I agree with pretty much all of what has been said.
I will say though the main trick to using tech in RP is commonsense in impact to the scenario.
As much as drawbacks and malfunctions are a thing for tech, I think the idea tech must come with them is overzealous. It is not reasonable to impose on an accomplished Gnomish tinker that any device they have may fail, because they’re accomplished, so that’s unlikely and just curtailing their power. We wouldn’t expect that a seasoned warrior always has a chance to randomly cut their arm off with their own sword for example.
The thing is it’s about awareness of use, will it make the situation meaningful or not? If a device robs a scenario of all intrigue and meaning, I’d say don’t deploy it or deploy it and consider it failing, but I don’t think tech necessarily must fail.
I have a little head model I use for techy races:
Mechagnomes and Gnomes tinker incessantly with their devices. They’re unlikely to fail but it’s also unlikely they have “a tool for every job” because of how long it takes them to finish their inventions in a working form.
A goblin is likely to have something for just about any job, however that’s because goblins tend to (not all) fastrack testing processes and reliability parses so what they have may not work.
So the key becomes if I’m playing a gnome, I ask myself how likely is it my char has a solution to the problem? Probably not unless it’s something they’ve encountered a while ago. Even then I’d gauge whether it’s useful to the scenario.
As a goblin I generally humour I’ll have something, but if I feel it will take away from the scenario it will fail. Even if it doesn’t take away, I’ll often have it produce a side effect in most cases.
This is just my take on it though! I’m just not a fan of all things tech necessitating drawbacks. There is no good reason why my mechagnome rogues cloaking device will fail as she has assiduously worked on it over many many years. I just play it with some reasonable restrictions to prevent it being a godmode that doesn’t require her to be incompetent. For example if activated when in direct eyesight of a viewer, the cloaking flash leaves a slight optical trace on the viewer which allows them to track her outline until she moves out of sight. If activated outside of being viewed, someone will be unable to see her unless she disturbs objects or moves between conflicting lighting rapidly (such as from shade into a bright light).
There’s lots of ways to curtail tech from ruining RP beyond making the inventor look incompetent. Make the limitation part of the design for example. The cool thing about tech is the skies the limit, so you can write just about any check and balances into the design you like, as opposed to just going for failure.
You could even have a device with a very substantial side effect which your inventor shares with the group, which can enhance the RP as it creates an IC way of asking permission for the deployment, and can introduce a new element into the RP. If the group doesn’t want it, they simply deny it on the weight of the side effect, a sensible solution.
For example “Oh yes, I have just the thing here, the innoculatron 5000, guaranteed to cleanse any disease from the body in a two hour period! I would have to add though- I haven’t been able to make it successfully operate without it causing severe numbness and temporary aphasia to the patient during the healing process. It does tend to clear up in a few hours though! What do you think?”
