My initial take on some d20 (Incarna) technology basics were done in early 2025. I did use the Imperium of Incarna as the backdrop. It was a VERY limited set of parameters – technology offers a massive spectrum of tech. Frontier style lesser tech was the focus, a single class (rogue) for all characters, restricted supplies, limited races and variants. It involved a crashed ship, low amount of salvage, and limited enemies. It was predominantly a survival scenario.
The area that seemed to get bogged down most were:
The perception that tech (except explosives) was weak against large kinetic challenges. I did not allow a wide range of energy settings to be used with salvaged equipment. Players thought technology should be able to do significantly more damage. Defenses provided appeared to do little to reduce the harm taken from attacking creatures.
Expectations: this is the larger discussion of setting expectations of advanced tech in a setting and how it fares against more primitive (physical) attacks from creatures and conditions.
I would like to codify the specific issues, find a way to address them (either via mechanics or expectations), and re-test using a different scenario. Desired outcome is improved pacing, simplicity in managing integration between tech, and easier management of energy that supplies tech. From a character perspective, have at least 3 factors for a class differentiation.
Exluded factors: Psychic, magic, spaceships, large scale ordinance
All the previous runs in a high tech setting clearly point that RPG adventures are fringe scenarios mostly. Unless its pure espionage, rugged adventuring must take place in frontier/lesser availability to high tech, or exotic situations (magic, extreme environment/conditions, limited high tech application or function, etc.). The idea of this may also necessitate running high tech and low tech side-by-side to ensure there is a balance and that they can be a hybrid. This may actually not be true in extreme high tech scenarios (powered assault armor vs. chain mail; automatic machine gun vs. a sword). Demonstrably, iy should at least demonstrate that the $ value of high tech is the offset – basically a question of scale. Just like good primitive armor is mostly restrictive in its cost, so should the super high end tech be out of reach for starting characters – scale is relatively the same regardless of the level of sophitication or how primitive the base line is.