1 comments about GURPS Steampunk Miniatures Set 1.

1. Quick delivery. Excellent condition and quality product. Can't wait to get out the paints and get to work.

2 comments about GURPS Traveller: Starships.

1. I have mixed feelings about this book after reading it.

   At the bare minimum, I wanted Starships to expand on the various tech levels represented in the universe and I am pleased to report that the detail desired in the vehicle design was delivered. Still the rules aren't too bogged down, so designing new ships isn't going to overwhelm, like say designing a scratch vehicle from GURPS Vehicles.

   And as expected with each GURPS Traveller installment, there are a couple more ships outlined and detailed, though the emphasis in Starships seemes to be Martial. But pleasantly detailed are some of the smaller vessels, the Boat, Pinnace, and Shuttles, which would be encountered quite often. The evolution of the top designs is laid out with enough flavor text to please the avid Traveller fan.

   I have only two disappointments with Starships;

   First, some of the assumptions with the Combat rules seem a bit silly, expecially when it comes to guided missiles. This may indeed be an attempt to "balance" combat and make encounters more survivable, but I found most of the new assumptions to be severely limiting and "unrealistic?" Either way the beauty of options are that they are just that; Options!

   Lastly, the author did a terrific job giving the impression that life on a Starship is filled with boredom and tedium. So much routine and ordinary that rolling skill checks are largely unnecessary. This is to be contrasted with GURPS Starports, where a fairly routine and mundane subject was brought to vibrant and unexpected life. Starports suddenly became interesting! Unfortunately, the authors chose to take a romantic subject (starships) and emphasis a boring existence. In short, I expected something more rewarding and was disappointed with the results.

   Now don't get me wrong, you WILL know everything you need to live on a Starship, and the rolls of everyone on board. Just to get too excited with the prospects.

   Still, this is a four star product and if you want the different tech levels for vehicle construction, get this book. In addition there are a LOT more components added to starship design which can add a great deal of flavor to your campaign.




2. This book is helpful in that it not only gives stats for various ships, but also expanded rules for starship design and combat. What I find most interesting, however, are the parts where day to day operation of starships is described.

1 comments about GURPS Mecha: Mighty Battlesuits and Anime Fighting Machines (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System).

1. GURPS is well known for its flexible and seemingly limitless possibilities for plots and adventures. GURPS Mecha is a refreshing alternative to the standard "party in a dungeon fighting monsters" RPG setting. If you're a fan of Starship Troopers, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, or such anime as Robotech, Mobile Suit Gundam, or Neon Genesis Evanglion, you will enjoy this genre of play. Be battlesuit-wearing warriors or control 200,000 pound mechs to crush your enemies. If you are a beginner, this book is easy to understand and takes you through the process of constructing your mechs and characters step by step. If you are a more advanced player, it shouldn't take you long to pick up the pace. The book covers some very innovative and fascinating character backgrounds, plot ideas, and extras (read the Bonded Mecha advantage and you will see what I mean). The potential for roleplay is great as well. You can play your characters in a classic anime style, or in a dramatic Hollywood manner. Okay, here's the bad part. First of all, you need to have the GURPS Basic Set. You knew that, right? Well, to fully enjoy your roleplaying experience I recommend getting GURPS Compendium I, GURPS Vehicles, and GURPS Ultra Tech/Ultra Tech 2. GURPS Compendium I allows for characters more suited for your campaign, and it is practically a staple for GURPS campaigns (you may have it already). GURPS Vehicles lets you have more elaborate Mecha designs, and GURPS Ultra Tech gives you a large variety of weaponry and technology. Basically, if you are looking for a refreshing change of pace in you role playing experience, I recommend picking up GURPS Mecha.

1 comments about GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 1 : Zhodani, Vargr and Other Races of the Spinward Marches (GURPS Traveller).

1. David Pulver is a marvellous and prolific author, a true credit to the game industry. It therefore comes as no surprise that Alien Races 1 lives up to his usual high standards of excellence. The Zhodani and Vargr are put under the microscope in this tome, examined carefully with a wealth of detail that goes far beyond the original Alien Modules. Homo Zhdotlas is scrutinized in all its psionic glory... the perfect society, carefully regulated by the helping hand of the Thought Police is examined in careful, and one could say objective detail. Utopian or sinister? Its written so well you'll be hard put to decide. The enigmatic, chaotic Vargr are also treated well. Here Pulver carefully explains the personal charisma and pack mentality of the 'Wolves of Space', giving a thorough and very believable overview of why the Vargr "rule" the sprawling, disorganized extents with a patchwork of independent governments, constantly rising and falling. Three other minor races are presented, including the Sheol and Clotho ... and a bonus section on psionics, firming up the Psi rules in GURPS Traveller, rounds off this book.

   What can I say? This is an excellent addition to the GURPS Traveller legacy, and an essential aid to any GM running a game in the Spinward Marches. 5 stars, no question.

5 comments about GURPS Vehicles: From Chariots to Cybertanks...and Beyond! (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System).

1. This book is very thorough, very detailed, and massive overkill for any rational use. I just designed my first vehicle with it, and it took me most of a hour and I'm pretty sure I have missed a lot of the rules.

   For example: You are going through the vehicle design checklist, and you come to the step where you have to buy a powerplant (page 36). They are rated in KW of energy. How many KW do you need? It doesn't say. Searching the book, I find a formula to estimate in a sidebar on page 22, but the heading claims it is "optional" so I assume there is some other rule somewhere else. Page 61 has tables to calculate "Thrust factor" and "power factor," but does not explain why you would want to know these numbers.

   If you enjoy idling away the hours designing vehicles, this book is probably for you. If you want to quickly design some vehicles for a campaign, you are going to be frustrated.




2. I love complex, realistic systems. I wouldn't dare use this book in a real rpg campaign unless the vehicle had a role as important as the mellenium falcon in star wars or the enterprise in star trek. But for that key vehicle or starship (when used with GURPs Space), this books rocks. It gives you as much as realism as possible with the physics stuff washed down to 7th-9th grade math level (Full arithmitic with exponents, simple geometry, basic algebraic equations)



3. Most roleplayers fall into one of two categories: The ones that prefer the dynamics of the game (whether the action, the roleplaying or the puzzlesolving) and the tinkerers that spend hours reading and contemplating RPG modules in the way some sane people read prose.

   This module is not for the roleplayers of the first category. Building your first vehicles takes a looong time. But after a while you realize that these incredibly well-thought through rules are to a very high degree compatible with other GURPS rules such as those found in Ultra-tech and Robots, and you realize you can actually build that piece of equipment you need for the next scenario (whether you're a GM or player) with a minimum of fuzz.

   If you like this kind of RPG engineering, this is probably the module for you. Guaranteed hours of fun and entertainment.




4. This is by far the worst GURPS book I've ever seen. The most obvious problem is that the book isn't just poorly organized- it's not organized at all. It begins with what I initially assumed was an overview and introduction to the (rather complex) design process, making occasional references to formulae but describing most steps in only general terms. Well, it turns out that this is the *only* place that the entire process is documented, and (despite leaving many complex steps completely undefined, without even a chapter reference) it is the only place in the book that some important formulae appear (if you missed the paragraph on access spaces, you'll never read another word about the fact that all your numbers are now off by a factor of two or more). If you want to design a vehicle, the only way to get it right is to read the entire book from cover to cover and hope you remember it all.

   Even more fundamental than the book's lack of organization is the utter ludicrousy of the design process itself. The "simple step-by-step process" is set up in about the most awkward way imaginable: first pick everything you want in the vehicle, then decide what kind of body you want the vehicle to have, then add more components, then determine structural characteristics, then layer on armor, then compute statistics. This system is completely backwards for players who wish to design vehicles for a particular purpose. i.e. Suppose you want to build a plane which can travel at mach 2. The first thing you have to do is decide how powerful an engine you want. How on earth are you supposed to know that *first*? Working backwards through the dozens of equations from drag to surface area to volume (which of course is largely determined by engine size itself) is nearly impossible; any attempt at building a vehicle with even vague performance parameters will take several attempts and some very good guesswork.

   Most disappointing of all, however, is the fact that even with the ridiculous detail and complexity required to build a vehicle, the performance characteristics are computed using absurd and arbitrary rules with no relation to reality, leading one to wonder what the point of all that trouble really was. Multihull sailboats are defined as being much heavier and having much less usable space per volume than monohulls (opposite of reality), aeordynamics have no affect at all on the handling of high speed cars or fuel efficiency, and little effect on speed (a cardboard box with a hefty engine can outperform a formula one car), a plane's vertical speed is completely independent of its weight (if it can fly at all it can climb as steeply as you like), and jet engines take twice as much space if installed in an aircraft's body as if they were installed in wing-mounted pods (again that sneaky access space rule). There is no uniformity between any two rules and everything is a special case; one wonders if this can actually be termed a "system" at all, or if it's really just a collection of ad hoc solutions to one-time problems. Any GM who wants to use this book will have to make so many changes just to make it playable that he might as well design his own rules; this ruleset's only links to reality are the area=volume^(2/3), top speed=(thrust/surface area)^1/2 formulae available from any physics book.

   The only section of the book which seems at all useful is the 3-page note on advanced maneuvering for vehicles (which of course relies on just a single simple statistic almost entirely independent of the painstakingly complex design of the vehicle); this might be appropriate for a magazine article but is hardly the basis for a sourcebook.

   All in all, any gaming group is much better off agreeing on their own vehicle rules than wasting time trying to understand and then repair this brain-damaged system.




5. This is more of a GM style book there are several factors in this that the average player character would not understand or be able to use properly, having your charicter drive a car player, gm rolling to see if the car survives the player driving it plus. People seem to care about if it is fast or pretty. but actual design of a vehicle require a bit of planning. If you buy this buuk you will need to take plenty of notes while you are designing it will make it easieer to use, and if you are like me a calculator to check your math. And You thought that you would never use algebra.

   Carl

2 comments about GURPS Fantasy Folk (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System).

1. This excellent source books provides a way to create fantasy races and provides some very good examples using well-chosen fantasy races. People who have read the Fantasy Trip, Tunnels and Trolls and D&D rpgs will recognise and welcome these architypal races presented in a fresh and interesting style.



2. If you are planning any sort of Fantasy based game for GURPS, this book is a must. Not only does it present the classic races of elves, dwarves, gnomes, orc, halflings, and various others, but also gives them character more so than any other game I have found. Each race is given at least 2 to 3 pages of text, and that doesnt include the game mechanics. Also, because of the GURPS system, it is easy to modify and change the existing races for your personal games.
   
   Also, their is a section on creating your own races for your game, which proves invaluable to any game master wanting to put in his own ideas. This is an award winning book, and a quick look through its pages will show you why.

5 comments about GURPS Traveller: Science Fiction Adventure in the Far Future (GURPS Traveller).

1. Well...as an avid Traveller player, I was very interested inseeing what SJG could do to Traveller. I approached buying the gamewith great apprehension. But, in the end I was throughly satisified.Sure, I beef with the GURPS mechanics, but there is more than enough background info which one can overcome that by possessing another rulebook. If you are a Traveller collector, which owns everything that GDW ever produced for the game...then this game is not for you (you will find too much repetition). But, if you are like most of us with a decent Traveller collection. You will find happy to see everything under one roof, so to speak. In the meantime, lets hope T5 is everything we want!



2. As a big fan of Traveller, I was eager to see how Loren Wiseman would adapt the game for GURPS. While I suppose GURPS Traveller is a necessary book to introduce Traveller to GURPS, the book certainly isn't very meaty and doesn't have much in it that you couldn't just glean from purchasing the GURPS main rulebook. The character archtypes are a must but beyond that, they could have distributed the material among GURPS other sourcebooks. I would have rather scene a more detailed history section, akin to those I've come to expect from my Traveller products.



3. to set up a new campaigne or universe. I've been away from gaming for about 15 years and have passed on all my old Traveller stuff. Never having used Gurps before, I thought that the Traveller book would be enough to get going again. I figured it would contain the basic info as found in the first three original Traveller books. Wrong! There's no real info on world creation or space combat or even charactar creation. That's all covered in other GURPS books. By the time I get all the books I think I'll need, I'll be in for $100 or more. The GURPS system takes the narrow yet deep info approach to gaming. Travellar is a good background book if you're already a GURPS player but you need other books if you're new to this. It looks like I'll be getting "Traveller Scouts: First In" for world building and "GURPS Space" for space combat as well as "GURPS Basic Set" and "Compendium II" (charactar creation) . The good thing is that SJGames (publisher of GURPS) has a free GURPS Lite pdf file you can download that gives the basics of GURPS roleplaying. This may let me put off picking up the Basic Set for a while.



4. I'm a twenty year traveller veteran - I cut my teeth on classic Traveller, played MegaTraveller so much I probably could have won the rebellion single-handedly ;-) - and enjoyed wandering around the ruins of the Third Imperium, in Traveller : The New Era.

   ...Let me say straight out that this is a *great* addition to that legacy. Loren Wiseman has done a fantastic job of presenting a background rich in detail that will be accessible to newbies and ancient grognards alike. Set in an "alternate universe" in 1120, where the Imperium never fell, the supplement lovingly brings the feel of classic traveller to the GURPS system.

   The book is packed with library data, essays on the Imperium and its worlds, character templates, weapons, equipment - and the second edition even includes a modular starship design system to ease the pain associated with the enormous detail in GURPS vehicles.

   So without further ado - I bequeath this supplement ...5 stars. Its well written, beautifully presented and just a joy to own. If you are inquistive about Traveller this is a great book to start with. If you are vaguely serious about Traveller this is a purhase that you just can't do without.




5. Wow! Finally got round to playing Traveller with the GURPS system last night and I was amazed at what a good fit they make. The attention to detail in GURPS (and in particular combat) really works well with Traveller. The weapons and armour are beautifully realized and the character generation system gives a level of detail and flexibility that sits well with the depth of the Traveller universe. My worry that we would get bogged down in details was groundless. Though the GURPS rules cover pretty much everything, they don't get in the way. And another thing, how nice, how Traveller, to only be using six sided dice!

3 comments about GURPS Space.

1. This book does wonders for a far future GURPS campaign. The world and ship generation techniques are excellent. Lots of cool gadgets too. The weak point of Space is it's lack of detail on creating alien races. But if it were more detailed they wouldn't have needed to make GURPS Aliens right?



2. Ahem ...

   This is one of the best roleplaying books I have ever read and certainly among the best for GURPS. If you want to create a pace-based science fiction campaign, this is the book for you whether you play GURPS or not. Everything is in here: spaceship design, alien races, solar systems, planetary governments ... all organised in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion. If something seems to techy to you - leave it out! If you want hard sci-fi with colony ships and no aliens, GURPS can oblige. If you prefer Flash Gordon to Carl Sagan, GURPS has the reactionless thrusters (scientifically divided into slow and fast) primed and ready for take off. If you are desperate for a REAL hard sci-fi setting, then GURPS Traveller maybe a better purchase but if you're itching to create your own strange new worlds, this is the book.

   Generic in the best possible sense.




3. GURPS Space is one of the many competent supplements for Steve Jackson's Generic Universal Role Playing system.
   
   Or, handy when you want to go haring around in spaceships and that sort of fun stuff. Mostly we used it as an adjunct to the other games we were playing at the time, but worth a look.

No comments about GURPS Low-Tech.

1 comments about GURPS Vampire Companion: The Masquerade (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System).

1. This expansion brings in the 4 independent clans the Sabbat with their two clans and all the antitribus and a few bloodlines (daughters of cacophony, salubri and a decaying nosferatu like one) with conversions for high level powers new clan powers and their merits and flaws. Very useful for turning the full VTM world into gurps or for adding stuff to a normal gurps world.