CT Only: Wonderful World But Low Tech

[Supplement Four]

WONDERFUL WORLD BUT LOW TECH



Using the Traveller system to create worlds gives us some interesting outcomes, and one of the strangest is when we roll up a world that is perfect for humans but has a low tech level. We have to figure why the world turned out this way.

I remember MWM saying that this was one of his favorite parts of the process--the creativity in figuring why a world ended up like it did.

Was there a plague? Is the world a noble retreat? Are there some pesky, difficult natives that make the otherwise paradise unsafe? Is the world settled by some tech hating religious sect that lives by the "old ways"?





I'm reading the Hammer's Slammers short story, Hangman, where two worlds, both economic powerhouses, go into partnership on a colony world, and the two mother worlds agree to keep tech level low on their colony by restricting high tech imports.

They do this in order to not create a rebellious competitor in order the two mother worlds to rape the colony world of its resources (and profit largely from that).

When I read that, I thought of Traveller. Here's a great reason to use in a game to explain a wonderful, human-standard world with a low TL.

 

[sabredog]

Yes, but it can also depend on how you treat tech levels in the game. Are they representative of what local industry can sustain or just what some of the nicer shops have on sale? Can they get it if you order it or can you walk into a local shop and get one?

Plus, is that tech level the same across the board? If the place is TL-10 what defines that standard? Is for ship building or for computer manufacturing and everything else is around 8-9?

 

[Supplement Four]

The tech profiles in Grand Census/Survey is perfect for this type of thing.

 

[sabredog]

Yesssss....but in CT we just have a a big chart. Other than the rules that you can't buy it here at book price unless the world your standing on is the required TL, and ship building and repairs require a certain star port and TL to perform we don't have much to go on that isn't open to a lot of interpretation.

Look at us now: we are experimenting with quantum computers and A.I. (really advanced expert systems in productions and use), have some space stations in orbit, have battlefield lasers and railguns in service, and effectively what could be called early TL-10 combat armor.

Yet we still have a fossil fuel-base industrial power system with internal combustion being the norm. There are nuclear fission reactors but no fusion yet. We don't have antigrav but we are working on its principles. Particle weapons are possible if not practical. We have more computing power in a cell phone in our pocket than a Type C+ computer.

So what TL are we, then? Maybe it just depends on which column you think is the most important on that LBB3 chart?

 

[Timerover51]

Yesssss....but in CT we just have a a big chart. Other than the rules that you can't buy it here at book price unless the world your standing on is the required TL, and ship building and repairs require a certain star port and TL to perform we don't have much to go on that isn't open to a lot of interpretation.

Look at us now: we are experimenting with quantum computers and A.I. (really advanced expert systems in productions and use), have some space stations in orbit, have battlefield lasers and railguns in service, and effectively what could be called early TL-10 combat armor.

Yet we still have a fossil fuel-base industrial power system with internal combustion being the norm. There are nuclear fission reactors but no fusion yet. We don't have antigrav but we are working on its principles. Particle weapons are possible if not practical. We have more computing power in a cell phone in our pocket than a Type C+ computer.

So what TL are we, then? Maybe it just depends on which column you think is the most important on that LBB3 chart?

It also depends on where you are at on the Earth. You have places in Africa with cell phones and the people are using cow dung for fuel to cook the dinner. Then there are places in New Guinea where they are still on slash and burn agriculture along with hunting and gathering, basically Tech Level One. In the Central Solomon Islands, they have outboard motors with no capacity to repair them. When one breaks, they order a new one as a replacement. So what Tech Level would they be at?

On low population worlds with medium to high tech levels, I assume that is the highest level of goods that you can find in the area of the space port. Once you are away from there, anything goes.

 

[sabredog]

I can go with that.

In Traveller, no matter how hard you try to pretty much end up with worlds that are some what monolithic in culture and level of civilization. Biomes are the same way.

To do otherwise, except in singular cases, would drive anyone insane. Besides, the rules don't support it at all in generation. It might depend to a degree on how old the civilization there is, too, and I admit in the case of the Imperium there might be some measure of cosmopolitan leveling out among the majority of worlds for the reasons of time and the way vilani do things, but not in a younger empire.

Still, it works for a game environment without killing the referee.

I use the my rule that a world's tech level is equal to the highest level of technology it can produce and sustain on without having to import to do it. It means I have a lot of lower than you'd expect TL worlds in my game, but it also makes sense.

The worlds with the highest TL tend to be hubs with the highest populations and best circumstances for supporting a colony. Worlds that have to import a lot of the things they need to produce higher tech items tend to be locked into a lower TL overall because they are poorer worlds and the only reason anyone is even there is to use the place for manufacturing for some reason. Like the abundance of some major mineral component (but otherwise short of others), location (that's a huge one), or because of the pollution the industry causes being relocated there once the original colony world elsewhere could do it.

I think the lock in to the lower TL works, too, because if the flow of goods stopped the world would instantly default to whatever it could support on its own only. You can still get high tech items on these places, though, so long as ships keep coming and going, but the economic model is a little more complicated because of the two TL's the place has: the actual and the artificial one supported only by trade. It helps keep player interest in moving goods, too, because prices fluctuate more with more competition, and there are more opportunities for personal gain on the ground floors of these places.

 

[Timerover51]

I can go with that.

In Traveller, no matter how hard you try to pretty much end up with worlds that are some what monolithic in culture and level of civilization. Biomes are the same way.

The only way to get around the monolithic biomes is develop animal encounter tables for the various biomes. I am working on that for my sector, but I am also using a lot of existing Terran animals to speed things up.

There is quite a mix of Tech Levels in the sector because you have worlds using only the Tech Level that they can support, worlds using higher level equipment, partly because of an existing Scout base, and also a fair number of worlds with ruins on them.

 

[whartung]

When I read that, I thought of Traveller. Here's a great reason to use in a game to explain a wonderful, human-standard world with a low TL.

That's all well and good if the worlds has been a) settled within the last 50 years, b) has some style of corporate governance.

Outside of that, they'd have "broken free" by then and raced to the best TL they could get as quickly as possible, ESPECIALLY if they have actual resources to trade.

 

[kilemall]

The way I roll with it is TL is the TL the place can AFFORD on average, whether that is native ability to build/repair/replace or to pay for imports through lucrative exports.

I always think of the great Nevada mining towns in their heyday, being able to afford swank luxuries and technologies only seen in rich East Coast towns, but absolutely no native industrial ability not oriented to extracting gold and silver. The minerals ran out, and the place emptied out and 'dropped TL' or at least wasn't on par with the best on the planet.

Depending on your conception of the Imperium or relevant polity, you might consider political/economic megacorps/noble relationships that 'artificially' suppress a place or enrich it beyond 'natural economic means'.

 

[jawillroy]

I've got one of these figuring prominently in my current sandbox TU:

D 566879 4 GS Ri

Fairly high population, nice climate, 19th century tech. Isolated astrographically; there's some trade but not lots, so limited destabilization from the outside? Perhaps the scouts are on hand to help guide the world's developers so that technological progress skips the "hellish-coal-polluted-slagheap" stage?

There's also, within a jump, similarly low-tech worlds which are MUCH less pleasant and MUCH less independent. I'm imagining that this one stays nice and low tech out of complacency as much as anything else...