Re: Change (was: (TFT) Jobs table: ...)

[raito@raito.com]

I think you mistake my point. Gunpowder weapons were around early, and 
so the argument that post-gunpowder = late isn't really true (and 
you're not the one who asserted that). 

As for the rest, I'm sceptical. Yes, growth of population may or may 
not parallel technological advance, but correlation is not causation, 
as they say. But this does not account for innovation following the 
Black Plague, or necessarily explain Flornce in the Rennaisance. 

As far as magic goes, we know that TFT does not scale well, so why 
should its magic be any different? Take a town of 30,000 (which 
certainly existed in this world in medieval times). ITL says that 100 
of those guys will be wizards. Let's say 10 of them have sufficient IQ 
to know how to make any particular sort of item (becausae we're 
assuming they work together). The other 90 guys make dandy apprentices 
in that respect. And because this is an on-going concern, they have 
labs and a supplies of materials. They'd be kicking out magic items at 
a pretty fair clip. 

And what warlord wouldn't have some wizards on the payroll just to be 
churning out Weapon/Armor enchantments as fast as they can? That extra 
point or two makes a difference. And since politics are variable, might 
as well spring for the enchantment that says that the W/A E goes away 
if the wrong person handles the weapon. 

It's rather like an article I read long ago on Shadowrun tha pointed 
out that a character who got their abilities from a corporation would 
have what was best for the corproation, not for an adventurer. And that 
that result was likely to be a character with a single skill, because 
the corporation had thousands of employees, and could afford to keep 
the skill mix they wanted, but wanted each individual to have a high a 
level in the skill as they could get. 

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com

Quoting Denis DesHarnais <denisdesharnais@gmail.com>:
> True, but it took centuries for gunpowder to go from firework to weapon,
> while in the last century, it took a few decades from the theoretical
> possibility of the laser as suggested by relativity theory (I am forgetting
> which part) to implementation, and less than a decade for graphene to go
> from hypothetical material to prototype.  Again, I don't say that I
> completely subscribe to this theory, but proximity, be it real or virtual,
> does appear provide a fair explanation of why it took millennia to go from
> atl-atl to bow (small and widely-separated tribes), while the interval
> between the Wright brothers and the Red Baron was less than a generation
> (telegraph, printing press, major cities worldwide connected
> by transatlantic steamers).  We seem to think better in groups. 
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