It's been so long since the last GURPS edition, that the present day is now in the "future" tech level

[Deset Gled]

And the thing is, everything now just feels like slightly evolved versions of stuff we've had since the 1970s if not earlier. There have been zero obvious advances in science, zero new things, just miniaturized or faster versions of old things. I'm not sure when things evolve sufficiently so that we can say the memory sticks we have now are a full tech level above a floppy disk, or the PCs we have now are a full tech level above a 286. It's not like having Fusion Power or Mars Bases or Cybernetic Interfaces or something we just didn't have before that you can put on a list as markers that identify the tech level.

Let's just that I could not disagree with this more. From the supercomputer in your pocket that is wirelessly connected to the libraries of all human knowledge and entertainment, to the cybernetically implated insulin pumps that keep thousands of diabetics alive every day. I don't even know where to start talking about the advances we've had to science and the number of "new things" that exist now compared to the 1970s.

 

[Celebrim]

Let's just that I could not disagree with this more. From the supercomputer in your pocket that is wirelessly connected to the libraries of all human knowledge and entertainment, to the cybernetically implated insulin pumps that keep thousands of diabetics alive every day. I don't even know where to start talking about the advances we've had to science and the number of "new things" that exist now compared to the 1970s.

The trains that existed in 1890 were more advanced than the ones in 1850, but they were still trains. They were more numerous, more powerful, and more economical and more accessible, but that just meant the technology had matured.

The way of technology is that for any given invention it starts primitive and then undergoes exponential growth for a period, until at some point the technology becomes mature and then begins to stagnant, improving only slowly or not at all.

Maybe if quantum computing becomes a thing, I'll accept that as a new thing. The first insulin pump was in 1963. The microchip was created in 1958. The technology matured but everything about it would be implied by what was available in the 1960s, in the same way that the Orville flier prefigures a Stuka Dive bomber. The supercomputer in my pocket would be unimaginable to almost everyone in 1965 who wasn't Gordon Moore, but it's still just an evolution of what was visible by that point. But "Moore's Law" is coming to an end, and indeed in some senses is already long over. We've reached the limit of the existing technology and with what we know now it will only advance slowly if at all.

3D printing, quantum computing, virtual reality, cybernetic implants, genetic engineering, advanced batteries, reusable rockets, and artificial intelligence are things that are on the cusp of changing the world enough to maybe inaugurate a new tech level, but IMO have not yet done so. I still feel we are in the tech area began in 1945 with the first electronic computer, the first standoff attack weapons, the first ballistic missile, and the first nuclear bomb.

 

[Staffan]

More to the point, when I bought the rules and played we were according to the rules TL7 and TL8 was "the future", and the future could be recognized by things being "different". There was going to be "game changing" technology in TL8.

GURPS 2e and 3e definitely had TL7 being the modern day and TL8 being the near future. This table is from GURPS Lite:

 

[dbm]

This is the table for 4e:

 

[Celebrim]

This is the table for 4e:

I think it's easy to compare this to earlier editions and see how much more useful the earlier editions were from a story telling purpose. You could take any science fiction setting and get a pretty good feel for which TL that setting was at using the older tables. Something like Outlander was TL 8, Blade Runner was TL 9, Babylon 5 was TL 10 with Elder Client tech like the Mimbari being like TL 12 and the elders themselves being like TL 14, Star Trek was like TL 12 with the Q and others being TL 16, and Star Wars like TL 13. The table made sense and let you extrapolate a bit "what else can they do that we don't see" and also gauge how the setting differed from presumed TL conventions - maybe some portion of the tech wasn't as advanced in the particular setting as another (the Federation for example bans genetic engineering).

In the 4e setting you jump straight from TL7 modern up 3 tech levels to TL10 in the space of 150 years, and yet have only marginal changes in society. That's the equivalent jump of roaming bands of hunter gatherer hominids to Rome or Rome to Victorian England with no real bright lines of distinction or major changes in the social order until what, late TL10? And then TL11 is "exotic matter", something often associated with being like 5 levels of development past what was TL10 on this table. And then TL12 is the same as TL16 - "sufficiently advanced technology".

Is it more realistic? Maybe. But it's a whole lot less useful from a "convert this science fiction setting to GURPS" perspective.

 

[aramis erak]

When working on Adventure 1e playtesting and development, I learned from the developer’s side how hard it is to keep rules from inflating like the universe did in its first fraction of a second whenever we got to a subject knew a lot about. But then it’d have the same consequence every time: that subject became harder and slower to use, and in a game aiming for an overall fairly brisk pace of play, that’s no good. We didn’t catch all of those, but most of them.

If I were in charge of a new edition of GURPS, I’d be sticking someone with the task of combing through the accretions and consolidating them with a burden of justification. Which would probably be at one year’s work all by itself.

SJ has said there won't be a GURPS 5... because only one sub-line is currently profitable: Dungeon Fantasy. And it has its own subset corebook.

 

[dbm]

Douglas Cole is working on a modern action box set along the lines of XCOM for inspiration IIRC. So at least there may be a new ‘on ramp’ for people in the medium term.