CT Only: PTL - Personal Tech Level

[Garnfellow]

You mean that the character with INT 13, EDU 10, Alchemy-3, Witch Law-1, Aether Studies-1, and Bloodletting-2 may not quite find a place in a higher tech society?

This made me laugh out loud, though in seriousness I would argue that within the Imperium, most low tech geniuses know that Alchemy, Witches, Aether Studies, and Bloodletting are crap, unless their homeworld culture tells them otherwise. TL is not an insulation from superstition, and I'm sure many TL15 citizens have some very spurious beliefs in crystals, astral projection, and a magical Droyne civilization that pre-dates humanity.

 

[mike wightman]

There are an awful lot of people in the Imperium that believe in the flat universe theory, not that spacetime is flat but that every star system lies on the same plane...

 

[Condottiere]

Proof.

 

[whulorigan]

Proof.

So what happens if you fall off the edge of the Jump Plane?

 

[Condottiere]

The Jump plane is two dimensional and a Moebius strip; the jump bubble intrudes the third dimension into it.

 

[Timerover51]

missing image

Proof.

Thanks for posting the map of Charted Space. Looking at it, my Space Viking enclave in sub-sector D, Castaways, will have fun raiding all of the planets. The rest will be troubling the Aslan.

 

[Supplement Four]

I dunno -- I think people are vastly overestimating the disadvantage citizens from a low TL homeworld would have in an interstellar society like the Imperium.

There is tech bleed, no doubt. A doctor on an extremely low tech world may know that bleeding his patients and using leeches does not work. He may know that penicillin exists.

But still, would you want that doc on your Far Trader acting as your medical officer?

Yeah, probably not.



There is tech bleed, but also, populations are more stagnant than not. World TL's change very slowly. And, Travellers are a very small part of a world's population when the natives are educated to a certain TL or below.

 

[kilemall]

You mean that the character with INT 13, EDU 10, Alchemy-3, Witch Law-1, Aether Studies-1, and Bloodletting-2 may not quite find a place in a higher tech society?

Well, they are clearly using technology, just not in the 'vein' of science as we know it.


Or alternatively, they are TL 19 and their magic is greater understanding of interdimensional and matter manipulation through direct conscious direction by nanobot or genetically engineered capabilities.

 

[kilemall]

I dunno -- I think people are vastly overestimating the disadvantage citizens from a low TL homeworld would have in an interstellar society like the Imperium. Unless the homeworld is interdicted, if there's at least a class D starport onworld they are probably going to have a basic understanding of the Imperium and higher tech levels.

I would not be surprised if the Imperium actively attempts to engage lower tech worlds in interstellar society. Each of these worlds represent a potential market and source of valuable resources. So maybe the Imperium goes out of its way to recruit and educate these citizens for roles in the military and bureaucracy? Who doesn't love to hear rags-to-riches stories of destitute kids from low tech worlds rising to fame and fortune in service to the Emperor?

I would also contend that Edu means less and less the higher the TL. As TL increases, the complexity and size of the information increases exponentially, creating more and more specialization. Any one individual can only know less and less of the total body of knowledge. And paradoxically, tech becomes easier and easier to use even as it becomes more complex.

On a TL0 world cut off from interstellar society, Edu 12 might mean you know a lot about everything; you've read the primary sources for all major fields of inquiry. On a TL15 world, Edu 12 might mean you know a lot about one specific sub-specialty of a specialty of a sub-discipline; everything else you know comes from secondary or tertiary sources, and you rely on compudatabases like the Imperial Encyclopedia to keep up.

A much lower TL scholar might not be so disadvantaged on a higher TL world provided they have access to all the higher TL shortcuts and aids. They are just familiar with one less sub-specialty.

I grew up in a rural area with a significant number of kids who were raised off-grid and homeschooled, basically TL0. Some were back-to-the-landers and some were from religious families. Many of these kids grew up and went to college and generally fared as well as if not better than kids from TL7 homes. They knew what a urinal was even if they grew up with an outhouse, they weren't frightened by cars or radios. They might not have known who Hall and Oates were or watched an episode of ALF, but that wasn't a significant impediment to their success. In fact, it may have been an advantage.

Well keep in mind that the improvement rules for CT allow for bringing up EDU pretty quickly and cheaply to the same level as INT, so the game already says you can 'catch up' even if brought up in EDU 1 circumstances.


I think another point to keep in mind is setting- the Imperium may foster education and interstellar understanding for trade purposes that is part of the obligations of being a member of the Imperium. However, we also know there are a lot of control freak world governments that would be big into thought control and not on board with Imperial trade culture polluting their planet.



And other interstellar polities of course may have differing thoughts on sharing education or local control.


Finally of course is the classic hoary but always relevant point that our characters are not normal civilians but Travellers, and so by their nature they would tend to have exposure to experiences and education the average planet dweller does not.

 

[kilemall]

So what happens if you fall off the edge of the Jump Plane?

Dragons!

 

[whartung]

A doctor on an extremely low tech world may know that bleeding his patients and using leeches does not work. He may know that penicillin exists.

If penicillin exists, then where the heck is it? People are dying here.

What idiot is keeping it from being imported. What trader is charging bank so that only the local wealthy and rulers get it, meanwhile, who's stopping the humanitarian organizations from shipping it in by the starship load.

We have "hands off" societies here on Earth, such as in the rain forest. No antibiotics for them.

We have folks that choose to not use them for personal reasons.

Neither of these scale to any size. Beyond a "Prime Directive" that forces "No Contact", a low tech world is going to be intruded upon.

Someone is going to ship this stuff in.

Along with guns, lawyers, and money.

 

[aramis]

If penicillin exists, then where the heck is it? People are dying here.

What idiot is keeping it from being imported. What trader is charging bank so that only the local wealthy and rulers get it, meanwhile, who's stopping the humanitarian organizations from shipping it in by the starship load.

We have "hands off" societies here on Earth, such as in the rain forest. No antibiotics for them.

We have folks that choose to not use them for personal reasons.

Neither of these scale to any size. Beyond a "Prime Directive" that forces "No Contact", a low tech world is going to be intruded upon.

Someone is going to ship this stuff in.

Along with guns, lawyers, and money.

Penicillin is a standard bread mold, and can be used for flavor in some cheeses, too. The tools to make a useful medicinal of it are TL 1. To make it notably safer than not treating are about TL2.

Unless there's a no contact protocol, even if the meds can't be imported, the information will be.

Lots of things are doable much lower tech than they were devised at.

bronze and brass sheet is doable at TL2, and largely is the foundational tech for TL 2. Gunpowder can be made, reliably even, without just containers, stone knives, stone hammers, and fire. Urine and grazer feces aged 10 months, then the liquid dried to form KNO3 (saltpeter). Charcoal can be reliably made with just a stick, a cord, local dirt, and felled wood. Method of felling is almost immaterial. Sulphur is the hardest to source - but it can be naturally found in certain hot springs.

Combine bronze sheet, some know-how, and gunpowder, and you have TL2 firearms...

 

[Supplement Four]

If penicillin exists, then where the heck is it? People are dying here.

Maybe it's here, but rare. Impossible to get your hands on it.

Maybe it's expensive.

Maybe it's not imported for whatever reason.



Penicillin might not be a good example. Maybe something like cell phones would be a better example.

 

[Garnfellow]

Maybe it's here, but rare. Impossible to get your hands on it.

Maybe it's expensive.

Maybe it's not imported for whatever reason.

Penicillin might not be a good example. Maybe something like cell phones would be a better example

A good analogy would be living in a remote, rural area of the United States. The doctor can prescribe an antibiotic, but there's no local pharmacy so everything has to be shipped in. Or they can make preliminary diagnoses, but they lack MRI machines, so you've got to travel to the nearest big city for confirmation or treatment. In my area it's not unusual for cancer patients to travel 5 hours or more one way to receive cutting edge tech.

 

[McPerth]

Penicillin might not be a good example. Maybe something like cell phones would be a better example.

I agree this to be a better example ,as they need some infrastructure to work. You can import them, but without the repeaters or satellites, or without power sources to recharge them, they would be of little use

A good analogy would be living in a remote, rural area of the United States. The doctor can prescribe an antibiotic, but there's no local pharmacy so everything has to be shipped in. Or they can make preliminary diagnoses, but they lack MRI machines, so you've got to travel to the nearest big city for confirmation or treatment. In my area it's not unusual for cancer patients to travel 5 hours or more one way to receive cutting edge tech.

See that in no case any current Earth analogy can work with Traveller.

As you say, in low TL (or remote) areas, even in high TL countries, a patient may need to travel several hours (or even a day or two) to reach a good hospital, and in most cases the result of a test (e.g. a tomography) may be sent to it for an specialist to evaluate in a matter of seconds, and have the specialist's evaluation in little more time tan if done in the same hospital.

In traveller, once in the starport (that may take some days to reach itself) the minimal travelling time is a week, asuming there's an available ship in the planet.

As a side comment, this also happens with any spare part you need, that while in current Earth you can order in a matter of minutes and receive it in a matter of hours, at most one day or two, in Traveller, if you need to rder it from anothr planet, you need a mínimum of 2 weeks if you can dedícate a ship to it, probably more.

 

[mike wightman]

Penicillin may be a common mold on Earth, but I doubt very much it is common on other planets with alien biota unless it is introduced. Which begs the question of what happens when Terran microbes are transported off world either accidentally or with deliberate intent.

With hindsight many higher TL achievement can be moved backwards in time.

Mastery of fire means you can thermally decompose limestone, extract metal from rocks, alloy metals. Once you know something is possible the technology can be achieved in really 'primitive' ways. The hard part is discovering it is possible, the really hard part is understanding the chemistry and physics of it so it is no longer magic.

Mechanically generating electricity is pretty easy once you understand how to do it - it's just magnets and copper wire and some method for spinning one of them.

Generating radio waves and x-rays is pretty easy too, once you have electricity - yet it took until the 1860s to even realise they potentially existed.

For centuries metals have been extracted without any understanding of the actual chemistry/physics involved, in point of fact atomic theory has only really been scientifically mainstream since the early 1900s, an understanding of chemistry not until the 1920s and the unification of atomic theory with the empirical periodic table of Mendeleev.

Materials science in the twenty first century is so well understood that substances that would be considered magical to our ancestors are trivial to manufacture - aluminium alloys for example.

Any planet with access to the Imperial knowledge data base will be capable of stuff at low TLs that our low TL ancestors could not.

 

[Timerover51]

As a side comment, this also happens with any spare part you need, that while in current Earth you can order in a matter of minutes and receive it in a matter of hours, at most one day or two, in Traveller, if you need to rder it from anothr planet, you need a mínimum of 2 weeks if you can dedícate a ship to it, probably more.

That depends on where you are at. If you are in the Solomon Islands and need a spare part that has to come from the U.S., then you are looking at three weeks by air, or three months by ship, depending on the size of the part. That also assumes that you have the U.S. Dollars to pay for the part, as the U.S. shipper is not going to accept Solomon Island Dollar.

Those shipping times hold true for a number of areas in the world.

As for cell phones, the normal range for a cell phone to connect to a tower is 3 miles. There are areas in the far north suburbs of Chicago where I live where there is no cell phone coverage. In downtown Chicago, coverage can be blocked by buildings, and if you are in the basement of one of the larger stores, forget about answering a phone. Get out in the middle of Lake Michigan and your cell phone is not likely to work. Cell phones require a lot of infrastructure to be put into place to be viable.

 

[McPerth]

That depends on where you are at. If you are in the Solomon Islands and need a spare part that has to come from the U.S., then you are looking at three weeks by air, or three months by ship, depending on the size of the part. That also assumes that you have the U.S. Dollars to pay for the part, as the U.S. shipper is not going to accept Solomon Island Dollar.

Those shipping times hold true for a number of areas in the world.

If the part you need is vital enough and you have enough money, you can have the part anywhere in the world in a day or two. In Traveller, your need or money does not matter, as the time minimums are absolute.

As for cell phones, the normal range for a cell phone to connect to a tower is 3 miles. There are areas in the far north suburbs of Chicago where I live where there is no cell phone coverage. In downtown Chicago, coverage can be blocked by buildings, and if you are in the basement of one of the larger stores, forget about answering a phone. Get out in the middle of Lake Michigan and your cell phone is not likely to work. Cell phones require a lot of infrastructure to be put into place to be viable.

True, that's why I see them a better example than penicillin...

 

[Timerover51]

If the part you need is vital enough and you have enough money, you can have the part anywhere in the world in a day or two. In Traveller, your need or money does not matter, as the time minimums are absolute.

McPerth, have you ever tried to ship something to anywhere in the South Pacific? That might hold true in Western Europe, I would have reservations about Eastern Europe. I would be hesitant to make that statement about the U.S. There is no way I would make that about most of the Pacific, along with parts of Africa. I have friends in Papua New Guinea and also in Tanzania, and I know what they tell me of how long it takes to get material from the U.S.

 

[McPerth]

McPerth, have you ever tried to ship something to anywhere in the South Pacific? That might hold true in Western Europe, I would have reservations about Eastern Europe. I would be hesitant to make that statement about the U.S. There is no way I would make that about most of the Pacific, along with parts of Africa. I have friends in Papua New Guinea and also in Tanzania, and I know what they tell me of how long it takes to get material from the U.S.

I havn't, but I guess if you have enough money you can have it quite earlier than what you say, even if you have to cháater an airplane.

That's what I mean you cannot in Traveller, to speed deliveries or communication, no matter how much money you want to spend.