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Title: Gurps Vehicles: From Chariots to Cybertanks...and Beyond! by David L. Pulver, Sean M. Punch, Susan Pinsonneault ISBN: 1-55634-325-6 Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Pub. Date: June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Good book but not for the average hack and slash gamer
Comment: This is more of a GM style book there are several factors in this that the average player character would not understand or be able to use properly, having your charicter drive a car player, gm rolling to see if the car survives the player driving it plus. People seem to care about if it is fast or pretty. but actual design of a vehicle require a bit of planning. If you buy this buuk you will need to take plenty of notes while you are designing it will make it easieer to use, and if you are like me a calculator to check your math. And You thought that you would never use algebra.
Carl
Rating: 1
Summary: *Horrible* book!
Comment: This is by far the worst GURPS book I've ever seen. The most obvious problem is that the book isn't just poorly organized- it's not organized at all. It begins with what I initially assumed was an overview and introduction to the (rather complex) design process, making occasional references to formulae but describing most steps in only general terms. Well, it turns out that this is the *only* place that the entire process is documented, and (despite leaving many complex steps completely undefined, without even a chapter reference) it is the only place in the book that some important formulae appear (if you missed the paragraph on access spaces, you'll never read another word about the fact that all your numbers are now off by a factor of two or more). If you want to design a vehicle, the only way to get it right is to read the entire book from cover to cover and hope you remember it all.
Even more fundamental than the book's lack of organization is the utter ludicrousy of the design process itself. The "simple step-by-step process" is set up in about the most awkward way imaginable: first pick everything you want in the vehicle, then decide what kind of body you want the vehicle to have, then add more components, then determine structural characteristics, then layer on armor, then compute statistics. This system is completely backwards for players who wish to design vehicles for a particular purpose. i.e. Suppose you want to build a plane which can travel at mach 2. The first thing you have to do is decide how powerful an engine you want. How on earth are you supposed to know that *first*? Working backwards through the dozens of equations from drag to surface area to volume (which of course is largely determined by engine size itself) is nearly impossible; any attempt at building a vehicle with even vague performance parameters will take several attempts and some very good guesswork.
Most disappointing of all, however, is the fact that even with the ridiculous detail and complexity required to build a vehicle, the performance characteristics are computed using absurd and arbitrary rules with no relation to reality, leading one to wonder what the point of all that trouble really was. Multihull sailboats are defined as being much heavier and having much less usable space per volume than monohulls (opposite of reality), aeordynamics have no affect at all on the handling of high speed cars or fuel efficiency, and little effect on speed (a cardboard box with a hefty engine can outperform a formula one car), a plane's vertical speed is completely independent of its weight (if it can fly at all it can climb as steeply as you like), and jet engines take twice as much space if installed in an aircraft's body as if they were installed in wing-mounted pods (again that sneaky access space rule). There is no uniformity between any two rules and everything is a special case; one wonders if this can actually be termed a "system" at all, or if it's really just a collection of ad hoc solutions to one-time problems. Any GM who wants to use this book will have to make so many changes just to make it playable that he might as well design his own rules; this ruleset's only links to reality are the area=volume^(2/3), top speed=(thrust/surface area)^1/2 formulae available from any physics book.
The only section of the book which seems at all useful is the 3-page note on advanced maneuvering for vehicles (which of course relies on just a single simple statistic almost entirely independent of the painstakingly complex design of the vehicle); this might be appropriate for a magazine article but is hardly the basis for a sourcebook.
All in all, any gaming group is much better off agreeing on their own vehicle rules than wasting time trying to understand and then repair this brain-damaged system.
Rating: 5
Summary: Probably the most well--designed RPG module ever
Comment: Most roleplayers fall into one of two categories: The ones that prefer the dynamics of the game (whether the action, the roleplaying or the puzzlesolving) and the tinkerers that spend hours reading and contemplating RPG modules in the way some sane people read prose.
This module is not for the roleplayers of the first category. Building your first vehicles takes a looong time. But after a while you realize that these incredibly well-thought through rules are to a very high degree compatible with other GURPS rules such as those found in Ultra-tech and Robots, and you realize you can actually build that piece of equipment you need for the next scenario (whether you're a GM or player) with a minimum of fuzz.
If you like this kind of RPG engineering, this is probably the module for you. Guaranteed hours of fun and entertainment.
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Title: GURPS Compendium I : Character Creation by Sean Punch, Steve Jackson, Dan Smith ISBN: 155634290X Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Gurps Robots: Bold Experiments, Faithful Servants, Soulless Killers (Steve Jackson Games) by David L. Pulver, Susan Pinsonneault, Dan Smith ISBN: 1556342330 Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Gurps Ultra-Tech: A Sourcebook of Weapons and Equipment for Future Ages by David L. Pulver, Dan Smith, Guy Burwell ISBN: 1556343159 Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: GURPS Space by Steve Jackson, William A. Barton, David Pulver, Sean M. Punch, Lloyd Blanekenship ISBN: 1556343906 Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Pub. Date: 13 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Gurps Bestiary : Monsters, Beasts, and Companions (3rd Edition) by Steffan O'Sullivan, Hunter Johnson, Monica Stephens ISBN: 1556344120 Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Pub. Date: 01 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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