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Old 10-11-2018, 01:27 AM   #1
doctorevilbrain
 
Join Date: May 2009
Default How has the world builder's handbook held up?

It's widely regarded and people really want a copy. How does it compare to Gurps Space and Gurps Traveller First In? Is it worth buying?
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Old 10-11-2018, 02:26 PM   #2
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: How has the world builder's handbook held up?

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Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain View Post
It's widely regarded and people really want a copy. How does it compare to Gurps Space and Gurps Traveller First In? Is it worth buying?
The first part of it is a methodical checklist for exploring a new system and possibly making first contact. After that it has a bunch of handouts that describe equipment complete with boxes to check off power usage, as well as one handout you'd give to the player that represents "sensor screens" that looked very nice. After that it gets into star system generation which at a casual glance looks mostly the same as First-In except for possibly a few more fine details. But it does go into details about randomly generating details about the society, stuff that includes things like "how many cities does it have?" and "what kind of local cultural customs will you encounter" that go well beyond anything First In or Space had to offer. Finally it has several pages at the end that are an excellent guide to how to draw up a map of a planet using the standard GURPS/Traveller hex maps.
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Old 10-11-2018, 04:44 PM   #3
RogerBW
 
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Default Re: How has the world builder's handbook held up?

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
The first part of it is a methodical checklist for exploring a new system and possibly making first contact.
For coverage of the same sort of material in GURPS 4e, look at GURPS Spaceships 5 - Exploration and Colony Spacecraft.
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Old 12-24-2018, 09:17 PM   #4
doctorevilbrain
 
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Default Re: How has the world builder's handbook held up?

I meant how has the science in it held up? I don't think that I made it clear. Have a Merrrrry Christmas!
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Old 12-24-2018, 09:52 PM   #5
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: How has the world builder's handbook held up?

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I meant how has the science in it held up? I don't think that I made it clear. Have a Merrrrry Christmas!
The new stuff it brings to the table doesn't have enough scientific issues to be out of date. The system design itself is just a reiteration of First In with some more fiddly details.
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Old 12-25-2018, 06:06 PM   #6
doctorevilbrain
 
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Default Re: How has the world builder's handbook held up?

How can it be a reiteration of First In, when the World Builder's Handbook came first?
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Old 12-25-2018, 09:33 PM   #7
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: How has the world builder's handbook held up?

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How can it be a reiteration of First In, when the World Builder's Handbook came first?
My mistake. I was confusing First-In with the Scouts book that it adapted.
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Old 12-26-2018, 08:46 AM   #8
malloyd
 
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Default Re: How has the world builder's handbook held up?

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I meant how has the science in it held up? I don't think that I made it clear. Have a Merrrrry Christmas!
The answer to that is going to remain "we don't know" for a while yet.

Many of the extrasolar planets we have detected don't look like what pretty much any RPG system generator would produce. But the major difficulty with deriving any conclusions from that is most system generators are designed to produce something that looks sort of like the Solar System, and our detection methods are *strongly* biased toward detecting stuff that's quite different from the Solar System (i.e. places with really big planets really close to small stars). If we were looking at Sol from any distance away, we'd almost certainly not have found any planets around it yet.
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