History SchizoTech / TabletopGames

** Most races actually manage to avoid this trope fairly well, with Eldar, Necrons, Tau and Tyranids having reasonably consistent technology levels. Orks, on the other hand, really don't. Primitive axes, clubs and boar-riding cavalry are regularly seen alongside laser guns and HumongousMecha. The in-universe explanation is that their technology works by the RuleOfCool -- if Orks believe something they've built will work, it will.

** While the Orcs' technology level is largely dependent on what they can steal from other people, the Savage Orcs are still deep in the Stone Age -- their weapons are made of roughly carved stone, wood and bone, their society limited to primitive tribes and their armor is made of crude leather and bones or just warpaint.

** Most races actually manage to avoid this trope fairly well, with Eldar, Necrons, Tau and Tyranids having reasonably consistent technology levels. Orks, on the other hand, really don't. Primitive axes, clubs and boar-riding cavalry are regularly seen alongside laser guns and HumongousMecha. The in-universe explanation is that their technology works by the RuleOfCool – if Orks believe something they've built will work, it will.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'', particularly in later editions. The Empire have a steam-powered tank and a "clockwork" horse while the Dwarfs - better yet - have a helicopter armed with a steam cannon (not mentioning an organ gun and a huge cannon-like flamethrower). The Skaven, infamously, feature "fantasy" versions of a sniper rifle, a [[GatlingGood ratling gun]], a flamethrower, a laser cannon, a hamster wheel of death and what what appears to be three separate types of nuclear bombs-including a Davy Crockett Personal Nuclear Missile Launcher (all of which may fail with destructively hilarious results). This in a world where a powerful human kingdom still think knights and longbows are cutting-edge, and there's at least one major faction that's entirely Stone Age. Fan reactions have been mixed, although some earlier editions featured actual plasma guns and laser pistols, so modern players get off lightly really. The schizo tech contraptions tend to go haywire in the most spectacular ways imaginable at the moment least desired. But even then they are fun to play - if not, just for laughs.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''

** As a more straight example, the Imperium of Man has floating bio-mechanical skulls called servo-skulls, basically a cybernetic computer that can hover. They put candles on them when they need some extra light.
** The Imperial Guard can sometimes be a good source of this. Example: the Leman Russ Executioner battle tank. It looks boxy and crude, the engine's designed to run on anything you can burn up to ''coal and wood'', and the heavy stubber on top is pretty much a UsefulNotes/WorldWarII-era [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning M2 Browning]] in all but name, but it packs a huge tank-melting plasma cannon for the main gun. An Imperial Guard force is probably the only place where you'll find motorcycle troops and horse cavalry fighting alongside [[HumongousMecha Sentinels and Warhound Titans]].
** Despite popular belief, the Astra Militarum has no "official" loadout enforced across all regiments; individual regiments are largely responsible for providing their own equipment and training. The image of Guardsmen all wearing green, angular armour comes from many regiments [[SincerestFormOfFlattery copying the famed Cadians]]. Since planets in the Imperial Guard vary wildly in technology levels, you get a lot of this when regiments are folded into each other or co-operate: you may get professional troopers from a Forge World equipped with plasma weapons and utilising cameleoline cloaking and cybernetic augmentations, fighting alongside Feral World primitives who like draping themselves with noxious body paint and the bones of dead comrades, and prefer tomahawks and longbows over their lasguns. It sounds crazy but this is a necessity for an interstellar empire that is so profoundly large, ancient and thinly-spread that it doesn't even really know how many planets it controls.
*** To stop Guardsmen from a planet with technology level around the 16th century from using their muskets over the far more effective lasgun the later was modified to make a "bang" sound when fired.

** As a more straight example, the Space Marines have floating bio-mechanical skulls called servo-skulls, basically a cybernetic computer that can hover. They put candles on them when they need some extra light.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' is also rife with this sort of thing. The {{mecha}} all run on highly compact and portable fusion engines and have guns and missiles with great range and hideous damage, but due to the rubbished industrial base apparently nobody can build decent fire control or air-conditioning systems, so most fighting takes place at close range (under 1 kilometer!) and most mechwarriors fight in what amounts to underwear. (Admittedly, the short ranges are both to keep map sizes reasonable for gameplay purposes and because the designers ''were'' shooting for a classic in-your-face mecha combat aesthetic in preference to more logical but boring long-range sniping contests.)
** Similarly, while [=BattleMechs=] have essentially taken over the role of [[TankGoodness tanks]] -- not necessarily combat vehicles in general, just the old twentieth-century style armored boxes with a gun turret -- centuries ago in-universe, everybody still uses those anyway. Some handwaving about how they're supposedly cheaper and easier to produce is basically canon, and of course weapons and armor have kept up with the times, but it's still rather akin to keeping prop fighters in production and actual military use long after everybody already knows how to make perfectly good ''jets''. Tanks are still used because they're comparatively cheaper and stealthier. They lack the technology to keep HumongousMecha from being ludicrously expensive artillery bait (which is probably why the Clans' ObstructiveCodeOfConduct forbids artillery).

** [[TheEmpire The Coalition States]] uses this to their advantage to peacefully assimilate human communities.[[note]]They generally assimilate non-human communities by flattening them and claiming the smoking crater as their territory.[[/note]] They offer to help HighTechLowCulture towns to perform repair and upkeep on their technology, and use that to make the town more and more dependent on the Coalition, until they quietly absorb the community into their empire.

* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}''
** The world of Alexander Athanatos from ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: Bio-Tech'' is mainly in the Iron Age yet capable of producing genetic hybrids thanks to Hippocrates triggering revolution in medical science.
** The world of Yrth, setting of ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} TabletopGame/{{Banestorm}},'' is a vaguely-medieval fantasy world like many others, except that people from Earth occasionally get teleported there and stranded. The Powers That Be suppress gunpowder, but many minor technologies and concepts have become common, including the germ theory of disease, some experiments in vaccination, heliocentric astronomy with elliptical orbits, the modern novel, stagecoaches with suspensions, sloops and brigs, fingerprinting, and the use of perspective in art.
** The random alien culture generation rules in 3rd edition ''Space'' have a small (a roll of 3 on 3d6) chance of resulting in primitive barbarians with spaceships.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'''s world Golarion is [[FantasyKitchenSink deliberately]] all over the place. The Inner Sea Region contains every conceivable level of technology, from simple tribal cultures with axes and spears, to the standard fantasy kingdoms policed by knights on horseback, to a nation where the wreckage and technology of a fallen city-sized spaceship litters the land of savage barbarians. To top it all off, a steampunk city with black powder firearms is wedged into a magical wasteland between two nations dominated by wizards. The designers actually acknowledge the trope in one book, citing TruthInTelevision: not every nation develops at the same rate or obtains new technologies in the same order.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'''s world Golarion is [[FantasyKitchenSink deliberately]] all over the place. The Inner Sea Region contains every conceivable level of technology, from simple tribal cultures with axes and spears, to the standard fantasy kingdoms policed by knights on horseback, to a nation where the wreckage and technology of a fallen city-sized spaceship litters the land of savage barbarians. To top it all off, a steampunk city with black powder firearms is wedged into a magical wasteland between two nations dominated by wizards. The designers actually acknowledge the trope in one book, citing TruthInTelevision: not every nation develops at the same rate or obtains new technologies in the same order.

** As a more straight example, the Space Marines have floating bio-mechanical skulls called familiars, basically a cybernetic computer that can hover. They put candles on them when they need some extra light.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'', particularly in recent editions. The Empire have a steam-powered tank and a "clockwork" horse while the Dwarfs - better yet - have a helicopter armed with a steam cannon (not mentioning an organ gun and a huge cannon-like flamethrower). The Skaven, infamously, feature "fantasy" versions of a sniper rifle, a [[GatlingGood ratling gun]], a flamethrower, a laser cannon, a hamster wheel of death and what what appears to be three separate types of nuclear bombs-including a Davy Crockett Personal Nuclear Missile Launcher (all of which may fail with destructively hilarious results). This in a world where a powerful human kingdom still think knights and longbows are cutting-edge, and there's at least one major faction that's entirely Stone Age. Fan reactions have been mixed, although some earlier editions featured actual plasma guns and laser pistols, so modern players get off lightly really. The schizo tech contraptions tend to go haywire in the most spectacular ways imaginable at the moment least desired. But even then they are fun to play - if not, just for laughs.

** The ''TabletopGames/{{Dragonlance}}'' setting has the Tinker Gnomes who power their dormant volcano home with Geothermal power and individual Gnomes have invented things like Powered suits of armor, Invisibility Spray, various Clockwork automaton, and even a nuclear bomb. The Tinker Gnomes are a race of [[BunglingInventor bungling inventors]], and so a lot of their technology does tend to be a bit prone to [[MadeOfExplodium exploding]].

** ''TabletopGames/{{Pathfinder}}'''s world Golarion is [[FantasyKitchenSink deliberately]] all over the place. The Inner Sea Region contains every conceivable level of technology, from simple tribal cultures with axes and spears, to the standard fantasy kingdoms policed by knights on horseback, to a nation where the wreckage and technology of a fallen city-sized spaceship litters the land of savage barbarians. To top it all off, a steampunk city with black powder firearms is wedged into a magical wasteland between two nations dominated by wizards. The designers actually acknowledge the trope in one book, citing TruthInTelevision: not every nation develops at the same rate or obtains new technologies in the same order.
* ''TabletopGames/SpiritOfTheCentury'' plays with this, as it's set in the 1920s but uses pulp Science! to allow more futuristic technology, and even full on mad science inventions that we still haven't made. The book does a good job of cataloguing what inventions are just around the corner to give you some idea what the state of the art inventions you could get prototypes to, or make, are.
* ''TabletopGames/{{Exalted}}''

** ''TabletopGames/{{Exalted}}'' also has the LostTechnology angle going for its Schizo Tech. A lot of the more powerful or complex Artifacts are remnants of First Age technology made by Solar artisans. Of course, the Solar Exalted have spent most of the last couple thousand years being dead and have only just recently returned. Enough documentation has survived that Dragon Blooded artisans can maintain most surviving First Age tech, but any technological advancement since the First Age can't compare to what Twilight Caste Solars were capable of.

*** The Hollow World, ''inside'' Mystara, proactively averts this trope with the Spell of Preservation, which makes people in various cultures distrust and spurn unfamiliar technologies, no matter how useful.
** Technology levels in ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' range from Stone Age to late Renaissance, depending on where you are, with even higher tech turning up in the local MadScientistLaboratory. This is because new domains are added to the Land of Mists from different worlds with their own indigenous tech-levels, rather than technology evolving in tandem within adjacent countries. (Of course, some of those cultures may have Schizo Tech of their own, but they won't be developing any ''new'' examples while under this spell.)

** Technology levels in ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' range from Stone Age to late Renaissance, depending on where you are, with even higher tech turning up in the local MadScientistLaboratory. This is because new domains are added to the Land of Mists from different worlds with their own indigenous tech-levels, rather than technology evolving in tandem within adjacent countries.

* Naturally, ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' picks up this ball and runs with it. Even disregarding the CyberPunk-meets-magic setting, there are weapons like [[KatanasAreJustBetter katanas]], [[{{BFS}} claymores]] and [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything "vibro-swords"]] to go with their assault rifles and grenades.
* As per ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'', in ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} 2020'' you can find along firearms and even more advanced stuff [[KatanasAreJustBetter katanas]] [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything "vibro-swords"]], bows, and crossbows.

** Despite popular belief, the Astra Militarum has no "official" loadout enforced across all regiments; individual regiments are largely responsible for providing their own equipment and training. The image of Guardsmen all wearing green, angular armour comes from many regiments [[SincerestFormOfFlattery copying the famed Cadians]]. Since planets in the Imperial Guard vary wildly in technology levels, you get a lot of this when regiments are folded into each other or co-operate: you may get professional troopers from a Forge World equipped with plasma weapons and utilising cameleoline cloaking and cybernetic augmentations, fighting alongside Feral World primitives who like draping themselves with noxious body paint and the bones of dead comrades, and prefer tomahawks and longbows over their lasguns. It sounds crazy but this is a necessity for an interstellar empire that is so profoundly large, ancient and thinly-spread that it doesn't really know how many planets it controls.

** Exodite Eldar don't. Their Dragon Knight warriors ride dinosaur-like creatures, and they have laser lances (much like the Shining Spears aspect warriors but more primitive) and laser carbines (much like Imperial lasguns except they don't suck). Exodites limit their technology in such a way to give themselves hard lives to stop their culture from falling into decadence and depravity; otherwise, they have almost exactly the same technology as their craft world cousins.
** While the Tau avoid this trope like the plague, their Kroot allies do this [[SpaceAmish intentionally]]. They keep tech for the most part very simple (they can absorb the DNA from other species) they still have space travel and use black powered guns to five incredibly advanced munitions given to them by the Tau. Even the Tau, which are supposed to avert this, have mostly the same military technology in the "present" of the game as they did hundreds of years ago at first contact. They upgraded their ships into true warships, and that's about it. Even that is Forge World canon and may not apply to the main line.

** [[TabletopGames/{{Pathfinder}} Golarion]] is [[FantasyKitchenSink deliberately]] all over the place. The Inner Sea Region contains every conceivable level of technology, from simple tribal cultures with axes and spears, to the standard fantasy kingdoms policed by knights on horseback,to a nation where the wreckage and technology of a fallen city-sized spaceship litters the land of savage barbarians. To top it all off, steampunk city, complete with black powder firearms, exists squarely between the magical wasteland that separates two nations dominated by wizards. The designers actually acknowledge the trope in one book, citing TruthInTelevision: not every nation develops at the same rate, or obtains new technologies in the same order.

** Quite a few of these are very subtle ones that most people probably wouldn't notice deviate from the somewhat medieval level of technology generally used. Windows using 19th-century sheet or plate glass are described, chimneys (a 16th-century invention) are universal, and even seemingly-minor details such as the existence of "private rooms" at inns are all developments of later centuries. On the flipside, pre-Dark Age technologies such as triremes, chariots, colosseums and the notion of daily bathing also appear.

** Quite a few of these are very subtle ones that most people probably wouldn't notice deviate from the medieval level of technology otherwise used. Floor plans for castles tend to use the 14th-century pinnacle of the art, windows using 19th-century sheet or plate glass are described, chimneys (a 16th century invention) are universal, and even seemingly-minor details such as the existence of "private rooms" at inns are all developments of later centuries. On the flipside, pre-Dark Age technologies such as triremes, chariots, colosseums and the notion of daily bathing also appear.

** Quite a few of these are very subtle ones that most people probably wouldn't notice. Floor plans for castles tend to use the 14th-century pinnacle of the art, windows using 19th-century sheet or plate glass are described, chimneys (a 16th century invention) are universal, and even seemingly-minor details such as the existence of "private rooms" at inns are all developments of later centuries. On the flipside, pre-Dark Age technologies such as triremes, chariots, colosseums and the notion of daily bathing also appear.

** Quite a few of these are very subtle ones that are a result of either ignorance of medieval technology, RuleOfCool, or both. Floor plans for castles tend to use the 14th-century pinnacle of the art, windows using 19th-century sheet or plate glass are described, chimneys (a 16th century invention) are universal, and even seemingly-minor details such as the existence of "private rooms" at inns are all developments of later centuries. On the flipside, pre-Dark Age technologies such as triremes, chariots, colosseums and the notion of daily bathing also appear.

* In ''''TabletopGame/FadingSuns'' most advanced technology is prohibited or restricted by the Church following the fall of the Second Republic, though it's not always enforced, particularly weapons tech. For example, a militia man on a backworld may have a laser, while his wife still cleans the shirts on the rocks by the stream.

** How about ''[[http://www.somethingawful.com/d/dungeons-and-dragons/wtf-wondrous-items.php The Book of Wondrous Inventions]]'', which was a collection of Tinker Gnome inventions based on RealLife technology?