GURPS Alternate Earths (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System) [Paperback]

Kenneth Hite (Author), Craig Neumeier (Author), Michael S. Schiffer (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Steve Jackson Games (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556343183
• ISBN-13: 978-1556343186
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Winner from Mr. Hite, June 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: GURPS Alternate Earths (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System) (Paperback)

This guy must do nothing but read and write. I'm not even sure he takes time to eat. He knows more and more obscure facts about the history of our planet than anyone I've ever met.

Whatever the case, though, I'm grateful, because he's come up with some pretty terrific rpg sourcebooks. This is one of them.

This book offers six alternate Earths, each an imagined world in which something is different from the world we know. Some are set in a past in which something is different; others in a present in which something in the past went a different way.

Such settings make for great fiction--and for great adventures. It's not hard to come up with ideas for such settings, but it is nice when someone's taken the trouble to do the development work for you. A modern Confederate America, an ancient Roman campaign in the New World. Wonderful!

The book can also help you design your own alternate earths by example.

This book is definitely worth checking out if you're looking for a new and different setting for your campaign. If you're done with high fantasy, but you still want magic; if you like metropolises but long for a radically different social structer; if you have any interest in things NOT as they are, then this book's for you.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for gamers..., January 17, 2002

By 

Chris B "zerocard13" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: GURPS Alternate Earths (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System) (Paperback)

It doesn't matter if you have no intention of ever role playing or if you have no idea what GURPS is about, this is a fascinating book for anyone who, like me, wants to see more of an alternate history than the point of divergence and a sporadic description of the world spread out across the course of a book.

This book holds the background information for six alternate histories, each at different points in their timelines. In each section you'll find maps, histories and descriptions for each of the major powers involved in that world along with sidebars that cover some small details of those worlds (rock & roll in the Confederate States of America? It's in there. How to tour in Gernsback? Yep). These are not stories, these are the actual histories involved.

If you're not interested in the gaming aspect, then the tables and charts referring to character types and the likes will be of minor interest, but don't let that stop you.

This is a rare time when I wish that Steve Jackson Games had a fiction line to explore each of these scenarios...

4.0 out of 5 stars Dimension Hopping in 6 easy lessons, October 28, 2002

By 

Bruce Gray "gurpsgm" (Shenandoah Valley, VA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: GURPS Alternate Earths (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System) (Paperback)

GURPS Alternate Earths may be made to order for a dimension hopping campaign such as GURPS Time Travel, but I believe it also gives gamers an opportunity to see how our own world "might have been" if just one event in history was changed. And it provides opportunities to set whole adventures, and even whole campaigns in those worlds.

The six different "Earths" in this book are almost textbook examples of the now popular "What If" line of SF stories. The first world, "Dixie", gives us a good idea as to what might have happened if the South had won the American Civil War. It covers the time from secession to the time when the Confederate States of America became a superpower. The second world, "Reich 5" give us a chilling look at the world under Nazi rule and the resistance effort still under way years later. The third world "Rome Aeterna", assumes the Roman empire never fell. The fourth world, "Shikaku-Mon", assumes the ancient Japanese Empire conquered the world. The fifth world, "Ezcalli", has details for a strange Earth where the might of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans is unsurpassed. The sixth and final world is the strangest of all. "Gernsback" starts with a simple postulation: what if Nikolai Tesla's inventions worked and were used by someone with the financial genius of Morgan? Flying cars and broadcast power are common.

There are ideas for adventures, characters, and even whole campaigns for each of the worlds, including several paragraphs about even stranger worlds that diverged from these six. These "reality seeds" give creative GM's even more alternate worlds to explore.

People wishing to use books like Harry Turtledove's wonderful alternate earths books need look no further for ideas of how to recreate his books for a strange parallel world campaign. Highly recommended for GURPS GM's and recommended even to SF fans wanting to explore the ramifications of what might happen if...