Customer Reviews

GURPS Infinite Worlds (GURPS 4th Edition Roleplaying)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

But the scale only goes up to 5 stars!

I bought this book because it is advertised as the new "official" setting for GURPS fourth edition. The first thing I need to do is dispel that myth. This book contains that information but it contains so much more that you have troubles believing that the authors managed to cram so much information between the two covers without it exploding.

This isn't really a "background" book that describes a single well thought out campaign, it is more of a "background generator" book that provides the basis of literally thousands of possible campaigns. The scope of this book is so gigantic that I have troubles believing that the authors managed to finish this project anywhere near on time.

Want cross-time adventuring? It's in there. Want alternate histories? Boy is it EVER in there! Want Time Travel adventures? Yep, it's there too. Don't want to have to worry about blowing up the space-time continuum? There's suggestions on how to suspend disbelief without damaging gameplay.

Say you want to create your own alternate history but don't want to deal with all the icky stuff of guns vs. swords. There's a very detailed chapter that assists you in filling out your vision before your players go mucking around and spoil things by emphasizing the one thing you didn't think of.

My head was spinning by the time I was 90% of the way through the book. There was too much to grasp. The scale of the author's efforts had caused my brain to go into meltdown and I couldn't figure out whether I wanted to:

1) Run screaming from the room (did I mention that there's lots of Cthulu-oriented stuff in here as well?)

2) Ignore the book for a year or so until I could clear my head enough to think logically

3) Introduce my players to a tiny spoonful of this fascinating universe (my head ached from the thought of even trying to work out all of the causality-related issues)

Then I hit Chapter 7 (Infinite Campaigns) and the authors addressed all of my concerns and self-doubts in a few clever paragraphs. They pointed out that the big thing that the GM needs to do first is figure out what he and the players want to do. This needs to be in alignment or the game won't work (trying to force a locked-room Agatha Christie mystery down the throats of a bunch of combat-oriented gamers is a recipe for disapointment for everybody). Once you've got that down, determining which rules to follow becomes much more obvious. My sole complaint is that the authors didn't introduce this concept much sooner in the book.

I haven't checked the index yet but I suspect that it isn't that good compared to the normal GURPS standard simply because it is 2 pages long and this book should have at least a 20 page index.

The artwork is up to the usual very high standard for GURPS 4th edition and the authors have included a small selection of example stories that help you envision the possibilities (my favorite is about a group of Roman Legionaires who are attacking Rommel's tanks in the desert. You think the struggle would be uneven until you realize that all of the Legionaires have genetic modifications). I wish there were more stories, those stories made a huge difference in my appreciation of GURPS Magic but there's so much here already I can easily understand why the authors made the decision they did.

This book will help a GM enhance just about any campaign you can think of; fantasy, modern, science fiction, supers, horror, etc.

In short, buy this book!

GURPS Infinite Worlds is truly one of the best tools created by GURPS. It comes with descriptions of dozens of worlds to use, and gives every thing you need to make new ones. Infinity, the corporation that travels through the worlds (and the books main route to exploration)is incredibly detailed, all the way down to day-to-day operations. It evens includes a handy guide for timetravel. And, of course, infinite enemies to run into are described, complete with templates to use. It deserves its award.

What I've always looked for in a GURPS book is a book that can be used in a variety of campaigns at a variety of TLs, equally useful in a fantasy campaign as in a futuretech campaign. Well, except for ones that warn you in the title, like Fantasy and Magic.

"Infinite Worlds" is a lot for a book to live up to. In defense of this book's critics, this book is finite in length, but the different ideas in here combined with the different ways you can implement them, lead to almost infinite variety. This book doesn't just cover time travel, but dimensional travel as well, including alternate histories, alternate worlds and just plain different places from our own.

With the tools in this book you can either play in the core campaign, invent your own brand-new campaign or create Sliders, Stargate, Lovecraft's maddening world-hopping, Starjammer or any combination in between.

In a pleasant departure from modern RPG standards, the book is almost completely devoid of copyediting errors and is of exceptionally high quality.