The Grand Cluster , the setting for Called from Exile, hosted a wide variety of technology: almost the entirety of the ultra-tech book exists in there somewhere. But I didn't want characters to be using all of it, because the point was to have lots of homages to various science fiction settings next to each other and interact with each other, and I wanted the PC's to feel that.
So the base TL was 10, but access to most technology had to be purchased with "technology points". These didn't raise player's Tech Level so much as control what genre of science fiction they could buy gear from. I let them choose a ranged weapon class for free (lasers is a class, slug throwers is another, force beams is another), as well as a specifying what their typical comms/computer interface looked like. For most other PC-style gear, they needed to select options with technology points. This was a player decision, but it was about their home culture as much as it was about them.
