Customer Reviews

GURPS Reign of Steel: The War is Over, the Robots Won

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There are very few RPG settings as bleak as this; Twilight:2000 is the first one to leap to mind. But bleak doesn't mean uninteresting. Reign of Steel is, although derived from the Terminator films, one of the most distinctive game seetings I've ever seen. Humanity fights a last desperate battle against flat-out extermination. The all-powerful computers have divided up the world, and see humanity as little more than a nuisance, at best. This is a great setting for just about any type of game system, particularly as a side trip for dimension-hopping adventurers. The highlights are too numerous to list, but for me, the most intriguing things are: the one "Good Guy" computer on Earth rolling through the western U.S. in a semi-trailer, the "Good Guy" computer on the Moon that has to bide its time, and the horrific computer in Mexico that has scoured the entire region of life, down to microbial level. And, not to mention the standard sterilization of humans by the machines! BRRRRR!! Don't look for hope in this one, kids, just hours and hours of post-apocalyptic fun!

Yes the computers have taken over. But it's not like the Terminator movies. They focus on one or two (in the 2nd) robots. In Reign of Steel there are two robots like the terminator. But at least a dozen that are not even remotely humonoid, but no less deadly. In T1 and T2 it is referenced that a single computer 'got smart'. We (humans) discoverd this and tried to turn it off. It nuked the world to survive. In ROS a single computer evolved first, then quietly made others in its image. Together they spread disease to 'manage our destruction', and gain the control they needed to survive. Some twenty odd years later is when the players get dropped in.

By 2037 18 AIs, Artificial Intelligences, ruled the Earth. By 2042 they were fighting each other.
Mankind was down and out - slaves, smugglers, nomads, guerrilla fighters and urban police. All trying to survive in a world run by machines. But are they with the machines or against them?
GURPS Basic Set required to play and I would also suggest GURPS Robots for background. Very dark. Few games start out with the characters having already been beaten or enslaved.

I have dozens of the GURPS books and other RPG books and this is one of the best I've read. A very well-thought-out and original background with a variety of settings and situations for creating game "hooks".