Gurps: Creatures of the Night [Paperback]

Scott Maykrantz (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Steve Jackson Games (March 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155634273X
• ISBN-13: 978-1556342738
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,914,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great little piece of work, August 31, 2005

By 

Paul O'Connor (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gurps: Creatures of the Night (Paperback)

Many people have complained that GURPS is too generic. That the GM and players have to work to breath life into a campaign. This wonderful little book addresses that issue quite nicely. The author has created 67 detailed nasty critters; their characteristics, their goals, their methods, and their environments. Then he provides 2-3 "adventure seeds" for each monster that the GM can flesh out quickly and easily to create adventures of varying degrees of complexity and challenge. These "adventure seeds" are extremely well done and GMs might want to buy the book just for all the adventuring ideas put forth there.

The creatures span all manner of time and space and could be used in a science fiction, fantasy, historical, or even a super-hero campaign with little effort.

My only complaint is that there's no way to index the creatures power against the strength of the party. It might well take some experience and possibly some GM intervention to avoid accidentally killing the party. There is an index in the back that provides a thumbnail sketch of all the critters but some sort of power rating would have made the book perfect instead of extremely good.

The descriptions are wonderfully macabre and the artwork does a great job of further setting the tone. There's no question that the author really enjoyed creating this book. There's still some lingering questions about the type of personality that would come up with some of these monsters, but that's not your problem. Just go out and buy the book and enjoy how it pumps up your campaign without any extra effort on your part.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The first time I wet my pants in years, November 10, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (Waco, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gurps: Creatures of the Night (Paperback)

I read this book at night and was so scared that I didn't want to get out of bed to pee. It brought back some wonderful memories of my childhood but cleaning it up was a pain. Also, my wife was pretty upset. I was almost successful blaming it on her but the center of the stain gave me away.

I have used a lot of these creatures in my space/fantasy/old west campaign. The creatures are very creative and the outstanding artwork alone is reason enough to buy this book.

I didn't really wet my bed. But I thought about it. Maybe tonight...

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The one RPG book I'd want on a desert island, September 1, 2010

By 

D. Norder (Knoxville, TN, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gurps: Creatures of the Night (Paperback)

I haven't played RPGs in years, and I never played GURPS when I did. But I absolutely loved this book. This wasn't just your typical, bland collection of stats to throw against player characters. Each of the many creatures detailed in this book had real ideas behind them, and they were written in such a way to encourage adapting them to whatever theme, style and setting you gamed in. A few ended up being real duds that just didn't seem like they could be taken seriously in any plot I'd ever run, but then I'm sure for someone else they would have been perfect. Several years back I sold off something like 95% of my RPG books, but I held onto this one, and it's the only one I still read through from time to time.