I have made some words today
Feb. 9th, 2020 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethWhat I am realising with Pathfinder is
taking the GURPS standardish approach of getting Banestormed in with whatever you are carrying
means you are really implausibly incredibly rich.
Some of the tech I carry every day doesn't have a Pathfinder equivalent. Phones aren't as useful as independent comms, and gps probably dont work on another planet (and if it do it's a distinctly different post apocalypse than the setting thought), but a torch on its own is 30 gold pieces, and pricing a gp at £25 is on the low end. A phone is a torch and a mobile library easily worth the research bonus on most topics. ... did you know there are offline versions of wikipedia? I did not know until I wondered about taking it to another planet. But there are. And as well as that there's however many free ebooks you can download, and however many you paid for, and all your music, which is not going to get you mechanical bonuses per se but has to be a leg up on your Perform studies. And, also, too, with enough storage capacity (and I checked, and I could get a phone with as much storage as my laptop and THEN some, if I wanted to optimise it that way) you could bring television shows.
Bringing enough charger is a whole other problem, but there are solar panels and all sorts. You could stock up. Stocked for a long train journey isn't going to be quite right for a trip to another planet, but it's a start.
And that's just entertainment and stuff I know how to use the phone for. It can do... many things. Many.
But game rules don't tend to cover that.
I mean, is internet access so general purpose it's a Research bonus on EVERYthing now? You can download craft instructions, even videos. Not optimal instruction, but really very good. You can just teach yourself things. If you bring a phone full of teaching material, how far can you lift the local tech level before the phone breaks?
Except, oh yes, there's also magic, and Pathfinder magic of a high enough level can fix technology even of the nanotech level. Sooooo... phone breaking not a biggest problem...
The things RPG rules make easy are so weird though. I mean there's cybertech and direct brain upgrades and magic headbands that do the same thing, boost your intelligence and or skills, like whoosh, easy.
And there's a three thousand gold piece camera that can hold 200 photos and 20 hours of use on a full charge.
Pocket full of phone be worth...
... almost a mark III +6 skillchip??
Wild.
A power cable is worth 500gp and a generator of any type is an artefact, more or less meaning no gp value cause no one can make them and they're beyond price.
... do that include the solar panel?
... yes, yes it does.
... !
Soooo... just by packing stuff from the camping store and regular shops to make the phone go longer, a character can wander in with an irreplaceable and near legendary item.
See, this is the feeling I didn't get when thinking anout tech levels in GURPS. Because logically this is sonic screwdriver territory. It is impressive to jump into the age of sail with twenty first century technology, even if it's entirely civilian. GURPS having a tidy table of things made it feel sort of ordinary, but no, we live in an age of wonders and it would be pretty wondrous to acquire such things.
... so, I'm thinking she's going to get robbed. logically. people be taking her stuff.
... because a lot of people in the Pathfinder world are more effectively fighty than anyone in this world.
It's a problem and a puzzler.
Also, the reincarnate spell would bork any biometric security measures. You'll always have a fingerprint! ... until you have someone else's, because oops new species.
Huh, do gnomes have fingerprints?
... it's made up, gnomes could be toons, depends on the story, I know.
... but do they?
SO. This phone thing. I logically don't see her keeping it.
But. If it is her story. She's the one in a million that can.
Also in this story there's other earth humans that went through twenty forty sixty years ago. And the thing is none of them would have a mobile phone either. Or a portable wikipedia.
So this isn't the first moment in history a geek with a bad phone connection might routinely wander around with all human knowledge, but it's kind of close, and it's really something.
Somthing that plays an entirely other game than Pathfinder, I suspect.
But throwing incongruous parts together to see what happens is Story.
Trouble is so far everything even vaguely impressive or interesting about her arrived in her pockets.
should go fix that.
taking the GURPS standardish approach of getting Banestormed in with whatever you are carrying
means you are really implausibly incredibly rich.
Some of the tech I carry every day doesn't have a Pathfinder equivalent. Phones aren't as useful as independent comms, and gps probably dont work on another planet (and if it do it's a distinctly different post apocalypse than the setting thought), but a torch on its own is 30 gold pieces, and pricing a gp at £25 is on the low end. A phone is a torch and a mobile library easily worth the research bonus on most topics. ... did you know there are offline versions of wikipedia? I did not know until I wondered about taking it to another planet. But there are. And as well as that there's however many free ebooks you can download, and however many you paid for, and all your music, which is not going to get you mechanical bonuses per se but has to be a leg up on your Perform studies. And, also, too, with enough storage capacity (and I checked, and I could get a phone with as much storage as my laptop and THEN some, if I wanted to optimise it that way) you could bring television shows.
Bringing enough charger is a whole other problem, but there are solar panels and all sorts. You could stock up. Stocked for a long train journey isn't going to be quite right for a trip to another planet, but it's a start.
And that's just entertainment and stuff I know how to use the phone for. It can do... many things. Many.
But game rules don't tend to cover that.
I mean, is internet access so general purpose it's a Research bonus on EVERYthing now? You can download craft instructions, even videos. Not optimal instruction, but really very good. You can just teach yourself things. If you bring a phone full of teaching material, how far can you lift the local tech level before the phone breaks?
Except, oh yes, there's also magic, and Pathfinder magic of a high enough level can fix technology even of the nanotech level. Sooooo... phone breaking not a biggest problem...
The things RPG rules make easy are so weird though. I mean there's cybertech and direct brain upgrades and magic headbands that do the same thing, boost your intelligence and or skills, like whoosh, easy.
And there's a three thousand gold piece camera that can hold 200 photos and 20 hours of use on a full charge.
Pocket full of phone be worth...
... almost a mark III +6 skillchip??
Wild.
A power cable is worth 500gp and a generator of any type is an artefact, more or less meaning no gp value cause no one can make them and they're beyond price.
... do that include the solar panel?
... yes, yes it does.
... !
Soooo... just by packing stuff from the camping store and regular shops to make the phone go longer, a character can wander in with an irreplaceable and near legendary item.
See, this is the feeling I didn't get when thinking anout tech levels in GURPS. Because logically this is sonic screwdriver territory. It is impressive to jump into the age of sail with twenty first century technology, even if it's entirely civilian. GURPS having a tidy table of things made it feel sort of ordinary, but no, we live in an age of wonders and it would be pretty wondrous to acquire such things.
... so, I'm thinking she's going to get robbed. logically. people be taking her stuff.
... because a lot of people in the Pathfinder world are more effectively fighty than anyone in this world.
It's a problem and a puzzler.
Also, the reincarnate spell would bork any biometric security measures. You'll always have a fingerprint! ... until you have someone else's, because oops new species.
Huh, do gnomes have fingerprints?
... it's made up, gnomes could be toons, depends on the story, I know.
... but do they?
SO. This phone thing. I logically don't see her keeping it.
But. If it is her story. She's the one in a million that can.
Also in this story there's other earth humans that went through twenty forty sixty years ago. And the thing is none of them would have a mobile phone either. Or a portable wikipedia.
So this isn't the first moment in history a geek with a bad phone connection might routinely wander around with all human knowledge, but it's kind of close, and it's really something.
Somthing that plays an entirely other game than Pathfinder, I suspect.
But throwing incongruous parts together to see what happens is Story.
Trouble is so far everything even vaguely impressive or interesting about her arrived in her pockets.
should go fix that.