an extraction village. As a gov't unit they share tech with the megacorps. Its all very planned, official, and organized or clean.
Everything is documented. Ancient battleships are not a mystery well its mutually beneficial.
Well a bit more then that.
I think this essay, the introduction to Mirrorshades the anthology by Bruce Sterling, covers the ground best of all.
http://cyberpunk.asia/cp_project.php?txt=182&lng=fr
And to this day I still always have some mirrorshades around to whip on and disturb people with. Just cause.
I'll take back the "inefficient"/"ineffective" part, because the ZS was clearly successful at surviving.
WHAT can an interstellar empire do with its resources?
* expand or secure borders
* keep member worlds safe
* pursue external politics (embassies, trade and embargos, wars)
* pursue internal politics (diplomacy, border management, stop Bad War)
* regulate trade
* research
The Ziru Sirka was not against research: no Vilani would say that, either. You don't state what you're for by stating what you're against: you end up with only one facet of your actual position.
And you don't support a technic empire by saying "we're against technology".
Policy or culture or law or whatever you want to call it guides the empire in a direction that happens to leave research by the wayside.
Super-high technology requires research and time and an interstellar infrastructure to support that research and maintain existing tech.
I guess that makes a little more sense from a genre oriented point of view.
As you and others suggested, GDW wanted to keep that buffer of humans pressing buttons and pulling on control sticks / yokes to operate starships, and likewise with other equipment. I guess otherwise you get people plugging themselves into ships and vehicles and going where they please, and how they please, or weaponzied autobots hovering over your head and heading your every cyberlink command ...
So, Traveller, as a background oriented game, probably doesn't benefit from that.
But, Traveller, as a generic Sci-fi RPG, could possible benefit from some rules addressing this.
Very successful. And anti-tech never works. But change is someones a tough adversary. ZS may have actually been a bit tired of their own success.
Similar threads
