Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Technology and trade on a world in a feudal-capitalist future! (Traveller Tuesday #16)

I think we've established enough details about Ishee now to get started figuring out its tech levels! On a world settled by Rose Brothers, that is one of the most important statistics to them, culturally.

We start with 1d6, with a bunch of modifiers based on planetary statistics. The die gives us a rather measly-looking 2. Ishee is small enough to get a +1 due to its size, and balkanization drives technological progress, adding a further +2, but that's it. Ishee's high common tech level, thus, is 5 ~ about equivalent to the Broadcast Age or the 1930s (though I doubt it visually resembles such times, though that could be fun, too). In GURPs 3e terms (the tech level system I imprinted on as a child), this would represent early TL 6. (α-3D-0704-α0 (α Greve-Eau Pleine-α Bishop Scheumack-Ishee)/E261774-5/X/LG-LT-Ri/Em)

OK, that's significantly lower than I was hoping (though my hopes were rather unrealistic: the highest tech level we could have rolled would have been only 9 ~ early stellar and fusion technology (G3TL early 9)), but this actually drives the social commentary concretized in Ishee forward, I think. By focusing so heavily on the actions and contributions of individual rock-star innovators and by chasing future shock and paradigm shifts with a religious zeal, they've actually prevented their inventions from rooting into their society and making actual shifts to its structure. Amidst all the flash and whiz, people continue to rely on technologies they know how to operate and whose reliability can be, well, relied upon. I think there's also something to be said that said founding religion was named in the masculine.

Oooh! Knowing the planet's high common tech level lets us explore what material resources and goods are available here. But first, we need to figure out if Ishee has evolved its own native lifeforms. We need to roll a 6 or greater on 2d6 for it to have, and we roll a 6 exactly! I don't have a good Traveller-style method of determining if that life is intelligent (one of my ongoing quests for Traveller worldbuilding info!), but I checked some Drake Equation calculator sites and found that most use between a 1% and 10% chance for planetary life to be intelligent. I'll just use the higher of that, and say that there is intelligent life if I roll a 10 on 1d10. I roll a . . .1, so not only no, but hell no.

We need to roll a 10 or less on 2d6 for agricultural resources to be of significant trade value on Ishee, a 7 or less for ores, and a 5 or less again each for radioactives and crystals. Our first roll is a 2, so we might say that agriculture is not only present on Ishee, but big business! Ores are the next most likely natural resource to be present, and a 4 confirms that ore mining is a thing on Ishee. What about crystals? Another 4 gives us significant crystal deposits on Ishee ~ useful in everything from jewelry to computers to certain construction technologies! Finally, radioactives would round out Ishee's resource wealth, but an 8 rejects us. The next set of three things are processed natural resources. Somewhere between raw materials and consumer products, these are often sold B2B or to the sort of people who really enjoy crafting their own things (although, in the case of agroproducts, this would extend all the way to end-user-facing products, like boxed food, TV dinners, and the like ~ though the category also includes things like cellophane and biodiesel). Ishee will produce compounds on a 7 or less, agroproducts on 11 or less, processed metals on a 1 or less (so, no), and processed non-metals on a 6 or less. We roll a 4 to begin, so Ishee definitely sells compounds, and that's followed by an 11, meaning that Ishee just barely sells agroproducts to other planets. It would seem that they are primarily raw ingredient merchants. Finally, a 12 tells us that processed non-metals are not an Isheean thing.

What about final, manufactured products that could be sold to consumers directly? A 4 or less will mean that Ishee produces parts, a 6 or less that it produces durables (that is, any object intended to last, like a chair or a car), and a 5 or less each that it produces consumables (that is, any object intended for limited use, like batteries or bandages) or weapons. A 3 tells us that Ishee manufactures parts, and durables roll a 7 so they're an almost-but-no-go, while an 8 and a 9 put the kibosh on consumable and weapon manufacturing.

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