Tinker

Description

Tinker was a profession that built technology. Tinkers needed to have a Schematic and all the parts (usually tinker components) for that Schematic in order to build a given piece of technology. The types of tech they could build were extremely varied, but it was challenging to learn new schematics.

Putting more character build into Tinking let you work with more complex devices. Each device had a complexity rating, and you had to have invested a lot of build into Tinker to work with the highest tier. There was, however, a fourth tier that was never officially something our tinkers could work with in-game (though this was mostly replaced with Knowledge: High Tech and Electrical Engineering later in the game).

Characters learned how to build new things by finding technology and studying it to reverse engineer a schematic. The schematic was always WYSIWYG: You couldn't improve it by swapping in rare parts for common parts, so you'd hold onto your rare components until you found a schematic that needed them. Studying tech took up time they could otherwise spend building known schematics. This encouraged specialization in many ways. But specialization as a Tinker was not Categorical. There was no real advantage in specializing in building pistols or sensors or medical equipment. Instead, it revolved around having a catalogue of items you already knew how to build, and giving preference to those jobs over jobs building something you didn't yet have a schematic for. If you weren't a bit picky about what you chose to research, you'd have no time to build things.

Electrical Engineering

The High Tech version of Tinkering that was introduced later in the game as a 2nd tier of profession was Electrical Engineering. This skill allowed us to work with tech that was previously beyond the understanding of the Tinkers on Karst. It mostly replaced Complexity 4 items, which were by and large written out of the system.

Inventions

Perhaps the most obvious use case for BGA inventions, Tinker was one of the most powerful ways to get in game advantages over a BGA cycle. Inventions were one way in which characters did tend to specialize, if only because it was easiest to justify inventions that were directly related to your character's particular expertise. Example inventions include: Medical Power Armor, Bubble Guns, Electromagnetic Field Generators, Refrigeration Units, Wendigo Masks, Electric Lacing, Auto-Injector Implant

History

Around year three, the town built a computer which, among other things, allowed tinkers to more easily share schematics. This was a major shift in the way Tinking was used. Printing a schematic was trivial, but now you could build anything as long as someone took the time to share out the schematic (which was easy but not trivial). Tinkers began to differentiate themselves more by what they researched and invented than what they built.

Player Tinkers

NPC Tinkers