There are four general types of new tech you can introduce into a game campaign: refinements, fillers, breakthroughs, and artifacts.

Refinements:

A refinement is a minor improvement to already existing equipment. Usually a refinement will involve making one general class of equipment (scanners, rifles, vacc suits, etc.) cheaper, lighter, smaller, easier to use, more powerful, more efficient, or a combination of such. A new laser pistol may have a hundred more meters of effective range than older models or holographic projectors may go from clunky cabinet-sized units to pocket portables.

Refinements will have only a minor impact on your game world. They will rarely affect society as a whole, but may greatly affect small portions of it (holographic crystals, for example, may replace optical disks as the primary data storage medium, causing disk manufacturers to go out of business).

Refinements should be as common as they are in the real world, with new models coming out every year or so. The referee should plan out refinements in each field several years ahead of time, in order to anticipate what affect they will have on the campaign. For example, in one year, an advance in light focusing allows laser rifles to propagate a more intense beam, resulting in greater penetration for that weapon class. However, this new element makes the weapon bulkier, heavier, and increases the price by 50%.

In the next year, aggressive miniaturization reduces the price and bulk of the new rifles back to standard. The year after, the focusing element becomes modular, and can be added onto old models for a slight fee. During the fourth year, the advancement becomes small enough to be added to laser pistols.

Fillers:

Because of limited space, most science fiction games tend to focus on only certain fields of technology while breezing over or completely ignoring others. The technical fields that receive the most attention in RPGs include weapons, cybernetics, vehicles, space travel, sensors, computers, exploration equipment and robotics.

This leaves only sparse room for such fields as medicine, genetics, chemistry, forensics, materials science, aquatic equipment, construction tools, rescue equipment and entertainment. Filler technology is when the referee expands on these neglected fields on his own, "filling in" what he feels is missing on the game's equipment list.

Creating filler technology often requires a lot of forethought on the part of the referee, but can generally be handled in two ways: transferring technology from listed equipment to new fields, and extrapolating from clues in the game's background about these fields.

An example of the former technique involves translating the proliferation of laser weapons technology in the Traveller rules to mean that things like laser scalpels, laser torches, and laser cigarette lighters are also common. In Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., robots are rarely mentioned, but how hard could it be to extrapolate robot parts from the game's truckload of cybernetics and computer equipment? An independently powered cyberhand, for example, with the fingers reconfigured and sensors attached would make a nifty chassis for a small recon robot.

Another example: a brief mention in the old MegaTraveller rules of a plastic knife that could be melted into a blob and later reformed with just a few sharp raps led to the introduction of a materials science "filler" in my TravelLer campaign, morph plastic.

Morph plastic is a material that can be deformed and, with an electric catalyst, change back to its original form. Contracting rings of morph plastic can fell trees, while expanding coils of morph plastic can pry apart barriers, and so on. The possibilities are endless.

Further examples of filler technology are listed below.

Medicine:
Spray-on bandages that can cover any size wound.
Sleep-inducing electronic headbands that eliminate the need for chemical anesthetics.
Drugs that temporarily induce total recall.

Genetics:
Guard dogs engineered to be as smart as chimpanzees.
Artificial microorganisms that can "age" wine and other spirits in days, not years. Used to accelerate the production of alcohol fuels.

Chemistry
Anti-polymer compounds that can dissolve most plastics.
spray-on, foaming plastique explosives.

Forensics:
Devices that can "read" voice prints from the minute ripples left in wall paint from sounds with. in a closed room.
Portable DNA analyzers.

Materials Science:
Thermal superconductors. Can be used as an anti-laser armor sheath, as the material will evenly distribute the heat energy of a laser over its entire surface area.

Breakthroughs:

Breakthroughs are the most important and far-ranging innovations you can bring into a campaign. By their very nature, breakthroughs will always have a major, significant impact on your campaign. This is why breakthroughs are introduced only very rarely, if at all, in an ongoing campaign.

Breakthroughs are major leaps forward in knowledge, often taking wildly tangential directions from established science. They are the initial inventions that spawn entire new fields of technology. Fire, the wheel, gunpowder, nuclear weapons, and computers are all breakthroughs that have had a profound effect on human civilization. You must realize that, after the any breakthrough is introduced, nothing in your campaign will ever be quite the same again.

The mere existence of this new technology will profoundly affect your PCs' lives.

The most common breakthroughs in science fiction games include faster than light (FTL) drives, FTL communication, fusion power, cybernetics, anti-gravity, force fields and artificial intelligence. Depending on the game you play, your campaign will already have some of these breakthroughs already in place as part of the game's background. Cyberpunk 2.0. has only one (cybernetics), 2300 AD has three (cybernetics, FTL drives and fusion power) and Star Trek has them all. The designers of your game have probably included or excluded these breakthroughs for the good reasons of game balance and style. Therefore, introducing breakthroughs in these fields is not recommended unless you want to change the course of your campaign to a radical new direction.

Weapons technology is also a dangerous field to introduce breakthroughs, Radically new weapons will usually be so overwhelming that they will completely dominate all combat in the game. Imagine battlemechs armed with Star Trek- style phasers or Reformation Coalition starships armed with 2300 AD FTL missiles.

All that said, breakthroughs can provide wonderful opportunities to jump-start a stalled campaign. Charted Space might be just the same old engine exhaust to your PCs, but what if someone discovered a way to create a stargate to the center of the galaxy?

Your PCs may puke if they fight one more battle in the Inner Sphere, but what if genetic engineering found a way to produce giant monsters that could give mechs a good run for their money?

Other breakthrough examples are listed below.

Gravity Pulse Munitions.

In universes that allow artificial gravity (Traveller, Star Trek), it should be possible to "pulse" specially-designed grav generators to produce brief, super-intense gravity fields (30 Gs or more) that would do incredible structural and bodily damage. As gravity penetrates even force fields, there would be no practical defense except stasis fields (see below).

Stasis Fields.

These create a field that essentially "bottles" its contents outside of time, freezing anything within in the moment the field was created. Nothing, save for a singularity or the heart of a star, can penetrate the field until it naturally decays. The field may last for seconds, millions of years, or may outlast the heat-death of the universe.

Unbelievium.

This has a number of different aliases: Monadium, Duralloy, Scrith, Adamantium. Basically, it is a nigh- indestructible material that cannot be destroyed, melted, deformed, or even scratched except from a hideous amount of punishment (several megatons of nuclear explosives) or very special circumstances (contact with anti-matter).

Uplift.

This is the genetic engineering of non-sentient species, like dogs and chimpanzees, into intelligent, technologically capable races. The technical, social and theological ramifications of such a capability are mind staggering, and will profoundly affect the societies that are capable of it.

Artifacts

Artifacts are pieces of equipment created by sources far advanced and usually far removed from your campaign's main civilizations. Usually they are products of long-vanished or equally out- oftouch alien races, like the Ancients in Traveller. Sometimes, they may be products of one-of-a-kind scientific accidents, like Captain America's shield in Marvel Super Heroes.

Artifacts are always very rare, non- reproducible, and greatly coveted. The party should only encounter a handful at most over the course of a campaign. Because they are created by science far removed from that of man, the normal restrictions that apply to the game's other technology can be ignored when creating artifacts, Feel free to have what they do appear to be miraculous and magical.

Each artifact should have its own unique character. One artifact's powers and look should not overlap another's, except perhaps to show that they came from the same exotic source (they may fit only three-fingered hands, for example). They should require much experimentation and examination before their true function is discovered.

All artifacts should have limits built into them, to avoid destroying game balance. That disintegrator you had the party find in those ruins will quickly wear out its welcome if it has unlimited charges.

Some artifact examples:

Unbelievium Staff.

This is a two-meter long quarterstaff that is mundane in every way except that it is indestructible.

Impossible Circlet

A small, finger-sized ring whose circumference is exactly equal to three times its diameter, no matter how it is measured. The holder of the ring may shunt objects within 100 meters into a small pocket dimension for storage.

Up to 1000 kg at a time may be so stored, and it needs to recharge for 1D6 hours after each use. Looking through the center of the ring has strange effects on a human's mind, and may require a sanity check or such to keep that person from going temporarily insane. Anything pushed through the center of the ring disappears forever, including fingers.

Holopen.

This thin, 10 cm metal stick will leave trails of glowing light in the air that lasts 2d6 hours. Messages can be written anywhere: on a wall, on a watery surface, or floating in the middle of a hallway.

New and Improved Going Beyond Your Game's Given Technology

Introduction and Basic Principles
Innovation Types
Sources for Ideas and Using Innovations