05-05-2021, 07:59 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
I wasn't. I excluded Characters and Campaigns. Those are what I consider the core books.
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05-05-2021, 08:36 PM | #22 |
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
For me it is
*Magic: a more logical magic system than what existed when it first appeared. *Fantasy: An excellent expansion that brought all its chapters together in a fantasy world what was not another Tolkien rehash. *Thaumaturgy: the book that allowed one to create any magic system one wanted
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05-05-2021, 08:38 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
Undoubtably the one I've gotten the most personal entertainment out of is Vehicles 2e, for 3rd edition. But as a freestanding toy more than anything - it's been almost useless for actual use in *GURPS*.
Most inspirational, I still have to give it to GURPS Voodoo - origin point of the system that's since turned into Path/Book Magic, Sorcery etc. and full of a bunch of other cool mystical stuff I at the time mostly didn't know. Most useful now, tough call. I refer to Power Ups 2 Perks probably more than anything outside the core books (or I would if I hadn't done it so much I remember most of it without needing to...) but I think for most actually useful I'd have to nominate one of the GM focused books for one of the PDF lines - like Dungeon Fantasy 2 or Action 2 - these are quite helpful GMing aids well outside the lines they are specifically for.
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05-05-2021, 08:48 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Jul 2015
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
Not including the core:
Martial Arts - this feels like it should be core rules. There's a lot of good stuff in here to add more options to combat and character builds. Low-Tech - Goes into a lot more detail for medieval campaigns, especially for equipment. High-Tech - Like Low-Tech but for more modern or futuristic campaigns. |
05-05-2021, 11:35 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Calgary AB
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
Glad to see so many of my favorites mentioned!
All the "historics" - Aztec, Celtic Myth, Vikings, and some great moderns such as Mysteries and Horror deserve note. Easier to do a top 20! But if only picking three, I'll mention a couple ... My three, in no particular order... 1 Horseclans Loved the novels, and this was one of the very early GURPS books. I think the first appearance of mass combat system, and the shortest version. Amazing cover (from one of the novels). Second appearance of psionics, and also had religious magic. Like so many GURPS books, I think it'd have done better with more published adventures, but Horseclans had all the tools to build on. 2 Ice Age... Which even had an 11 page scenario in its mere 64 pages. The first specific prehistoric rpg? Rules for Shamans. Jobs table with income in $kins. Perfect for running Big Lizzie. Which brings us to... 3 Old West There are a few good western rpg's out there, since the early days, but I don't feel like they get a lot of play considering the potential - probably more people doing crossovers such as Deadlands. But Old West was very well done as a sourcebook (as GURPS books tend to be), this is more of a favorite due to subject matter (I love westerns!). Glad to see Conan, and Thaumatology, got a mention, same with Fantasy Adventures, and lets give Space Adventures a runner up. The specificity of books such as those (and space atlases) makes running adventures more viable - especially since I don't have the same time to prep and write as I did back in the day! If this was a list of 4 books, I'd put Unnight! Really cool to see what the rest of you mentioned, I'm going to skim through a couple (ie Myth and Voodoo) that I haven't read for many years! . Last edited by Bud; 05-05-2021 at 11:43 PM. |
05-06-2021, 01:54 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Binghamton, NY, USA. Near the river Styx in the 5th Circle.
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
GURPS Space, 2nd Edition. Easily one of the best written genre supplements for GURPS, and the first one I ever purchased (in a double pack BOGO with Space Bestiary). The 3rd Edition updated the spaceships rules, but didn't change too much else. The 4th Edition somehow loses the magic for me.
GURPS Fantasy, 2nd Edition. What this book does right it does really right. Somehow both historical and fantasy, lots of different areas to adventure in, and lots of plot hooks. While GURPS Banestorm is a worthy successor, one of it's failings for me is that it solves several of the adventure mysteries that the previous edition set up to be major plot elements a GM can use without setting up some good new ones. What Banestorm does right is giving more flavor to all of the unique areas to adventure in. GURPS Time Travel. Another Genre book with a good presentation for all sorts of different time travel frameworks. GURPS Infinite Worlds literally contains all of the same information from Time Travel with a lot of extra for the Infinity Unlimited gameworld, but the fact that it pushes that setting as the primary and gives short shrift to the other frameworks makes it somewhat inferior to me, though a good purchase for GURPS 4th Edition. Honorable Mentions: GURPS Vehicles, GURPS Traveller: Starships, and GURPS Spaceships. I like building things, and these books let you build things. I've spent way too much time on my Spaceships Spreadsheet. WAY too much time. But I enjoyed it.
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05-06-2021, 07:01 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Chatham, Kent, England
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
More generally: the genre and historic books are almost campaigns in themselves.
More, small, niche, campaign or game-sized books: adapting what other might call a theme or a movie. Swashbucklers, Celtic Myth, Cliffhangers, Rome, China, Russia, these are the realistic ones. Banestorm, Voodoo, Gun Fu, Dungeon Fantasy, Infinite Worlds are theme or worked campaign books. More power to them. |
05-06-2021, 07:36 AM | #28 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
'Of all time' makes this a hard question. Because I'm finding myself drifting towards different tastes in terms of gaming and especially mechanics. Looking at where I spent most of my time, over the course of the gaming 'career', I suppose I'd have to pick these, even though they don't exactly reflect my current interests.
Bio-Tech. I like biomedical topics in general, though on an amateur level, so it's an ongoing field of interest. I like the book for the glimpses of a setting (vaguely proto-THS, it seems), for the various modifications and products available in it, the 'crunchy numbers' that allow creating some degree of coherence in what the PCs can invent, build, or buy on the biomedical front. Bonus points: some look at low-tech biomedical topics. Spaceships series (expanded with some Pyramid articles). Vehicles are cool, and the series offers a balance between detail and ease of use (contrast the older VE2e, which was way higher on detail, but way harder/slower to use). Despite all the flaws, I spent a lot of time using Spaceships. And not just for actual space vehicles. Social Engineering. Rules for social interactions don't get enough love in RPG systems. This book offers an expansion of rules into the direction. It offers some clarifications on things that people misunderstand about the basic rules (relating to Influence Skills), it fleshes out important 'self-evident in hindsight' frameworks like the Reference Society, it offers various ideas for social activities that PCs might be interested in performing (but players may not always realise). Some books that failed to make the top three but are still cool in my book:
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05-06-2021, 09:37 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
Quote:
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05-06-2021, 12:08 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Name your top 3 Gurps books of all time and why?
Off the top of my head:
Three books about which I am obviously biased:
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