Technology; how do you handle?

[Buufreak]

I'm working on making a game where the players have the opportunity to advance tech as they go along. From sharp rocks to metals, forging to smelting, skimming to sailing, and any other major technological leap forward you can think of.

The issue I keep facing is simply how to do this? How does one quantify such a thing? How would you keep track of that, as a stat? How would a player gain "points" in this stat?

[pabelfly]

Look at other systems that have this sorted and borrow from that. For example, the video game series Civilization has an interlinked tech tree that takes you from the start of agriculture to building a spaceship, and all the technologies in between. Use something like that, with the players getting a new technology of their choice at regular milestone intervals.

[redking]

I'm working on making a game where the players have the opportunity to advance tech as they go along. From sharp rocks to metals, forging to smelting, skimming to sailing, and any other major technological leap forward you can think of.

The issue I keep facing is simply how to do this? How does one quantify such a thing? How would you keep track of that, as a stat? How would a player gain "points" in this stat?

I wouldn't, at least not based on real world technology. That said, I DO enjoy putting a bit of sci-fi into my D&D, so perhaps a crashed space ship, androids with phasers (range: 60 ft touch attack. 3d6 50% fire damage, 50% "scientific damage", 50 charges, exotic weapon).

As for your stat, you could allow a pool of points that your PCs can spend to produce the technology. I don't have enough context to elaborate further.

[Zanos]

Probably just monthly knowledge checks with bonuses or penalties depending on gold and time expenditures. Points accumulate based on the success of the check and when a certain number is reached the new technology is identified. Simple enough, if you're fine with characters being savants that routinely identify groundbreaking technology. More realistically, it's not that uncommon for something to be discovered and not really be identified as useful in the way we understand it for hundreds of years. It took hundreds of years for people to even start making bombs out of gunpowder, for example.

[Pezzo]

I've never done anything similar, but taking inspiration from the real world, you could make the players throw gold at scientists (something like experts) and have them progress the world's technology. Players could go on adventures and test new inventions for "free", steal technology from other kingdoms, capture exotic creatures to dissect and the like.

[Jay R]

There's a crucial fact that is kind of hard for 21st century people to grasp emotionally: until the Industrial Revolution, most people's lives weren't that different from their grandparents' lives. There were slow changes, but huge, quick changes were rare.

Looking at real-life advances:

From sharp rocks to metals took over two million years.
The development of forging and smelting took thousands of years.
Sailing was the primary way to traverse the ocean from pre-history. But because of the lack of a way to measure longitude on board a ship, without precision clocks, it took until the 1700s to be able to do anything but sail directly west or east (and know where you were).
Lenses were developed by ancient Egyptians and/or Mesopotamians, but it took until the 1600s to make a viable telescope.
Even the plough was slowly improved from the 1600s century through (at least) the 1800s.

Of course, there were a few advances that made a huge change quickly. The Romans sharpened the back edge of their swords, and became world conquerors. [But the sword had been around for 1600 years by that time.]

The cannon changed medieval siege warfare, leading to star forts and bastion forts, leading to trenches. etc. But that took place over centuries, and started centuries after the development of gunpowder. A great inventor might be responsible for one of these changes, but not many. If scientific progress is the point of the game, you might need to play a dynasty, going through many generations. The aforementioned game of Civilization starts with pre-literate settlers and ends by sending a space ship to Alpha Centauri.

Maybe, just maybe, a PC could happen to live at the absolute perfect moment in development, and be able to make one small advance that would give him and his friends an advantage. Even so, it should take decades of focused studies, not days or weeks in time off from adventuring.

If you want to improve the plow, you should study plows, not hunt orcs.

But if you want to do it, then make some assumptions. Maybe magic makes it possible to improve things faster. Maybe you are right at the start of a Renaissance. Maybe your PCs are scientists and philosophers who sometimes go adventuring, rather than the other way around.

My recommendation is to start by deciding why these people are capable of changing the world so much. This will affect all your other decisions.

[Analytica]

Technology state of the art basically determines what DC is needed to make something with Craft or Profession. Advancing tech means lowering those DCs. I would let that happen as a result of success on hard Craft or Profession rolls. Like, if you exceed the DC needed by some large margin, that DC may go down for everyone since you worked out new ways to do it.

[rel]

Draw up a tech tree, and hand it to the players.
Unlocking each node is an adventure... Conveniently requiring delving into a nearby dungeon.

[HumanFighter]

Draw up a tech tree, and hand it to the players.
Unlocking each node is an adventure... Conveniently requiring delving into a nearby dungeon.

I think that is brilliant!