Incline Rusty sometimes reads and (not always) reviews various RPG books & magazines

[rusty_shackleford]

Today's book is GURPS SPACE 4E

This book contains almost nothing about GURPS, if you were looking for advice on how to run a space campaign in GURPS you'd be better off with other books such as GURPS Ultra-Tech, GURPS Spaceships, and GURPS Traveller books(nearly all 3E, trivially convertible to 4E.)
So, what is this book about then?

Well, it's actually a book about designing a speculative fiction campaign that focuses on space. Here is the cover except corrected:

Does that mean it's a bad book? Nope. It's fantastic, it's just not a GURPS book.
If you have any interest in designing a sci-fi space campaign for any RPG setting, or writing a book related to sci-fi space, or videogame, or whatever then you should read this book. It's 242 pages of advice, information, and good ideas.
It starts off with various types of space sci-fi subgenres, goes over campaign ideas, planets, biomes, spacecraft, engine types, types of interstellar travel, interstellar bodies, aliens, forms of interstellar government, and a lot more. It gives ideas on how to build up worlds, give them history, and such in one chapter, then in another chapter it goes even further into this as an 'advanced' topic. It gives a decent overview of various mathematics/physics needed for worldbuilding. Trading, law, etc., are also covered.
Aliens are covered just as in-depth as the worlds with lots of advice on how to properly present everything from totally-not-a-human-but-is to rubber forehead humans to unrecognizable alien life. It has an entire chapter dedicated to just how aliens would think.
And of course, it covers common character 'archetypes' seen in various sci-fi to give you ideas for creating interesting characters in your campaign.
It covers everything from hard science limited to our solar system to Star Wars/Dune-style science fantasy. It references all kinds of space sci-fi you can think of in book, movie, or video game format.

An example of the kind of content you can expect to find in the book:

As a GURPS book:
It contains nothing about GURPS!! Anytime there would be a good place for GURPS rules, it just refers you to another book. There's some GURPS-centric content near the end but man it's not enough, as a bonus it could be translated pretty easily to most other systems.

As a general purpose space sci-fi aid:
Can't recommend highly enough, probably the closest thing on the market to a "Space Fiction Builder's Bible"


Preview of next book:

Spoiler

 

[Silva]

Nice review, Rusty. I had a friend who was a Gurps aficionado. I remember leafing through Space in his room one day.

Tangent question: Does people still worldbuild these days? Honest question. I think the fall in popularity of Gurps is in part due to the more pickup and play nature of gaming these days. Even teenagers don't seem inclined to do the tinkering of systems/settings we did in our youths.

 

[Tyranicon]

Tangent question: Does people still worldbuild these days? Honest question. I think the fall in popularity of Gurps is in part due to the more pickup and play nature of gaming these days. Even teenagers don't seem inclined to do the tinkering of systems/settings we did in our youths.

Yeah people still like to worldbuild, if anything it's more popular than ever. Highly depends on your group and how much free time people have.

 

[MiguelSerranoFan]

Tangent question: Does people still worldbuild these days? Honest question. I think the fall in popularity of Gurps is in part due to the more pickup and play nature of gaming these days. Even teenagers don't seem inclined to do the tinkering of systems/settings we did in our youths.

Zoomers and Millenilols will regularly worldbuild elaborate settings all day while never actually sitting down at a table and playing a game.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

 

[JamesDixon]

Well to be fair he does read a lot of posts on the 'Dex and deals with a lot of morons.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Nice review, Rusty. I had a friend who was a Gurps aficionado. I remember leafing through Space in his room one day.

I'd have been pretty butthurt if I bought this thinking it was a GURPS book or well... related to GURPS whatsoever. I'm really not sure what they were going for here. Might have actually sold better as a non-GURPS book under SJ games label. I could remove probably 4-5 pages and most of the GURPS-related content would be gone.

Otherwise, really good book with solid research behind it on both the science and science-fiction aspects. Any aspiring sci-fi author, worldbuilder, or what have you would benefit from having it in their library.

 

[Silva]

Have you looked at Gurps Transhuman Space? It uses concepts from Space and Biotech (another good supplement), to create a very compelling hard sci-fi setting. I've played a couple games in it back in the day.

 

[HeroMarine]

I hear GURPS 4e is a major decline.

 

[Grunker]

I hear GURPS 4e is a major decline.

I thought only Alex was hipster enough to hold that opinion, lol

 

[HeroMarine]

I hear GURPS 4e is a major decline.

I thought only Alex was hipster enough to hold that opinion, lol

I've never played 4e (only a ton of 3e), but I read the new corebook and found it despising... This was many years ago, though, can't even remember why.

 

[Grunker]

It's basically 3e with a vastly better structure. Alex' argument was that it streamlined stuff (example being the removal of PD), but I find that opinion... edgy, at best (and pretty baffling that anyone would miss PD of all things). It did away with like one or two mechanics that served no purpose but to slow down play and polished the modular advantage-system to a mirror sheen. It's more universal and easier to make insanely complex characters than it ever has been. I find that my games are typically more complex, not less, than in 3E, yet vastly more manageable in moment-to-moment play.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Preview of next book:

Change of plans, that one will (hopefully) be next.

I started reading Player's Options: Skills & Powers for AD&D 2E because it had one thing I wanted to reference, and ended up going through the whole book. This is not something I had access to when I played AD&D, but it's something I wish I did have access to then. It has a lot of great ideas inside.

First chapter is a miss and a hit. It has some extra ability score generation rules which don't really add anything new. On the other hand, it ha a section for character backgrounds. Backgrounds are little vignettes for your character to add a bit of extra spice to their story and the book comes with 20 pre-written ones such as this

Having pre-written things like this you can easily pick up and modify a bit is nice and something modern RPG writers don't seem to understand in the least with its emphasis on telling players to think it up themselves. It's the entire reason people pay money for these books, you dinguses.

Second chapter introduces rules to split ability scores into subability scores. Each ability score is split in two by doubling your ability score and distributing the points to the two subscores, with them remaining within 4 points of each other. More customization is always something I like. Additionally it gives you a lot of ideas as to when and what situations to do subscore checks, and provides rules to help deal with anomalies of ability score checks being a bit too random.

Third chapter is more player races, including a lot of subraces. Deep Dwarves, Hill Dwarves, Mountain Dwarves. It's the dwarf emporium! I think this might actually be a somewhat rewrite/compilation of the Complete Book of X(race) books. But it also includes rules for playing as quite a few different monstrous races such as Lizardmen, Satyrs, Gnolls, etc.,

Fourth chapter is about classes. Something I didn't discuss yet is the idea of character points, essentially a point-buy system for AD&D. It's introduced in the first chapter and it's used heavily here. This chapter provides a bunch of "abilities" for classes that well, look a lot like 3E feats, don't they?

I especially like the restrictions, cool roleplaying stuff here.

Chapter Five: Character Kits. Oh, what a terrible, terrible title. Pop quiz: What's the first thing you think of upon reading "Character Kits"?
Nope, it's not about class kits at all. I'm not sure what I'd call these. Professions, perhaps? A "character kit" is a collection of social rank, requirements, starting equipment, wealth, benefits, and hindrances. Similar to what I said above about pre-written backgrounds, these things are great as a starting point. The book comes with 30 of them, ranging from Amazon to Jester to Swashbuckler. It also provides some rules and ideas for creating your own "character kit".

Chapter Six: Nonweapon Proficiences AKA "Skills before they were called skills." I believe these were first present in 1E's ... Oriental Adventures?
It also includes Traits, a similar concept except they are something innate rather than trained or learned.
This chapter will actually remind you much more of GURPS than D&D 3E though, down to the variable cost of each skill -- I'd assume this was determined by how useful said skill is. These are skills for basically everything. Ever wanted proficiency in juggling or cutting gems? I strongly prefer this over 3E's take on skills which feels much more like an illusion of choice than actual choice.

Chapter Seven: Weapon Proficiences. You've played that relatively unknown game called Baldur's Gate, right?
And once again, it outdoes 3E's design choices. There is no "Weapon proficiency: Gnomish Hooked Hammer". Each weapon is part of a tight group, and each tight group is part of a broad group.

Therefore, this is the Polearms broad group with 6 tight groups under it.
Purchasing proficiency with a tight group also gives the character familiarity with all weapons in the broad group. Familiarity is similar to, but weaker than, proficiency.

This chapter also contains some unrelated topics such as economics, what equipment to give monsters, and tables of equipment that should be available in a type of setting. The last one is pretty good:

It has tables for Stone Age, Bronze Age, "Roman Age", Dark Ages, Crusades, Renaissance, Middle East, and Oriental.

Chapter Eight is some new schools of magic for wizardry specializations. I don't particularly like this chapter. It doesn't introduce any new spells, simply provides existing spells in the spell lists for the new specializations. It's very short, about 4 pages long.

Chapter Nine: Psionics. Again, this is just a rehash of the Complete Psionics book, but it's specifically meant to expand the content available in that book and changes many of its rules. Getting the feeling that they might have been rushed or forced to add some content to pad the book out.
I've never run an AD&D(of any version) game using psionics, so I can't really comment on which implementation of psionics is better, and there are more than a couple of them for AD&D so I can't recommend for or against using this. Some of the power descriptions are cool though

There's about 60-70 powers listed. I'm not sure how many of them are new or reworked versions of preexisting ones, but it's a nice addition to the book anyways.
And that's the last chapter.

D&D used to provide a lot of cool supplement books with detailed optional rules. Now they rely entirely on fans to make that content, likely hoping new players never become aware of just how rich the content in the accessory books used to be.

Final rating?

A lot of cool ideas and optional stuff to add directly to your AD&D game or port to a different ruleset/RPG. Sub-ability scores help better define your character for roleplayers and are catnip for min-maxers. Nonweapon proficiences and traits greatly expand AD&D 2E with the main feature 3E has over 2E years before 3E existed.

 

[JamesDixon]

Player Options are hit or miss. I found the Powers & Skills to be a little overpowered in actual use.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

God bless Forrest Johnson wherever he may be.

Millennials & zoomzooms truly don't know what they missed. Check the 18 roll for over-sexed.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Invaluable historical data here

 

[HeroMarine]

God bless Forrest Johnson wherever he may be.

Millennials & zoomzooms truly don't know what they missed. Check the 18 roll for over-sexed.

Interesting. I'll incorporate some of this stuff in my system.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Guess I'll just post articles I think are worth reading here until I do another review. Consider these to be a 'Best of Later Space Gamer' posts, until I finish it and move onto a new magazine.

Nice article by David F. Nalle.
It appears he died in 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Nalle RIP

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Space Gamer issue #60

(page 9 was an ad if curious why it was skipped)

 

[rusty_shackleford]

29 years later, and it appears you can still order these.

https://darkelfdice.com/collections/gamescience-dice

Gamescience dice are back at Dark Elf Dice! Since 1974, Gamescience has produced dice of unsurpassed precision and accuracy from the highest quality materials. Founded by RPG legend, Lou Zocchi, the Gamescience company proudly makes its unique dice in the USA.

All Gamescience dice are precision-tested and razor-edged (with sharp points!) because they have not been tumbled or sanded. A mold-point blemish is to be expected on each die as a result of the casting process. To smooth down rough spots, simply use model-grade sandpaper. These sharp edged dice roll true and are the most accurate dice on the market. Dice are unpainted and can be colored with an ultra-fine point permanent marker or wax crayon.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The author of CAVES AND CARAVANS is the brother of the writer for Troika's Arcanum.

Judges Guild content tended to be very high quality for the time period compared to alternatives, but some of it was hit or miss.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Invaluable historical data here

1982

Notable publishers:
Avalon Hill, Chaosium, Dwarfstar Games, EON Products, Game Designer's Workshop, Hero Games, Ral Partha Enterprises, Steve Jackson Games, Superior Models INC


Wizardry 2 received a score of 7.73/9, or ~86% favorable.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Space Gamer #67 includes an entire adventure for Traveller, developed by someone many of you might recognize.

I think this may be his first RPG product he worked on?
It's quite long so I won't republish it all here. From a search it seems nobody really ever mentioned this before? Interesting bit of gaming history.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It's quite long so I won't republish it all here. From a search it seems nobody really ever mentioned this before? Interesting bit of gaming history.

It's quite good btw. You can find it here if you want to read it:
https://archive.org/details/Space_Gamer_67/page/22/mode/2up

scan is fairly poor, might see if I can obtain a physical copy if I can't find a better scan

 

[Matalarata]

Had missed this thread of yours. Good stuff.