A few years ago, scientists have discovered another moon of Jupiter. This brings the count up to 17. Scientists in Massachusetts have confirmed the discovery. This only proves that no matter how much you know about something, there is always something else to learn about it!
The main topic today is technology in Science Fiction. Several gaming companies that have published future technology supplements have come to realize that the timeframes discoveries are a little off. Technology has increased at a surprising rate in the last 20 years. So how do you as a Game Master attempt to determine what tech level a planet has? What is in the tech level or even what the science level of the race or a planet or country should be? Hundreds of authors of thousands of science-fiction books and role-playing book have tried to answer this question. There are several different points of view on this subject. The one area that almost everyone agrees to is that different areas of technology advance at different rates. A race that has computers equal to the 80486 might have limited knowledge in genetic engineering, or vise versa. After reading many, many documents, and listening to several anthropology lectures, I have come up with a list of 9 factors that can determine the growth of technology for a race.
- How effective and open the races documentation is.
- The Level of Intellect, Wisdom, and Curiosity of the Race.
- The available catalysts to technology (over population, wars, etc.) of the campaign world.
- The Environmental conditions with which the race must contend.
- The number and types of encounters the race has.
- The Available food supply of the race.
- The races? ability to adapt to new situations.
How effective the race keeps notes and how open the society is with concern to distributing the information on the available resources to the race is paramount to technology advancements. Using earth as an example the Egyptians had asphalt and operations to remedy cataract. These techniques were lost until the last 100-120 years. In what is modern Israel, the technique for creating cement that cured under water were developed. This ancient technology was lost for over 2000 years. If the creators of these technologies were able to keep their records from being destroyed or were able to provide the masses with the knowledge on these technology then earth would be at a higher technology level. Yes, there are additional factors involved with what the knowledge was lost however, that discussion is for another time.
The level of Intellect, wisdom and Curiosity of the race plays a significant role in the development of technology.