Technology in the Known Worlds

[Angelman]

You have very good points, woollygooseuk, consistency is sometimes sacrificed in FS. However, you make one mistake in your analysis, or rather in where you give up to analyze

The average TL is 4, that is more or less equal to the 1950s (FS2, p.200), which means that the majority of agriculture surplus is certainly not derived from a pre-industrial technology (peasants work for nobles mostly, who of course want as much yield as possible, and therefore won’t hesitate to equip their farms with TL4 tools and vehicles). The big difference is that the vast majority of high tech is owned by a very small elite portion of the population (nobles, priests, and guilders), which is why tech owned by peasants is TL2 and that owned by Freemen is TL3. In other words, peasants are familiar with TL2 (their Tech characteristic is 2) while Freemen are mostly familiar with TL3 (Tech char. 3) – the Tech char. Representing what kind of Tech the character understands (PS2, p.200). Anyone can be taught how to operate and electric apparatus or a vehicle, they do not have to understand it to use it, so the economy in the Phoenix Empire is very much TL4. Personally I use tech every day that I do not understand, heh heh.

All off this does not help explaining exactly what a planet’s TL score mean though. I still don’t know what FS1/FS2 meant by that

[Angelman]

What was most surprising with these ratings in FS1/FS2 was that the ratings weren't explained anywhere. You're probably right in assuming they were left-overs from the computer game, Angus.

[Tadeus]

I see your point, but I cannot just ignore the world descriptions in the fief books. If you look at those, you will see that the authors give us as much details regarding primitive rural communities as they do in case of modern places. They don't concentrate on the flashy technology stuff, as you are pointing out. And there are modern regions on almost all the planets in the Known Worlds.

And these are just the main planets in systems. The secondary planets which have a human population are almost always high tech/modern.

There is a lot of technology in the Known Worlds. Sure, most people don't know how it works or cannot legaly own it, but it's not rare.

Some examples:
1. BZ2 - bilions of people live on a modern continent
2. Kordeth - dome cities
3. Delphi - high tech continent/megalopolis
4. Ravenna- Multiple gigantic deep core cities
5. Criticorum - at least modern technology almost everywhere
6. Leaguegeim - bilions od people live in modern cities/flying cars everywhere
7. Stigmata - even if there are primitive troops they mix with high tech infantry and vehicles/ heavy cyber use.
8. Tethys - Almost the whole world is full of heavy industry, most of it at least modern level.
9. Rampart - Second Republic cities.
10. de Moley - dome cities
11. Pandemoinium - almost the whole population lives in a modern hub/spaceport

In many cases modern planets have a bigger population than the primitive ones.

[woollygooseuk]

All of which rather brings us back to the TL2 peasant as the overwhelming basis for the economy. A few minutes in "Arcane Tech" reveals that, "In many communities, farm workers must carry water to the fields in buckets hung on wooden poles slung across their shoulders. Some have the luxury of beast-drawn carts filled with barrels that can be driven around the field and water dipped out where needed. Fertilization may be provided by dung or by ferrying seaweed up from the coast to the fields, where it must be spread out and turned every few days. Seeding is usually done by hand, with one worker moving ahead and spearing a hole with a pointed stick and children following and dropping seeds into the hole. These in turn may be just ahead of a third worker charged with pouring water on the seeds and covering the hole with dirt."

"Limited strip mining, in which hundreds of peasants scrape away a top layer of soil to bare the riches beneath, is most common. … Picks and shovels are most often used, with some few gouging implements employed … "

"… all peasant dwellings have one thing in common: they are invariably made of the most ordinary, least costly indigenous material available… serfs live in adobe hovels, drafty log cabins, piled unmortared stone houses, and igloos. Roofs often consist of thatch laid down across the top and held in place by ropes with stones attached…"

This is quite clearly not 1950s agriculture (at least not 1950s USA/Western Europe)

My point, Angelman, is that it is just too easy for any of us to quote canon and then for some other smart arse to highlight another section of canon that explicitly contradicts the first quote. Which is kind of the point Tadeus made in his opening post.

I'm coming over as really negative. I do get hugely frustrated by some aspects of FS but I'm not here to be a troll. FWIW I personally think that, taken as a whole, FS canon describes an 'average' tech level broadly akin to WW1. Most people work in agriculture, where the horse & cart are still the principal means of power/transport. Electricity (and its associated equipment) are fairly common in cities, but still rare in the countryside. The average soldier carries a slug-throwing rifle, but there are still plenty of bow & spear-armed 'natives' in less developed parts of the world. A significant proportion of urban workers live in appalling poverty and smog-shrouded slums. You get the idea.

That, to some extent, is the easy bit - Angelman would add a few decades to the average, Darthgus would take (quite) a few off - each to their own. My passionate frustration, however, arises from my conviction that there is a really intriguing and challenging game in there somewhere, if only the implications of the setting are followed through - and if the game is to be more than a simple mash-up of AD&D with rocketships, blasters and energy shields. Personally, I've come to focus on the Church and the Privilege of Martyrs as the key elements. This has recently chrystalized further after finding my old copy of Bruce Quarries 'Fantasy Wargaming' and reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's 'A History of Christianity'. Anybody can (physically) use tech, but it is a sin and the Pancreator (and Hell) is real. I have more work to do on Quarrie's system, but in essence the GM keeps track of sins committed and visits damnation or salvation on the PCs appropriately. The 'answer' to these sins is penance and/or masses conducted by or on behalf of the sinner. Nobles and well-to-do Guilders can use tech because they can afford to pay a priest(s) to say the masses afterwards. Your average freeman is going to need to think much more carefully about the fate of his/her soul before using that cool bit of kit. As an aside this also neatly deals with the price of weapons and ammunition. The 1000%+ profit margin 'in order to to keep weapons out of the hands of undesirables' is utterly indefensible tosh (and a rant for anther day). Add to the reasonable economic cost of a weapon the price of a mass every time you use it, however, and the _effective_ price of the weapon mounts up pretty quickly. In my view all this gives PCs real decisions to make and the Church a genuine a role in, and control over, society (and a huge income), all essential FS.

As an aside, using tech around suspicious peasants should be an issue for your PCs IMHO. By all means let a player Chargen a cyber-freak not-SpaceMarine, but if he/she isn't facing a lynch mob every other session you're not really playing FS. And there I think lies the nub of the challenge for the writers of FS, and to some extent the corner into which the game has painted itself. All this consequences/morality/responsibility stuff is what makes FS not-just-another-Sci-Fi-RPG, but at the same time it is explicitly the kind real-world c**p that many players are getting away from when they game. And for that, I concede, I have no suggestions for writers needing to appeal to a tough games-buying market.

[Angelman]

(Sorry for the short answer, but I got to run)

You're both absolutelly right, there is a lot of confusion about tech in the source material as well. There are many mutually exclusive 'voices' in canon.
I think much of the confusion about tech in FS stems from people, including writers, misinterpeting the "(New) Dark Ages" as meaning "medieval". Also, the FS1 slogan "Space Fantasy" might reinforce this idea.

Ehr... what exactly are we discussing here? What are we trying to solve? I think I might have misunderstood the discussion? Or?
Now I'm confused Are we talking about FS1/FS2? Are we discussing personal takes on the setting? Are we discussing suggestions for FS3? I think we're talking past each other...

[Angelman]

Hmm... I can't remember that conversation, Angus, but that doesn't mean much seeing how faulty my memory is, heh heh

Personally I like to think of the Phoenix Empire society as Victorian Age Britain. Not so much technologically, but the division between who's got access to tech and who's living more primitively. I don't see much of a middle class in the Phoenix Empire, at least not for another few generations. WWI also works well as an analogy, again, not necessarily technology-wise, but in how tech is developed and what it is used for (mass production of war tech generally). In some regards, the 1950s analogy doesn't work as well as this was when high tech began to spread throughout western societies, with the middle class growing fast and having an increasing amount of new tech made available, from household appliances to cars and more. So, from a social perspective, the 1950s doesn't work as well, but (IMO) the level of tech generally manufactured in the post-Emperor Wars area of peace and stability is somewhat akeen to the 1950s through the 1970s (with huge exceptions of course).

[Tadeus]

The main question of this topic was: How do you handle the seemingly contradictory information regarding technology in FS?

My take on this is:
- I ignore all the global descriptions like "all peasants live in.., technology is feared... etc."
- I'm basing on the specific descriptions given in the fief books, what means:
- The Known Worlds are a very diverse place, there are high tech places and regions where ppl live in very primitive conditions
- The Church limits the use of technology - but its not possible everywhere - and it has no unlimited power. In many places they only have the option to limit very high tech soul threatening tech or the standard tabus like A.I. and Mass Media. They can do more but it's not worth because of political issues and is mainly the job of church extremists who act outside of the law.
- The Know Worlds are a little bit like a post nuclear setting. There are people living in places that were very high tech but are now run down and not function correctly. This gives us ppl that live in Second Republic era cities but don't have running water or an own electricity connection. It's all about the mix of high tech and low tech, so it's practically impossible to compare it to a specific era/tech lvl in our history.

I like my Fading Suns this way and this interpretation doesn't contradict itself, what makes it playable.

[Angelman]

I think this is a good way to handle the setting. It makes sense to me.

I'd just ask that the Church isn't the only thing standing between people and technology. There is a general paranoia about high tech in interstellar society, it is not just a Church forced dogma - peopel actually believe that tech is bad and that the martyrs (nobles, guilders, and priests) saves the common man the trouble of having anything to do with it. Of course, the Church is one of the major instigators of such ideas, but the League, with its monopolies, are just as much to blame, as are the nobles who needs to keep others down to legitimate their role as shepherds of civilization.

This doesn't degrade your take on FS in any way, I just felt like pointing it out

[woollygooseuk]

I fear we are in danger of reaching a consensus. Quick, someone make a case for plate armour and broadswords!

Tadeus, I like your approach. Some time ago I sketched out some ideas for 'mapping' each planet generically. The canon descriptions of planets usually (always?) mention one agora. Given the size of the KW economies and implied low level of interplanetary commerce I can accept that. Each planet might therefore consist of a series of concentric 'tech rings'. At the centre lies the Agora and the region immediately around it. This will the focal point of the planet commercially, politically and militarily as it is the single point of contact with the rest of the KW. This will invariably be the region with the highest TL as it's where most of the rich/powerful people are and it has access to off-world imports and expertise. This may well be the only bit visitors to the world see, and hence the (generally misleading) TL impression given in travel guides. The next ring is the series of counties/states that have regular contact and commerce with the centre. The upper echelons will be familar with the highest tech, but most people will only have access to what can be produced locally. The outer ring is then those counties/states that rarely, if ever, have contact with the rest of the KW. The elite may have access to tech imported from the second ring, but commoners will generally make do with whatever local cottage industries can produce. Throw in 'medieval' slums around an Agora and some high-tech 'islands' out in the provinces to keep things interesting and a much more nuanced picture begins to emerge.

Angelman also makes an important point, IMHO, that the attitude to tech in FS is at least as important as the tech itself. It's too easy to portray the Church as caricature bigots who just mindlessly hate tech (and here again the Players Guide 'day in the life' of an Avestite really doesn't help). In my games churchmen, and most of their followers, sincerely believe - and therfore so should the PCs and most of the NPCs they interact with. That doesn't have to mean a no-tech game where PCs can't use all the cool gear. Instead, tech itself becomes the source for a whole range of adventures and challenges with suspicious locals, devout nobles, rogue engineers, tech smugglers, unlicenced Guildsmen and a host of others.

A final thought. Those Hazat augmented penal legionaries. Perhaps they aren't so highly regarded. From the perspective of a great many KWorlders their every waking moment is a tech-sin and they are surely bound to burn in Hell for eternity. Truly a fate worse than mere death. Perhaps their only hope of salvation is a glorious death in battle earning absolution from the Church. Now that would make for a motivated soldier.

[Sir Marco]

I was never a fan of Global Tech levels. I always took them as a suggestion. Even in today's earth you have a general TL but you have people still living in shacks and huts. Even some of those people have ipods.

When you look at the fear of tech.. There have been some horrible technical advances out there. The Church has some cred behind them. Think about it. Serfs think a demon is in their midsts. An Avestite comes into town and through theurgy shows everyone that yes indeed Mr. Tom IS a demon. So when the Church says the reliance on Technology is a sin.. what's not to believe?