Reviewer gives GURPS Space substance 3 out of 5

[zorg]

Originally Posted by copeab

OTOH, repeated material means, in theory, fewer books one has to carry around to gaming sessions or have at the table. I didn't mind Cyberpunk repeating the TL8 chapter from Ultra-Tech -- it means I didn't have to carry Cyberpunk *and* Ultra-Tech with me. In general, I don't like to carry more than 3-4 books with me as GM.

If only it were so! Repeated material means a) I finish reading any new book much more quickly, because I know a good part of it already and b) looking for something is really painful, since I have to leaf through page upon page of the same material.

If 4E hadn't publicly been announced to refrain from these repetitions, I wouldn't have changed. The structured design is a big Plus, imo.

[Wicked Lurker]

Originally Posted by Luther

Personally I think that SJG should use Web-Enhancement for such things. They would:

• shut down complaints
• tease customers
• avoid repetition in books (wasted pages)
• be updated to match latest products

Exactly my opinion as well.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Bah! Carrying books builds character. I remember in the old days we had to lug around all these stone tablets that the first RPGs were inscribed on. AND we had to make our own dice from painstakingly carved ivory wrested from the mighty mammoths...the youth of today...

Uphill. Both ways. In the snow. Without shoes, over razor sharp rocks. And we liked it that way!

[Almafeta]

Originally Posted by review

The bad part of gurps space 4e isn't anything that's in it, it's what's not in it that hurts. In a book about space and technology, not one single piece of equipmwent is statted out in 4e terms. Not one single weapon, ship or even a spacesuit appears in stat form, and that hurts the book a lot.

What made it worse is that I dug up my gurps space 3e book to compare the two. GS3e was 175 pages and had several useful lists of weapons, equipment and gear taking up a few pages. It also had a basic modular starship construction system and a spaceship combat system. Lastly, it was softcover, flat paper, B&W and more affordable.

That's touching on pretty much every reason I'm sticking with 3e GURPS supplements for now. (Yes, I admit some of them are petty, like the layout, but.) Really, 4e supplements should be everything the 3e supplements were and more, not an expansion of one or two chapters of a complete space book...

I'm thinking of getting Beastiary, since I could use some animal stats to write a fan supplement or two, but the way things are going, there'll be hundreds of pages about animal behavior and running zoos but not one actual animal stat-block.

Originally Posted by zorg

If only it were so! Repeated material means a) I finish reading any new book much more quickly, because I know a good part of it already and b) looking for something is really painful, since I have to leaf through page upon page of the same material.

If 4E hadn't publicly been announced to refrain from these repetitions, I wouldn't have changed. The structured design is a big Plus, imo.

If you can afford that... some gamers who play more than one system consider two or three books in a game line to be quite an investment; for them, SJG has already priced themselves out of the market.

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Almafeta

If you can afford that... some gamers who play more than one system consider two or three books in a game line to be quite an investment; for them, SJG has already priced themselves out of the market.

But if gaming material is repeatedly printed in several books, you're paying for it more than once.

In 3E, I paid three times for the vehicle design system (Vehicles, Mecha, Robots), two times for cyberware (UT and Cyberpunk) and three times for the statistics of a Laser Pistol (UT, Space and Basic).
Now this is annoying and expensive.

In 4E, if I'm looking for Vehicles, I get Vehicles or Basic. If I'm interested in cyberware, I'll get Cyberpunk or Basic. If I'm looking for spells, I need Magic or Basic. That's quite neat, imo. You can buy what you need.

[Almafeta]

Originally Posted by zorg

But if gaming material is repeatedly printed in several books, you're paying for it more than once.

Yes, but the books are much larger: 75 to 100 pages or so. There should be enough room for both dozens of pages of GM content, *and* 25 to 50 pages for such core and necessary topics as equipment, races, and vehicles.

People who are buying GURPS are buying Space, expecting to get a supplement about Space, not expecting to get a book about Space and requirements to purchase other books to handle the actual game. (Not to mention the fact that many of said books haven't even been written yet...) Buying a "basic set" is acceptable to most gamers; buying a basic set and 2-5 mandatory supplements (unless you artificially limit your game concept to what the basic set and a single content-light supplement can handle) is not. When they only find part of a complete supplement about Space, they will turn to other games -- even many Palladium games are more complete in this regard.

And just to note, I don't mind paying that extra $2 to $5 to see the stats for that laser pistol put in a book where it logically goes.

[zorg]

So, let's say you want to play a Space Campaign. You need the Basic Set and UltraTech (though I make do without UT, at the moment).
IF you intend to design a whole new Space setting, Space4E would be a good idea, but not a necessary one. Thats 2-3 books so far. I think that's acceptable.

atm, I'm also playing a Fantasy campaign, even though I don't have Fantasy. All I really need is Basic + Magic. I don't need Fantasy, I don't need Banestorm. Again, 2-3 books.

If you include everything in Space that "belongs" to the genre, you'll need: Psi Powers (Jedi Mind Trick), Vehicles (spacefighters, death stars, mecha), weapons (lasers, blasters, stunners, tanglers, death rays...), armor (vacc suits, servoarmor, powerarmor, bioarmor...), equipment (breathers, sensors, survival), space combat rules, spells (Techno-Fantasy, Spelljammer), etc.

There is either simply not enough space in Space, or all these things could only be outlined very roughly, making them not very useful. And making them repetitive, compared to other books.

I find the equipment chapter in Space3E quite annoying, btw - it's identical to the content of UT, anyway. And I do object to paying multiple times for the same content.

Space4E is certainly not a detailed setting. It's a guideline how to design a setting. This is an important fact, which - for instance - the review on RPG.net didn't quite understand.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by some guy who reviewed Space

...flat paper...

Flat paper? WTF?

[Luther]

Originally Posted by zorg

So, let's say you want to play a Space Campaign. You need the Basic Set and UltraTech (though I make do without UT, at the moment).
IF you intend to design a whole new Space setting, Space4E would be a good idea, but not a necessary one. Thats 2-3 books so far.

Nope. You still don't have spaceships. If you want to use them you need GURPS Vehicles, that is a catalog only book. So if you want to design ships you need Vehicles Design System, and e23 release. Still you don't have spaceship combat rules . . .

Personally I like to have a lot of detailed books. This means more crunch and more content for me. But we have to admit that this way GURPS is going to be very expensive. Again I don't mind paying for high quality, well researched books.

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Luther

Nope. You still don't have spaceships. If you want to use them you need GURPS Vehicles, that is a catalog only book. So if you want to design ships you need Vehicles Design System, and e23 release. Still you don't have spaceship combat rules . . .

I'm not actually so sure whether you need spaceship statistics for every space game (or even for most). Frequently, ships are just devices which bring you from A to B, or which explode in the background. I never needed plane/car/boat statistics for a modern game.

Still, I admit that there are certainly games where you do need these statistics. :) But there are also space games where you need the rules for Psi (get Powers!) or for Magic (get Magic!). What is central to a genre and what is not is probably dependent on personal preferences, right?