"New Inventions" is a subsection in Technology and Artifacts (Chapter 17) of the Basic Set[1]
Basics[]
It provides guidelines for GMs who want to allow PCs to invent stuff during the campaign. These cover realistic innovations at the inventor’s tech level or one higher.
Things to consider:
- Required Skills
- Complexity
- Concept
- Prototype
- Time Required
- Cost
- Testing and Bugs
- Production
Gadgeteering[]
"Gadgeteering" is a subsection in Technology and Artifacts (Chapter 17) of the Basic Set[2] that gives advice on how to relax the New Inventions rules to allow the cinematic creation of devices that are far ahead of their time.
Having the 25pt Gadgeteer advantage reduces the amount of bugs different MoS result in, as well as allowing going further than 1 TL beyond.
The 50pt Quick Gadgeteer goes beyond that to reduce the development time.
Magic[]
The Inventing New Spells rules uses the New Inventions rules for making up spells not in the GURPS Magic book.
Ultimately the GM decides on the prereq count for a new spell which determines the penalty, however since you can't develope spells you lack the prereqs for, this means a mage can bridge their way up the 'tech tree' by designing simpler spells first.
The huge penalties resulting from prereq counts are difficult to offset w/ the 4/level it takes to level up Thaumatology. If the GM doesn't allow buying off this penalty more cheaply as a technique, bonus-hunting for things like Visualization could help.