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58 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good stuff!, January 8, 2005
This review is from: GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns (4th Edition) (Hardcover)
Steve Jackson Games split the 4th edition Basic manual into two books, the Characters book and the Campaign book. Characters provides everything you need to know about creating a character while Campaigns provides the information needed to run a campaign. I didn't like splitting the book when I first heard about the concept but I have to admit that it makes sense now that I've read both books. This book is an extremely ambitious undertaking, even bigger than Characters, and putting the two together would have made the system too big, expensive, and difficult to easily digest.
The Campaigns book is probably the single best rules editing job I've ever seen. The best example is probably the evolution of the combat system. GURPS 3rd edition combat *sprawled*, the GM had to pick and choose which of the two sets of combat rules and which of the optional rules he wanted to use. Then he'd frequently regret his choices when he wanted something to happen that required rules he hadn't chosen to use. As a result, when I GM'd I used a fairly simple hybrid of GURPS, D&D, and Rolemaster rules (simpler than they sound) that got to the intent of the rules but was adaptable enough to do what I wanted. I tried using the GURPS combat rules several times but just couldn't quite make them work.
Combat now works beautifully. Somebody over at SJ Games took that massive mishmash of rules and beat it into a rules set that is breathtakingly simple but does everything required. I recommend buying the book for the combat system alone but that's not all! Believe it or not, everything is like the combat system!
Folks, this is the most streamlined set of rules I've seen since AD&D 1.0 and it covers everything in greater detail and realism than AD&D ever did. There are frequent examples that clarify the fine points. The artwork is frequent, interesting, and in color. The book is extremely well organized and has a good (but not great) index and the production quality is WAY higher than you get in all those d20 books.
In short, this is a remarkable evolution in the GURPS system and I STRONGLY recommend this book for frustrated GM's of all varieties. There's sure to be a little something here for everybody if you only look for it.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AWESOME...but you must be creative, September 16, 2007
This review is from: GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns (4th Edition) (Hardcover)
GURPS is one of the most, truly, generic systems around... and that's no suprise since it's the first. In this fourth edition, SJ games brings to bear their 20+ years of experience with this system and delivers an excellent addition to the GURPS line. The system is fully able to be employed in any genre from fantasy, science-fiction or horror and it flexible enough for even the most creative of gamers. If it has any weaknesses they would be:
1. too many options: some gamers might be overwhelmed by the number of options available. Keep in mind that the game can be as simple or as complex as you like.
2. all of the "flavor" is on you: GURPS (since it is generic...duh) is not set up to convey flavor through the design of its character sheets, the naming of abilities or the graphics in the books. Flavor is ALL up to the game-mast
... on the otherhand, perhaps those are strengths.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
COMPLETE your GURPS Book 2 of a the classic Basic GURPS set, April 24, 2006
This review is from: GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns (4th Edition) (Hardcover)
This book 2 of the GURPS basic set (4TH EDITION) The last edition was a single book of 256 pages plus instant characters section, but so much material was add to the new edition it would have weighed in at a total of 576 pages, while suitable for stoping bullets, a but unwieldy for gameplay, so Steve Jackson games have divided everything a player has to have is in book one, basic system rules and everything for character creation, just enough combat to get a player into the game. The rest of combat is this book. This book goes into detail for what a GameMaster needs to know about physical feats and combat (in greater detail). It covers vehicles and technology. It includes stats for animals and some monsters, along with a guide for world design and Game Mastering itself. "Tool kit chapters let the GM make artifacts, character abilities, and entire game worlds (in fact an infinity of worlds, alternate, parallel, cross-genre, etc.) Don't get me wrong this is just for GMs. Players who enjoy detail and the creative side of the game will find this book inspiration for beginning their own campaigns. My point is it's not required, but Basic Set GURPS: Characters and Campaigns are designed to work together, pages and chapters are consecutively numbered and the index covers both books and repeated in both. SJ games has made the system easy to play, easy to learn and easy to get hooked. They have also made the new Basic Set easier to carry around. GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System and it is just that, it is the perfect for linking already existing d20 systems, creating cross-genre campaigns or making campaigns based on any book, movie, TV series or concept you or SJ Games can brainstorm (before the Wizards of the Coast edition we used GURPS to run Star Wars and Dr. Who campaigns).
www.sjgames.com/e23/ is an excellent resource for pre-generated PDS ranging from short adventures to whole sourcebooks. Like D&D, there is a considerable amount of GURPS material out there, either new and updated or old and out-of-print, anything you can imagine (Fantasy, the Prisoner, Horror, Swashbuckler, and loads of other supplements). The GURPS main web site is good too, www.sjgames.com/gurps/ most books and supplements hotlink from Amazon.
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