Classic: Technomancer

GURPS Classic: Technomancer (1998) is a worldbook written by David L. Pulver.
==Changes for 4e==
Pyramid #3/115: Technomancer provides information to help bring Merlin-1 into 4e.
===Magery 0===
Magery 0 didn't officially exist in Classic so statements like "only about one person in 10,000 had magery, but as many as one in 100 people born in Trinity's Shadow would be mages" and "Beyond Trinity's Shadow, one in 1,000 people has Magery 1, one in 10,000 has Magery 2, and one in 100,000 has Magery 3."sidebar pg 70 were based around Magery 0 not existing and have to be adjusted accordingly. What rate of Magery 0 would be best is a matter of judgment.
==Industrial Enchantment==
Expanded in Classic: Magic Items 3, Industrial Enchantment was updated in the Pyramid 3/66 article "Thoroughly Modern Magic".Pyramid 3/66: The Laws of Magic's pg 25. GURPS Fantasy had provided an alternative method but the method given resulted in conflict results.
==Spells==
Many of the new spells published in this book were reprinted in 4th Edition GURPS Magic and GURPS Bio-Tech with the following exceptions:
===Air Spells===
*Purify Signal/TL (Regular)
* Static Charge (Regular)
*Ether Static/TL (Area)
*Seek Emitter/TL (Information)
===Body Control Spells===
*Partial Mechamorphosis/TL (VH) (Regular)
=== Communication and Empathy Spells===
*Delete Commercials/TL (Regular)
*Seek Number/TL (Information)
*Borrow Number/TL (Regular)
* Wrong Number/TL (Regular)
* Identify Caller/TL (Information)
*Magical Switchboard/TL (Regular)
*Speed Data/TL (Regular)
*Broadcast Spell/TL (VH) (Regular)
===Enchantment Spells===
* Spellprocessor/TL (Enchantment)
*Curse Virus/TL (Enchantment)
*Video Entity/TL (Enchantment)
*Electric Power/TL (Enchantment)
* Soulburner Gestalt (VH) (Enchantment)
====Weapon Enchantments====
*Mana Warhead/TL (Enchantment)
*Spell Targeting/TL (VH) (Enchantment)
===Fire Spells=== 
*High-Explosive Fireball (Missile)
*Shaped-Charge Fireball (Missile)
*Detonate (Regular)
*Mass Detonate (Area)
===Food Spells===
*Guns to Butter (Regular)
===Knowledge Spells===
*Necrovision™ (Regular)
*Divinations
** Cybermancy
**Plutomancy
**Quantumancy
*Televisomancy (Information)
===Light and Darkness Spells=== 
*Infrared Flash (Regular)
*Coherent Light Jet (Regular)
* Disruption Bolt (Missile)
*Invisible Sunbolt (Missile)
===Making and Breaking Spells ===
*Immediate Action (Blocking)
===Mind Control Spells===
* Game Addict (Regular)
===Movement Spells=== 
*Homing Missile (Special)
*Hail of Lead (Regular)
*Reduce Recoil (Regular)
*Magic Bullet (Regular)
*Steady Hand (Regular)
===Protection and Warning Spells===
*Blind Sensor (Regular)
* Spoof Sensor (Regular)
*Prismatic Mist (Area)
===Sound Spells=== 
*Volume Control/TL (Regular)
===Technological Spells===
Energy 	Fatigue Equivalent
1 kWs 	0.00277 fatigue
9-volt cell 	0.05 fatigue
12-volt cell 	5 fatigue
1 kWh 	10 fatigue
3,400 btu 	10 fatigue
1 MWh 	10,000 fatigue
1 kW 	0.00277 fatigue/second
Household outlet 	Up to 0.01 fatigue/second
Household fuse box 	Up to 0.1 fatigue/second
360 kW 	1 fatigue/second
965 hp 	2 fatigue/second
1 MW 	2.77 fatigue/second
18 MW 	50 fatigue/second
Industrial power line 	Up to 250 fatigue/second
Notes: kWs = kilowatt-second (or kilojoule); kWh = kilowatt-hour; btu = British thermal unit; MWh = megawatt-hour; kW = kilowatt; hp = horsepower; MW = megawatt.:Values for 9- and 12-volt cells assumes TL7 non-rechargable lead-acid batteries. The 12-volt cell is a typical car battery. Rechargeable cells or batteries contain half as much energy.	Notes: kWs = kilowatt-second (or kilojoule); kWh = kilowatt-hour; btu = British thermal unit; MWh = megawatt-hour; kW = kilowatt; hp = horsepower; MW = megawatt.:Values for 9- and 12-volt cells assumes TL7 non-rechargable lead-acid batteries. The 12-volt cell is a typical car battery. Rechargeable cells or batteries contain half as much energy.
====Energy Spells====
*Water to Fuel/TL (Regular)
*Hotshot/TL (Regular)
*Purify Power (Regular)
====Machine Spells====
*Program/TL (Regular)
*Guide Missile/TL (Regular)
* Confound Firearm/TL (Regular)
*Upgrade Computer/TL (Regular)
*Animate Machine/TL (VH) (Regular)
*Mad Machine/TL (Regular)
====Metal and Plastic Spells====
* Seek Metal (Information); Folded into Seek Earth
==== Radiation Spells ==== 
*Particle Beam (VH) (Missile)
===Water Spells===
*Elemental Plumbing (Regular)
==Notes==
GURPS Technomancer has some issues:
*Maybe, but whoever listed these things didn't seem to actually find any.
===Political-scientific arena===
1) Ok the atomic bomb is a bust. How the blazes do you get the Japanese to surrener on the date they did in OTL when even after nuking two cities and the Russians declaring war Tojo and his bunch of fanatical nutbars were going to go down fighting to the point of trying to break into the radio station to stop the surrender speech?
*Exactly the way the book says happened - the US showed the Japanese the Hellstorm, threatened to put one over Tokyo, and compromised on unconditional surrender.
2) It is hard to see Joseph Mccarthy going on his Anticommunist witchhunt with all the problems of the Hellstorms around.
* Right, yes, if there's one thing Joe McCarthy was known for, it was a refusal to exploit fears about real problems to improve his political position.
3) one of the reasons that Oppenheimer was relegated to the fringes of the military establishment was his argument against the Hydrogen bomb (he and his allies called it MegaDeath); the Hellstorms of 45 and 49 would have prevented Oppenheimer from being pushed out of the decision process as he was in our history. With Oppenheimer even something as simply as atomic reactor development would have gone a different path. 
*And? Atomic reactor development has to come to a halt for twenty years anyway to deal with the materializing demons problem.
4) Why in the name of sanity would Stalin even mess with the atom bomb once his spy relayed it was a bust? Better yet why would he set it off "between Enderby and Queen Maud Land" which was claimed by Norway, Chile, Argentina, Australia, and United Kingdom. That would have been an act of war again five countries at once; Stalin may have been sociopathic but he wasn't stupid. As far as the resulting Killer Penguins - Wally West said it best in Justice League International Annual #4 (1990) Page 52 panel 4 "..what has to be the stupidest case in the history of superheroes". It was a really silly idea in 1990 when the Annual came out and was even dumber when Technomancer came out in 1998.
*Why mess with it? Because it wasn't a "bust", it was a massively devastating superweapon.
* You then test it somewhere with nothing even remotely valuable around because you don't know for sure what it will do. A technical "act of war" committed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War in a completely worthless and uninhabited place where all territorial claims are explicitly not recognized by either of the world's superpowers would result in nothing except maybe a sharp diplomatic note, and anyone who thinks Stalin would worry one bit about that is far stupider than killer penguins.
===Social factors===
1) GURPS Classic Magic was very clear on this: "In order to create a magical item, the caster (and any assistants) must know the Enchant spell and the spell to be put into the item."GURPS Classic Magic pg 27 but GURPS Technomancer expressly states "All mages on the line are "assistants"; as usual, the require skill 15+ in the Enchant spell and the spell being enchanted"Technomancer 41 The inherent illogic of having Magery 2 common enough that they could be worked as blue color workers seemed to have not occurred to whoever playtested this thing. 
*There's nothing inherently illogical about 1-in-400 residents of Trinity's Shadow having Magery 2. That translates to about 1 million people in the US, Mexico, and Canada. The pay scale for these "blue collar" workers is given as $375 a day in Technomancer's 1998; that translates to about $85/hour or $160,000/year in 2022 dollars, or the US's 93rd income percentile for 2022.
2) How on earth can Louisiana have undead chain gangs given I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932) and book it was based on I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang? It took nearly 30 years after that fiasco before the southern states even tried chain gangs again. And the Antiquities Act of 1906 and rulings following is would have made having a zombie chain gang an cheque blance on any relative who wanted to sue the state in question. This is all ignoring the huge potential disease vector a decaying body is.
*Well, let's see, "30 years after that fiasco" would be 1962, and the current year of Technomancer is 1998, or more than 30 years after that. In fact, popular revival of chain gangs was in the news in general in the 1990s Washington Post, May 4, 1995, as part of the tough-on-crime politics of the era.
*The Antiquities Act of 1906, and its amendments and rulings, is in fact entirely irrelevant to the matter of the disposal of the bodies of executed murderers, as opposed to bodies dug up at archeological sites.
*A potential disease vector in a world with the Sterilize (3rd edition)/Remove Contagion (4th) spells for decontaminating the bodies, $7 cans of Flesh Fixative (p.81) for sealing the bodies, and of course the Cure Disease spell to cure anyone who gets sick.
3) The Legal problem of having a MR person testify in court. Since any Resisting of Compel Truth in court is illegalpg 100 and 'normal' MR cannot be turned off any MR person called into to court would be forced to break the law. This is entrapment and a violation of the persons' 5th amendment rights.
* And so the law will have a specific exception for those demonstrated to be magic-resistant which, the game book not being a legal treatise, didn't go into specific detail on.
===Random social===
1) Does it make sence for demons to 'appear' in the Nevada Test Site when in the Technomancer Timeline there is no such place?
*Demons didn't appear in the real-world "Nevada Test Site", they appeared in the in-book "Nevada Test Area". Which, as the book explicitly lays out on p.42, was a nuclear power plant test area (reactor research wasn't halted for another two years), not a bomb test site.
2) Does killing off the acting cast of The Conqueror (1956) mean that the movie industury on Merlin is going to go a different path? You bet your sweet projector it does. Valley of the Dolls (1967), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) all had actors who originally starred in The Conqueror in supporting roles. Then you have people like Norman S. Powell (an uncredited mongel guard) who becamse directors and producers in their own right. Without Powell there is no "Johnny Ringo" (1959) TV Series, The Big Valley series never is made, nor is the 1985 revival of "The Twilight Zone". While some people may blow this off it does demonstrate the 'domino effect' of what changing one trivial event can result in.
*Yes? Look, this isn't a randomly-selected result of "change one thing and work out all the logical consequences" world. This is a world that, in the Watsonian sense, wound up in a specific "quantum band" accessible to Homeline because, despite its changes, it was "similar enough" to be "nearby". And in the Doylist sense, was a lot like the real world because that was more fun for the original adventure than something unrecognizable.
3) The effect spells like Truthsayer and Detect Lie would have had on 'landmark' cases like the Dr. Shepard case. In that case the man was tried in the court of public opinion and his appeal some 10 years later result in the 'supposed' and 'alleged' you see in today's newspapers. Those spells would have short circuited the whole media circus and forced the judge to give a directed verdict of innocence (DNA evidence has indicated that yes there was a third person in the house as Sherpard claim all those years ago.)
Similar miscarriages of justice which took a while to clean up would have never happened in the first place and the resulting changes in the law if they got the Supreme Court would have similarly never happened.
*Yes, law was changed by magic. This not being a legal treatise, we got a summary of the relevant bits for play, not a detailed story of how everything wound up into a world vaguely similar to Homeline/the real world.
== See Also==
*Designer's Notes: GURPS Technomancer
*GURPS Infinite Worlds
* GURPS Update
==Additional Material== 
*Banestorming Infinity Unlimited (06/19/1998)
*Additional Campaign Crossovers for GURPS Technomancer (8/4/2000)
*The Coldest War: The Antarctic Rim in GURPS Technomancer (9/21/2001)
*I am Iron Man: Combat Golems in GURPS Technomancer (11/30/2001)
*"Thoroughly Modern Magic" – Contains updated magical mass-production rules for GURPS Fourth Edition.
*Pyramid 3/115: Technomancer – Featuring new Technomancer templates and campaign ideas, a new organization, and more.
*Pyramid #3/121: Travels and Tribulations – Discover "Merlin's Magnificent Menagerie," with dangerous new monsters from this setting.
==External Links==
*GURPS Technomancer: Funny New Guys Technomancer in Vietnam - on sjgames.com
*Technomancer Designer's Notes - Free sample from Pyramid (6/4/1999).
*Technomancer (obsidianportal) - links may be hard to read (gold on white background)
*Steven Ehrbar's Technomancer Resources - A site with a whole bunch of material for Technomancer (4th edition rules adaptation, timeline advance, detail expansion)
==References==
[[Category:Attributes and Secondary Characteristics [0]:]]
Category:Classic
Category:Fictional Settings
Category:Supernatural
Category:Reality Classification
Category:Quantum 3
Category:1998
Category:High Mana