If I'm understanding things correctly, the biases are not just for the planet you're on, but for the entire universe. So, if you could travel to another planet in the same universe, it would have exactly the same biases as the planet you left from, right? So that means that no one anywhere in the entire universe could be more advanced than the planet you are currently on. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how it works, right?
Biases
(12 posts) (5 voices)-
johnosevens
Member*boggle*
Wow, that's a good question. On the one hand, there is a certain logic to that. On the other hand, it seems to preclude the whole "advanced alien race" scenario. On a third hand (what? I'm from New Jersey - the nuclear waste state) maybe the Tech bias (for instance) is higher than you realize, but the culture you're in doesn't have/hasn't developed/had but lost technology that actually bothers to take advantage of it (kinda like a whole planet of Amish).Sat Jan 19 2008 10:27 pm # -
JohnA1nut
MemberThat's what I was thinking Osevens. Magic and Psi I could understand being the same over the entire universe, but how could the tech bias be the same? The universe I am in has a 6@ tech bias. You're going to tell me that no one anywhere in the entire stinking universe has advanced beyond gunpowder? Or could it be that you just coincidently land on the most advanced planet every time?
Sat Jan 19 2008 10:41 pm # -
DarkestDwarf
MemberAnd how does bias work with regards to regions that are aspected to a specific sub-area, permitting things beyond the usual limits to work at that place if it falls under the aspect?
And no, don't tell me the entire world of Yrth is composed of 2 meter hexagonal sub-dimensions as a way to explain why the level of magic there varies (according to certain rules) from one hex to the next.
And why does the tech bias scale look so compressed at the upper end? You hit scriff tech at the same point you hit plancktech (think nanotech but operating on a scale of quarks and smaller), yet Earths just beyond the modern era have scriff.
What are the tech levels of these?
a) building a planet-sized mass of anti-matter in a month and then moving it via inertialess drive to the system you're at war with so it can mutually annihilate the enemy's rogue worlds.
b) genetically engineering a pair of roots that, when grafted together, will form a plant that immediately and fatally poisons one specific race throughout the galaxy.
c) making a weapon that is the potential energy built up since the last time it was used, cannot truly be moved (the universe moves around it when attempted, not the other way around), and upon actually moving it it goes off by punching a hole in the universe that can draw matter out of a black hole to gradually uncreate it.
d) expand the orbitals of a single atom to planetary sizes, stabilize them, and build layers of rock using them as the foundations to make a very big, light, but Earth-like "planet" flying from galaxy to galaxy collecting species that would otherwise be lost.
e) develop a free-living organism with the power to practice objects through use, causing the inanimate to evolve and become more perfected at that use, and be able to transmit this ability to others through contagion.
f) make Silly Putty so bouncy and indestructible that you can drop it from orbit, bounce it off a farmer's field down below, and it comes back up into near-Earth space to hit and envelope a nuclear warhead, which the putty entirely contains the blast of when it detonates.
g) make pills that use electricity to perfectly supply every physical need of the person taking them for 24 hours.
h) make a computer able to determine by someone's brainwaves, from across the planet, whether they have a functioning copy of a specific gene.Valdahraeddur
Sun Jan 20 2008 8:30 am # -
DarkestDwarf
MemberThat's the problem, John. It's too-compressed. You hit 15@10 and the bias is effectively meaningless. Remove 1 point to 14@10, and you lose shitloads of the ultra-advanced stuff because the scale is too contracted at that end, it loses the fine control the lower levels have.
Sun Jan 20 2008 8:43 am # -
JohnA1nut
MemberWhile I see your point, and I do think you have a valid argument, there's something you need to consider. If we were to account for every single piece of technology ever conceived and thought of anywhere in the world, you would have a scale that went on infinitum. They had to cap the scale SOMEWHERE, and 15 was as good a place to do it as any. I see your complaint, but it's probably one of those things best left alone. It was probably just for simplicity that it is like that. Or would you really rather have an infinite tech bias to deal with?
Sun Jan 20 2008 8:54 am # -
DarkestDwarf
MemberWhat I'd like to see is a second quantum level, super-tech that can't be accessed at all until the main bias area is 15@10, and then the second quantum has it's own bias value that slowly works upwards.
I've seen one (that I recall off-hand) world that did that for magic. Mortals operated on the first quantum level, gods on the second. The most cutting edge mages could look up into the second level and study what they saw, but couldn't figure out how to use any of it yet.
Sun Jan 20 2008 9:00 am # -
johnosevens
MemberWhat I want to know is how the biases (Tech especially) were decided upon. Mostly I think they don't account for some cultures finding some things simpler than others. Take gunpowder, for example. The ancient Chinese had gunpowder eras before anyone else, but not any other 6@ tech. They just happened to find gunpowder more simply than, say, the Irish (whose bardic and druidic traditions had magic that the Chinese would've boggled at).
What I'm saying, I guess, is, why is "TK Pulse" considered simple but "Detect Thoughts" less so /universally/? Isn't it possible that there are cultures - let's say, rather like Star Trek's Betazoids - for whom reading minds is so natural it's practically a life skill, with its own etiquette rather like talking, but for whom even the simplest TK is the stuff of legends? Or make it even more extreme - people like the old Greek Oracles, who can Commune with Other Planes on a daily basis, but for whom the simplest Light spell is unimaginable?
Why aren't there cultures who can develop lasers and airplanes but (much like how there's no good way to communicate via magic in D&D) never discovered the telephone? Maybe they have very little quartz on their world so basic radios seem like sorcery to them.Sun Jan 20 2008 3:43 pm # -
DarkestDwarf
MemberThere was a novel a while back where barbarian-level primitives could easily make a high-UV laser and performed acts of nuclear chemistry on a regular basis (their homeworld was a neutron star, thus, degenerate matter), but were otherwise at the level of spears and making fire.
Sun Jan 20 2008 11:49 pm # -
DD - I'm going to tackle your posts one at a time. Please forgive any delay in getting to your later posts.
And no, don't tell me the entire world of Yrth is composed of 2 meter hexagonal sub-dimensions as a way to explain why the level of magic there varies (according to certain rules) from one hex to the next.
Why not? If I understand your objection to this solution, I'll be better able to devise one more suited to your tastes or to the unstated particulars of the situation. Given what I know, this seems fine.
And why does the tech bias scale look so compressed at the upper end? You hit scriff tech at the same point you hit plancktech (think nanotech but operating on a scale of quarks and smaller), yet Earths just beyond the modern era have scriff.
They have scriff, but not scriff technology. Look closely at the functions of the 15@ scriff skills; none of those skills are extent in the words from which the typical player character comes. An analogy: being aware of tachyons does not mean we have T15@ time travel skills.
What are the tech levels of these?
All of these fit neatly into the bias tree. You seem to be getting hung up on the power of these applications, which is counterbalanced by ad-hoc sit-mods rather than by bias restrictions. If you ask yourself questions about the essential function and method of the skills, you'll find they sort themselves out easily enough:
a) Antimatter tech is high-intensity T12@, while an inertialess drive sounds very similar to T11@ gravity control. Nothing higher than T12@10 should be required for this, although some of the 14@ jump drive or hyperspace applications might speed up delivery. (If the "inertialess drive" is faster-than-light, it must be at least T14@, but I could envision T11@ planetary systems being used in conjunction with natural wormholes to sidestep this obstacle.)
b) Both robots and genetics are T12@. That was easy.
c) I need more detail here. It's most probable that this is a high-intensity T15@ time&space application, but it's also possible that with more information I would decide to throw it into T12@ nuclear power or T14@ FTL/misc-energy.
d) This must be working under a very different set of physics, but this is either t12@ nuclear applications or T9@ synthetic materials. I'm leaning toward T9@ synthetics, with methods of propulsion covered separately.
e) I don't understand what your sentence here means. (I am confident that I'll be able to peg it once you explain, though. The "develop an organism" part requires high-intensity T12@ genetics, at minimum.)
f) This is T9@ synthetic materials, but it probably requires certain higher-level technologies to develop the necessary industrial base. (This expresses itself through sit-mods.) Pattern design, a powerful T14@ teleporter application, strikes me as being particularly useful. (Similar situation: Creation and use of flamethrowers is T1@ fire control, but developing the fuel for it is T8@.)
g) This is at minimum T10@ electronics, but it probably requires at least T12@ medical understanding, possibly T13@ (the level of mind-machine interface). More simply, it could be a high-intensity T14@ scanning/broadcast teleporter/pattern-modification application, re-adjusting the subject's atomic and sub-atomic makeup on a frequent and regular basis until its 24 hour power supply is exhausted.
h) Mind-machine interface is T13@, genetics is T12@. This is more easily accomplished with some kind of (T14@ ) matter scanner, but a sit-modded combination of those two areas could also work. Another easy one.
Are you genuinely interested in these situations specifically? Or are you trying to show that the system can't possibly cover everything? If it's the latter, you can save yourself the trouble: it can. If it's the former, I hope this helps; ask questions if something's unclear.
Mon Jan 21 2008 3:32 am # -
Again I thank Scott for tackling what was the most time-consuming of the posts; I'll touch on a few questions raised in the others.
Is the planet on which you find yourself the highest tech in the universe, or what? Well, there are three possible answers.
- Yes, it is. In fact, John raises the question of whether it is possible that no other planet in his present universe has ever advanced beyond the use of gunpowder, and fails to ask the more basic question: are there any other planets in this universe? He's in a fairytale universe. It is entirely possible that those lights above him really are angels dancing in the sky, looking down on the earth below and making predictions about what will happen next. There's one world in which what looks like stars are actually portals to other dimensions, and they're only five hundred miles above the surface of the planet at the center, and a lot closer where the dome of the sky meets the plane of the ground. Beyond that, you don't really know whether anything exists beyond what you have already seen--this might be the only place in the universe, a small medieval kingdom a few hundred miles across surrounded by wilderness populated by dragons.
- No, it isn't; you just have not tapped the potential of the world here. We run a twin scenario called The Farmland. In the alpha version, there is no technology anywhere beyond that primitive pre-gunpowder barter culture you see, but there is a fair amount of magic. In the beta version, the aliens who are about to invade have the technology, and the bias is high enough to support it, but these people are clueless, and think those lights in the sky are portents, and those invaders demons. Just because no one in this world knows anything better than this doesn't mean the bias is that low--it only means that these people don't know more. This makes sense, if you stop and think about it. How many of us on this board could construct a nuclear reactor, or a nuclear bomb, or a laser? The bias means someone understands those things, and we could learn them if we could find the right people and ask the right questions. It does not mean that the aboriginies of New Guinea are all skilled in modern science. Your entire planet could be that little backwater place that hasn't caught up with the rest of the universe.
- It is also possible that you're in a subuniverse, a section cordoned off from the rest of the universe by virtue of having different biases. In that case, the aliens might be out there somewhere, and they might have the technology, but it won't all work here. Subuniverses are very tricky, but they're often the answer to some rather vexing problems. For example, there was one--exactly one of fifty-two--episode of Blake's 7 in which they were on a planet where everything seemed to be magic. There was no magic anywhere else in the entire universe, as far as we saw, but here there were two beings who had to be the spirits of departed citizens of this world, and they had the power to override the technologies of spaceships in their orbit, teleport select people to the ground instantaneously, read all the thoughts, transmit images of what was happening on the ground to the ships, and much more. The best explanation was that when a ship got close enough to the planet, it crossed into a sub-universe with a very high mag bias, and these two non-corporeal beings were the only creatures in the universe who knew how to exploit that.
This also is a key reason why we never say what the biases are in this starting earth. No one needs to know them, because no one is coming back here; some of them are changing, and my assessment particularly of technology might be an indication of my own ignorance in some field; we could argue all day about whether magic or psionics exist at all in this world, nevermind how high the bias ought to be; and I do not know what exists in the universe beyond our backwater solar system.
I'll reiterate one thing Scott said: we have scriff in this world, now, but we don't have scriff technology. It's no different that noting that there were fires in the world before anyone could use them, or that being able to swim is not the same thing as being able to build dams and harness water power, or that getting a shock from walking across a rug and touching a doorknob does not give you skill in electronics. Trying to think of ways to use scriff is not scriff tech; being able actually to harness the functions of scriff is about dimensional travel, and is at the extreme end of anything we've imagined.
I would love to spend the hours it would take to go over all the nuances that went into the arrangement of levels and intensities in each bias area. I think some of your assumptions are wrong--mind reading/telepathy is the simplest application of psionics (thought becomes thought), and detect thought is part of the detects, the clairsentient gathering of information, all much easier than any telekinetic skill. On the other hand, the @1 nature of a TK pulse means it's the thing you can always do, even if it's harder than things that are lower on the charts that you can't do. Because of the curve there are a lot of worlds in which a P1@2 project thought skill is impossible, but someone not from this world can do a P10@1 force shield--not easily, because nothing will be easy in a world with so low a bias level, but it's possible.
However, this is not a good time to be going over those decisions. Maybe we'll start another thread later this week (really, guys, I have time on Wednesday and Thursday, not on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday).
Oh, and there are worlds with gaps in their discoveries. You missed the test runs of Dark Honor Empire Beta, a twencen technology in a Japanese feudalism, where never having invented interchangeable parts all of their guns, cars, television equipment, alarm systems, and everything else were individually crafted, and very rare, available only to the wealthy. Just because something is possible within the bias doesn't mean that the people of that world have it--only that they could, it would work and they could understand it.
--M. J. Young
Mon Jan 21 2008 5:10 am #
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