Edge Review:

Gurps:

Vehicles (Second Edition)

Reviewed by Matt Staroscik


  • by David Pulver
  • Published by Steve Jackson Games
  • 208 pages
  • $20.00

The GURPS system can seem overwhelming at times, and we here at SHADIS have certainly pushed it quite a bit in the pages of the Edge. But GURPS: Vehicles has always stood out as something different - something so versatile and useful that it could be used effectively in almost any role-playing system in existence. The second edition loses none of that versatility.

From internal combustion engines to stardrives, this book has got virtually everything a vehicle designer might want. GURPS Vehicles will give you the freedom to design almost any sort of transportation you can imagine, whether it's pulled by a horse, floats, rolls, flies, or warps space to get to its destination.

Equipping your ride with weapons of an appropriate tech level won't be a problem either. The book includes ready-to-play vehicles as well, in addition to extensive equipment lists and a thorough section on vehicular combat of all flavors.

This power is not without a price, however - you'd better have a calculator handy to design your masterpiece. GURPS Vehicles is rife with formulas, and math-phobes might get the willies upon seeing the occasional cube root or nested parenthetical expression.

It's not as bad as it looks, though. Most of the calculations needed will be simple multiplication and addition. Still, it's a lot more involved than, say, whipping up a Car Wars vehicle. Of course, no one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to create GURPS-legal designs - you can eschew the formal design process and just flip pages looking for inspiration. Game cops will probably not come to your house and cite you for running an illegal vehicle.

There's plenty of inspiration to be had, too, so this product will be useful for more than just GURPS players. It's practically a guarantee there will be something in here that will make you say, "Ooh! I never thought of that." GURPS alumnus Pulver has done a fantastic job of collecting information on a diverse array of systems and summarizing the essential information about them: relative cost and effectiveness, space and weight, and the tech level at which they become available. Everything you could possibly need to design and construct a movable object is right here; in light of that, a few bits of intermediate mathematics becomes a fair price to pay.

References are made to other GURPS books, and the GURPS tech level rating is used throughout. If you're not a GURPS player don't despair; you don't really need any other books, and it's easy to get the hang of the tech level nomenclature.

Unsurprisingly the bulk of the book is devoted to modern-day and futuristic gear. There's only so much you can say about horse-drawn transportation, after all.

Here's a small sampling of the topics covered in GURPS Vehicles - lighter-than-air craft, ornithopters, contragravity lift systems, Orion propulsion, tracked vehicles, vehicles with legs, micronuke launchers, g-induced loss of consciousness, bulldozers and plows, types of airlocks, submunition dispensing warheads, gravscanners, beam weapons, magneto-hydrodynamic turbines, harnessed animal propulsion, battlesuits... and this just scratches the surface! There are also eleven complete sample vehicles, ranging from a typical family car to a tech level 10 scout starship.

One of the best things about the book is its staggering versatility. Role-playing covers such a wide variety of times, places, genres, it seems impossible that any one book could be useful for all of it. But this one is. Or at least, anything can be created with the material it provides, which is just as good. Few, if any other products in the history of gaming have had such a wide applicability. GURPS Vehicles is all meat and no fluff.

Nearly every page will deluge you with useful information. Fortunately, it also includes an excellent index and table of contents, making it easy to find what you need. It is another excellent addition to the GURPS line, and is worth a look for any hard-core roleplayer

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© Copyright 1996 by Alderac Entertainment Group

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