Walter Milliken

It sounds like a great idea to have nine of your best authors fill an anthology with whatever they want to write about. Unfortunately, maybe there's a reason there's more editorial control over what gets published then was used in this anthology. On the other hand, some of my complaint was material that felt like rote GURPS filler.

Ghost-Breaking felt like a mundane chapter from GURPS Undead or something, not at all what I was hoping for from Hite. Alchemical Baroque, by Phil Masters, is an interesting little fantasy campaign setting that combines a number of traditional details with original material that's clearly not Middle Earth or Greyhawk or any other fantasy world. (I didn't fall passionately in love with the setting, but it deserves a full 4E book a lot more then Yrth did.) Mythic Babysitting is fun, but it's worse then Elizabeth McCoy's other setting, GURPS IOU, in that it marries a setting that doesn't bear nitpicking points and stressing over fine details, with, well, GURPS. (It's the only thing in this book I might run.) Meridian is a science fiction setting from David Pulver. I wouldn't classify it as space opera; it has tightly contained points of impossible (but necessary) tech in it, with the rest reasonable (for fiction) extrapolation. It wasn't something that excited me, but it was interesting. The Last Spartan, by Gene Seabolt, was a mini-historical handbook centered around the time period of the end of the Spartans, and what the last few might have done in that world. Underground was a bit of rote GURPS material about the underground, complete with scientific information and templates. Airships is a piece of real world description about airships. Precursors is back to sci-fi, covering the Ancients. The large section of advantages and disadvantages and how they might show up in precursors drags this down; a lot of it feels like obvious hackwork. I haven't read Chariots yet, but it's a historical book, the Near East in 1348 BC.

What did I want this book to look like? GURPS Horror: The Madness Dossier. Not once did this make me feel like "I could never run this, but this is incredible." Maybe that's somewhat specific to Hite, but large parts of it seemed like rote material, the same stuff you'd get if you assigned a chapter in a normal GURPS sourcebook to an author: We need a chapter about airships, or ghost-breaking, for example. The historical stuff may not have been my cup of tea, but were closer to what I would expect--though I'd point out that both the Spartans and the Chariots were set in the Mediterranean in times familiar to Westerners, and I can imagine GURPS books consistent with what they did put out that could contain those works as chapters. GURPS Ancient World wouldn't have seemed that unlikely at the time. They were hardly on 16th century Tibet or China of the 1930s. The three new campaign settings were my favorite; Phil Masters' fantasy setting really is unique. I might actually play Mythic Babysitters, but definitely not in GURPS.… (mere)

GURPS IOU is a worldbook for GURPS 3rd Edition, set in at a university where anything can happen. It is a comedy book, where anything can happen and humorous allusions abound. It's designed around 100-150 point characters, where anything goes. (An advertising blurb: "where Unusual Background isn't just an Advantage, it's a way of life.")

Does this work? It is definitely an excellent read. The world is very interesting and well defined, with humor and weirdness abounding. And unlike many other roleplaying books, the art actually adds to the book, instead of adding nothing or actually detracting from the book (Smif (Dan Smith) has done this. I love Phil & Kaja Foglio as the artists on this; they went along with the humor excellently.) However, don't let a mundane get a hold of the book - if they don't get the College of Temporal Happenstance, Ultimate Lies & Historical Undertakings (C.T.H.U.L.H.U), they won't get anything.

As for playability, that's more questionable. The book only offers 5 pages of adventure notes, and a GURPS IOU Adventures seems unlikely. Some practice in running a humorous campaign would help. They offer a 'Dark' campaign style in a discussion on playing IOU, but that isn't really supported by most of the book, which tends to the 'Silly' campaign style.

This book is hard to steal from for other campaigns unless you need a weird university around. It's based around GURPS 3rd Edition, but it's trivial to update it to 4th Edition. It should be simple enough to adapt to FUDGE or any other system; it has very little crunch to worry about. (The system has got to be able to handle modern weaponry, post-modern weaponry, magic and psionics, and detailed combat seems a little pointless when both you and your opponent will be fixed or resurrected by tomorrow.)

Overall - a great book. If you regularly buy books without expecting to use them, like me, grab it. If you are a GURPS game-master looking for a setting to use Ultra-Tech, Martial Arts, Magic, Psionics, and any other book you have around, grab it. If you're familiar with GURPS and want a comedy setting, grab it. Otherwise ...… (mere)