GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 4 [Paperback]

Loren Wiseman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2001

Aliens Everywhere!
Enough aliens to fill a cantina! GURPS Traveller Alien Races 4 brings 16 strange species to life. Compiled and edited by Loren Wiseman and Steve Jackson, this book features the creations of several favorite Traveller authors, including Phil Masters, David Pulver, and David Thomas.
Here you'll meet:
* The winged Ael Yael, nearly destroyed by greedy Humaniti, now finding their place in the galaxy.
* The bureaucratic Bwaps, faithful administrators through three Imperiums . . . but they have their own agenda, and few suspect how decisively they can act on their own.
* The huge Virushi, calm and nonviolent . . . until they're pushed too far.
* The newest species to be recognized as sentient, the aquatic Schalli. Will these brilliant, ambitious carnivores be our allies in a hundred years - or our rivals?
* And a dozen others!

Product Details

• Paperback: 1 pages
• Publisher: Steve Jackson Games (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556344333
• ISBN-13: 978-1556344336
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,229,854 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good, Solid Supplement for GURPS Traveller, December 17, 2011

By 

Rabid Hobbit (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 4 (Paperback)

This supplement is specific to the Traveller universe, but the data it contains could be easily adapted to any interstellar milieu. Since Traveller tends to be human-centric, it's not really essential to a Traveller campaign, although it's a decent supplement worth considering.

The book contains data on 16 intelligent races. The entries vary somewhat in content, but most entries provide information on the species' history, physiology, psychology, society, equipment, and a template for creating a character of the species in question (some but not all entries provide maps and data on homeworlds, government, language, trade practices, sample NPCs, etc).

The entries are sufficiently detailed to allow you to play a character, but at less than 10 pages per entry, there's not a lot of room to go into real depth. My biggest criticism would be that the alien races don't seem particularly alien... lizard people, octopus people, rhino people... almost all of them seem to be intelligent versions of terrestrial animals, albeit perhaps with a slight twist. Not much that struck me as truly alien.

The species detailed are:
Ael Yael (pterodactyls that hate megacorps)
Ahetaowa (psionic plants)
Bwaps (aka, Newts; lizard beaurcrats)
Evantha (flying lizards)
Girug'kagh (translators for the Centaurs)
Githiaskio (squid people)
Hhkar (dinosaur people)
Hlanssai (cat people)
J'aadje (they look kind of like ET to me, lol)
Jgd-Ll-Jagd (gas giant dwellers... one of the few really alien-seeming races)
J'sia (giant worms)
Schalli (dolphin people)
Shreikers (spider people)
Tezcat (they look a lot like goblins)
Valkyrie (tapeworms who control a host creature)
Virushi (rhinoceros people)

The bottom line: not a bad book, and worth having if you want to add more alien flavor to your campaign.