The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I don't Like Gurps. I think it's a poor attempt to build a universal RPG. It's sluggish, not really universal, slow and unbalanced. It's designed to make you buy more and more supplements so the guys at Steve Jackson Games can get richer.

Personally I prefer the Hero-System, but let's face it: the Hero-System is for smart people. It's for future programmers or writers. You need a lot of brains and creativity to play it. Even at that it's better than Gurps by a long shot.

And still, One has to admit with all it's flaws, Gurps has an amazing wealth of supplements. And since, it is still meant to be universal, you can usually take a Gurps supplement and use it for another RPG. Gurps Cyberpunk is the best supplement for Gurps I've seen yet.

On the cover you'll find a notice saying: "The book that was seized by the U.S. Secret Service!" There's a detailed story inside of that event. In short, the writers got in touch with a lot of heavy hackers. The U.S. government got suspicious and raided the Gurps group. Apparently the book was so well done that even when the service went through the material, it took them some time to figure out their mistake. Personally, I don't think it shows much intelligence, but I can't think of another RPG book that would have the potential to confuse them that much.

Gurps Cyberpunk is made of some excellent parts and some terrible parts. Fortunately the good parts are so good, it's all you end up remembering. The Character creation part is nice the archetypes described there give you the right feel for the setting. The Cyberwear Chapter is pretty standard. There are enough implants there but nothing we haven't seen anywhere else. The chapter about Technology is annoying: there's very little detail there and all you end up thinking is, "I need that Ultra-Tech source book". After that comes netrunning, we'll talk about that soon. There are chapters about World design and campaigning, which are pretty standard as well.

It's all worth it for the netrunning chapter. First of all the book avoids on of the most annoying problems in science fiction RPG's. Most science fiction RPG's are afraid to invent technologies that will seem stupid in a few years. Gurps Cyberpunk looks at netrunning in a more universal way: it's the what and not the how that counts. Exactly what their rules book lacks. The netrunning Chapter was composed after a lot of research. The mechanics is easy there's an icon system I recommend to avoid, but what makes it so great are the hacking tips and notions. There's an explanation about Phreaking and then there's a discussion about going through other people's trash and so on. All these little gems are not over done. They are simply written as ideas the players can use.

If Gurps had a netrunning source book I would probably charge at it, even if only for the reading. And one more thing, There's a little idea the book gives for using netrunning as magical system, Try it, it works well.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Gurps Cyberpunk
Author: Loyd Blankenship Category: game Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Line: Gurps Cost: $19.95 Page count: 128 ISBN: 1-55634-168-7 SKU: 6033 Capsule Review by plug on 09/04/99. Genre tags: Science_fiction	I don't Like Gurps. I think it's a poor attempt to build a universal RPG. It's sluggish, not really universal, slow and unbalanced. It's designed to make you buy more and more supplements so the guys at Steve Jackson Games can get richer. Personally I prefer the Hero-System, but let's face it: the Hero-System is for smart people. It's for future programmers or writers. You need a lot of brains and creativity to play it. Even at that it's better than Gurps by a long shot. And still, One has to admit with all it's flaws, Gurps has an amazing wealth of supplements. And since, it is still meant to be universal, you can usually take a Gurps supplement and use it for another RPG. Gurps Cyberpunk is the best supplement for Gurps I've seen yet. On the cover you'll find a notice saying: "The book that was seized by the U.S. Secret Service!" There's a detailed story inside of that event. In short, the writers got in touch with a lot of heavy hackers. The U.S. government got suspicious and raided the Gurps group. Apparently the book was so well done that even when the service went through the material, it took them some time to figure out their mistake. Personally, I don't think it shows much intelligence, but I can't think of another RPG book that would have the potential to confuse them that much. Gurps Cyberpunk is made of some excellent parts and some terrible parts. Fortunately the good parts are so good, it's all you end up remembering. The Character creation part is nice the archetypes described there give you the right feel for the setting. The Cyberwear Chapter is pretty standard. There are enough implants there but nothing we haven't seen anywhere else. The chapter about Technology is annoying: there's very little detail there and all you end up thinking is, "I need that Ultra-Tech source book". After that comes netrunning, we'll talk about that soon. There are chapters about World design and campaigning, which are pretty standard as well. It's all worth it for the netrunning chapter. First of all the book avoids on of the most annoying problems in science fiction RPG's. Most science fiction RPG's are afraid to invent technologies that will seem stupid in a few years. Gurps Cyberpunk looks at netrunning in a more universal way: it's the what and not the how that counts. Exactly what their rules book lacks. The netrunning Chapter was composed after a lot of research. The mechanics is easy there's an icon system I recommend to avoid, but what makes it so great are the hacking tips and notions. There's an explanation about Phreaking and then there's a discussion about going through other people's trash and so on. All these little gems are not over done. They are simply written as ideas the players can use. If Gurps had a netrunning source book I would probably charge at it, even if only for the reading. And one more thing, There's a little idea the book gives for using netrunning as magical system, Try it, it works well. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)