Roleplaying Books

This is William H. Stoddard's expansion on his outstanding GURPS Steampunk. It contains an amazing number of real and mythical pieces of equipment that can be used in a Steampunk campaign. These items range from the ingenious and realistic to the might-have-been to outright Victorian fantasy.

Not only does the book contain full descriptions of these strange and wonderous gizmos but it frequently includes humorous comments about their effectiveness, sometimes in the form of advertising intended to sell the item. My favorite was:

The villain aimed for the hero's head
And surely would have shot him dead
And sent him to his eternal rest,
If not for his Magnetic Anti-Bullet Vest!

The whole book is like this, another winner from the redoubtable Mr. Stoddard!

This module covers the spinward marches sector in detail. This is the region of traveller universe where most adventures were designed for along the almost 30y of the game existance. The sector has been covered twice before. First in a classic traveller module in the usual UWP (universal world profile) database without much detail. Second as an appendix of megatraveller Library data, also in a UWP database. Now SJ games covers them in detail giving a small text for each planet yet allowing many misteries for each game master to develop his own adventures. Also detailed are the major politics between the states and the corporations of the region. The versions differ from each other in world profle and even frontiers, but that is easy to be solved by the Game master. It's an excellent book lacking only a colored map in the old traveller style. This can be done by buying Megatraveller boxed set, which unfortunately is rather rare to find. Hopefully someone at SJ games will read this review and solve this...

The military writer William Dupay credited the German General Staff with what he called, "institutionalized genius"-with being able to institute a way of reliably producing command of an effectiveness that once was only viable for a legendary conqueror.
What the German General Staff did for art, Traveler did for storytelling. It was able to create a world as complex sophisticated and detailed as only the greatest writers of speculative fiction could before. It did this by the same method, by the mundane method of using a team of writers to create it's world.
Traveler is an RPG. RPG's are essentially a folk-art. In a way they are a revival of the traditional storytellers art in a new form. Or another way to describe it is as a play in which the actors choose their own actions and the director or "Gamemaster" must oversee and direct the plot knowing his actors have free will. Many, perhaps most of what I have given is fammiliar to my readers. But Traveller is different. It is a work of genius, a splendid science-fiction world of multifaceted complexity set in the far future. Games can involve political intrigue, exploration, trading and whatever ones heart desires. It is not a utopia, nor a dystopia like many Sci-fi's but a world that is believable. It is a world that is different yet similar to ours. But at the same time, "Vive La difference."
Sword Worlds is my favorite of the Gurps Traveller series. It describes a cluster of nations and cultures in a group of planets sandwiched between the mighty Zhodani Consulate and the Vast Third Imperium. The Sword Worlders are clannish and traditionalist peoples who emphasize their Germanic and Scandinavian heritage. They are not pictured as perfect and they are forever quarreling with their neighbors and one another. Yet they are survivors and they have a "character" of their own, a contrarian way of thinking and a grim determination to be who they are.
The Sword Worlds sourcebook is a boon for any who wish to play a campaign set among Swordworlders. And it is a blessing for those like me that do not play but read the book for itself. It gives the political relations between Swordworlder states, substates and alliances, the history of the Sworldworlds and the various and sundry customs of the Sworldworlder people. It gives splendid characters. And it gives a number of preset campaigns that are some of the best in the series. The best campaign of all is the epic "100 parsecs" campaign which could easily be made into a movie.
Perhaps the best thing I can say about Sword Worlds is that it was not long enough. It is an attractive book and well worth the while of any Traveller fan new or old.

David Pulver is a marvellous and prolific author, a true credit to the game industry. It therefore comes as no surprise that Alien Races 1 lives up to his usual high standards of excellence. The Zhodani and Vargr are put under the microscope in this tome, examined carefully with a wealth of detail that goes far beyond the original Alien Modules. Homo Zhdotlas is scrutinized in all its psionic glory... the perfect society, carefully regulated by the helping hand of the Thought Police is examined in careful, and one could say objective detail. Utopian or sinister? Its written so well you'll be hard put to decide. The enigmatic, chaotic Vargr are also treated well. Here Pulver carefully explains the personal charisma and pack mentality of the 'Wolves of Space', giving a thorough and very believable overview of why the Vargr "rule" the sprawling, disorganized extents with a patchwork of independent governments, constantly rising and falling. Three other minor races are presented, including the Sheol and Clotho ... and a bonus section on psionics, firming up the Psi rules in GURPS Traveller, rounds off this book.

What can I say? This is an excellent addition to the GURPS Traveller legacy, and an essential aid to any GM running a game in the Spinward Marches. 5 stars, no question.

The book is well written and contains 5 sections, each dealing with one of five alien races - in this case the two major races Hivers and Droyne, the mysterious Ancients and two strange minor races (Inheritors and Lithkind). Each section has an in-depth description of the race, its history and culture and its relations to other races, adventure seeds, racial templates and some equipment and starships. Also included comes a set of cardboard Droyne coins, that can be used in their casting ceremonies (rules and suggestions for their use and a table that can be used instead of the coins are included in the Droyne section).

Of course the two major races (each gets about 50 of the book's 144 pages, the Hivers section including short descriptions and templates for some of the other races from the Federation, like the Ithklur and the Gurvin) and the Ancients (about 20 pages) are coverd more in detail than the two minor races (ten pages each). Still even they contain a lot of good background information and offer many adventure possibilities to any campaign set near the 2000 worlds and the Hiver Federation.

I found the book to be extremely usefull, especially (as they contain a lot of stuff I will probably use in my GURPS Traveller campaign) the Droyne and Ancients sections.

I don't know if there is a lot of new information (as compared to supplements from Classic Traveller and other editions of the game), but if you are playing GURPS Traveller and intend to include any of these races in your campaign, this book is well worth its price.

In my opinion it's the best of the three GT:Alien Races-books so far published by Steve Jackson Games.

This is one of the best RPG books I've ever bought. GURPS Uplift is full of more information than a lot of core rule books. It is an excellent setting book and comes with the best optional rule set I have seen in two decades of gaming. The optional rule I'm referring to is a detailed alien creation system that takes up the entirety of chapter 4. Even if you don't play GURPS Uplift, the system is massively useful. Even if you don't play GURPS, the system is massively useful. It is easily translatable into any game system and it alone is worth more than the price of GURPS Uplift. It will quickly generate random (or non random) entirely believable aliens that will both seem different from humans but still have plausible reasons for interactions with them. For the rest of the chapters you do need the GURPS basic set. You should also probably have GURPS Compendium I and GURPS Space, though you can get away with not having them. I would also highly reccomend Contacting Aliens as an additonal resource to play, though you don't need it as a simplified version of that information is available in Uplift. The setting is completely true to the Uplift books and contains a lot of information to play in multiple time periods and places within David Brin's universe. The information is equally useful for alternative settings. If you play space based rpg's this book is worth every penny. Even if you play fantasy games, this can give you some good ideas for truly different species and cultures. Five stars does not do it justice, this is as good as it gets.

Of all the different GURPS books which depict various cultures in our history, this one is my favorite. This book presents the Norsemen in a historical fashion with suggestions and ideas for playing any sort of game. Fans of Beowulf or similar stories will find this invaluable. Also, there is a section on playing less than true historical viking games, such as their magic and creatures of their legends. Over all, a great book.

World War II is often depicted as a black and white struggle of good against evil. This book is an excellent introduction to one of its most interesting gray areas: Finland, co-belligerent with the evil Nazis against our Soviet allies.

Setting the stage with a short history of Finland, beginning with its independence from Russia during World War I and continuing through the events leading to its involvement in World War II, the book explains and describes the Winter War, when the Finns resisted Soviet invasion of their territory, the Continuation War, when the Finns fought alongside the Nazis to reclaim the territory they'd lost during the Winter War, and the Lapland War, when the Finns expelled the Nazis from Finland.

Later chapters explain and describe the Finnish military, the Finnish people, and the gear, weapons and vehicles that the Finns used to fight. Sidebars throughout the book cover related subjects, such as Finnish pronunciation, place names, especially influential people, peripheral issues and events, and important Finnish cultural concepts. The last chapter discusses ways to use the information in the book for roleplaying games. And the book also includes a bibliography to facilitate further research.

My only critique is that the book doesn't even mention one of the greatest combat heroes of the Winter War -- and, with over 500 enemy kills, one of the deadliest soldiers of all time -- Simo Hayha.

A great system for a great game world. Leave d20 behind and try something new, you won't regret it.

Systems affect the world you run in very real ways. Heroquest introduces you to a style of game aimed at acting out and experiencing satisfying stories, not endless hacking through dungeons for meaningless treasure.

Discover what it takes to be a hero in a system that allows you to play anything from a lone wolf to a general commanding thousands of troops!

I really liked this book, though I'll end up converting its mechanics to D&D. It was fascinatingly detailed about each of the 4 houses, their histories, their subdivisions, their magic, and more. A well-edited and entertaining read with some really cool virtues and mysteries!