Question Devises and Essence

Absolutely. Devises can 'literally' work anyway you want them to. Of course, the less 'like' they are to the universe they are in... the more 'power' the devisor has to put into them to make them work (and consequently, the more likely said devise only works for that devisor or breaks down often).

It is technically possible for a GADGET to be powered by Essence (or Psi). Because in the WU, science and tech are not mutually exclusive. Technology using Essence and magickal 'machines' are very advanced concepts needing to be explored and proved properly... so it would take a very specialized or powerful gadgeteer to create them... and a lot of system building to let the rest of the world duplicate the process... but it is possible. But for a devisor, complexity is a no-brainer... and since it isn't even a violation of the universal laws in place, it could even be a fairly stable technology. Still not assembly line possible... it IS a devise, after all... but its not going to be hard to keep it working.

Sir Lee wrote:

Kristin Darken wrote: Because in the WU, science and tech are not mutually exclusive

You know, despite what some flat-earthers and some enemies of pure research may say, science and tech are hardly mutually exclusive in our universe either.

Doh. That was supposed to be science and magick.

To elaborate on the Devisor rating system... just remember that the whole mutant ranking system is a measure of mutation, not a measure of the effects of those mutations. It's something used by mutant specialized theorists and biologists... and seen in use by these people in use for purposes of powers testing. It is decidedly not an outcome/effect based system of measurement such as you see in RPG's (especially in RPGs, where powers can be assigned points costs and modified through the use of limitations or advantages with a result of equal cost powers being more or less equal in effect on the world - and most importantly, on combat). The idea of an 'effects' or 'outcome' based ranking system is in the works and may be revealed in canon at some point in the timeline of Gen 2... as a result of tech and social media platforms allowing the observation and recording of measurable 'feats' of power 'in the wild' that would require and produce a common system of measure by non-specialists (the ParaWatch / HeroWatch color rating system, for example). And our discussions of other characters and stories outside of Gen 2 where that system exists will likely also evolve to speaking in those terms... but more than likely, the powers tests and theorists will still use their earlier ranking system because of what that means in terms of biology and the science of what they do.

Specifically, for Devisors... the ranking is primarily a measure of how many vectors they can manipulate.

Or, using the tech tree example:
Technology moves within a reasonable progression. There are theoretical nodes, engineering nodes, and specific schematics/devices off of those and any node you try to reach has prerequisites and serves as the prerequisite for further developments. Normal science follows the course of the tree... logical progression and basic hard work generally keeps the process moving forward along various branches as long as effort is put into them. Innovation and genius can sometimes bypass specific nodes, maybe even more than one, especially where one branch moves ahead of another and connects back in through a different path... as things missed can be caught up quickly through reverse engineering and seeing how further developments prove the effectiveness of skipped nodes.

But for the Gadgeteer... you no longer have to follow the path linearly. A Gadgeteer can skip ahead to a specific target goal, possibly singling out a single node or landing with a splash effect and getting several things along the progression to it (or linked closely to it in that area of the tree). How powerful a Gadgeteer is tends to determine either how far into the 'fog of war' of the tech tree they can jump, how much of the tree is revealed when they splash down, and how long they can hold onto that knowledge.

Devisors aren't really much different in practice. But those differences result in an enormous effect... because Devisors aren't limited to just the one tech tree. In an infinite set of parallel universes, the laws of mathematics, physics, biology... and so on... can function in some outrageously different ways, which result in some very, very different tech trees. given all those possible options to land on... but fortunately, Devisors can only reach out as far as their power will support, just like the Gadgeteer.

The further from what they 'know' that they reach, the harder it is to hold onto it... which for the Gadgeteer results in less splash or interconnecting knowledge and a shorter time of holding that knowledge. For the Devisor, the further it is, the harder it is to keep the devise connected to THAT world's laws.

Or something along those lines...

There's a bit of shuffling of the chicken->egg sequence there. We wrote them that way... with themes and specializations... from the start. That was just the concept. But in later "filling in the details" this is how I rationalized that concept.

Back when the WU was just a hand full of authors doing a round robin set of stories with a shared universe; a lot of those things just 'were'. Either because they were tropes of the genre already... or because it served the purpose of a specific story. Hundreds (if not more than a thousand) characters between canon and non-canon Whateley stories later, we've filled in a lot more detail (still no where near all of it, but far more than we had in the early days). But we're still not to the point that you'd get consistent answers from an RPG source book or game mechanics. This is MY way of rationalizing the existing concepts with a sort of unified idea that works for 'many' if not all the existing stuff. And if it helps people create more stories that remain consistent with continuity, then its served its purpose. But its not an RPG rule book. I'm offering an explanation for why those things might work that way... but in most cases, the actual "why" is... the author wrote it that way. The explanation that integrates the rest of the WU came later.

Ya, you also run into problems with industry capabilities. A gadgeteer will build tools, fabricate materials, use those to build various machines and so on... and in a future event, they'll use these tools and machines to build more advanced tools and machines. Meanwhile, the industry has none of these tools. Sure, in the throes of an innovation event, you developed optical crystals for data containment. And the theory is sound. But no one in the world other than you has the pressure chamber with the right EM and radiation generation to grow the crystals. Sure, you can do it 100% of the time...and you can share the schematics to build them elsewhere... but to commercialize the process is going to take thousands of those machines creating crystals... just to make the tools to make the tech you've developed. Mass production advances in waves. It does so quickly... but even knowing advanced technology could be made now... it could still take decades and dozens of advancement stages to get technology there to do it.