The Inside Scoop on Gaming

You know, I was initially a touch intimidated by IOU - not so much because of the content, but because of what it suggested about college. Obviously, it's an over-the-top look at what colleges are like - godawful food, tiny living quarters, students from every walk of life and so forth - but it also makes college sound like a gigantic playground for those who were in on the joke. It's a cross between nostalgic "the crazy stuff that we did in college" stories and every SF and fantasy pop culture reference that you can throw into it.

Which is a touch intimidating when you don't go to Berkely; are you missing out on something big? Not really. If there's any lesson to be learned, it's not to let somebody else's experiences dictate your experience of a situation.With that out of the way, on to a review of IOU.

Imagine every wacky situation in the universe colliding in one spot and you'll have a pretty good idea of what IOU is like. Witches, cavemen and Yrth elves attend the same campus; the (Arch)dean may be both a fallen angel and a fallen demon; character death isn't a problem, since there's a mechanism in the university that resurrects everybody the next morning. Departments - including WUSE (School of Weird and Unusual Sciences and Engineerings) and C.T.H.U.L.H.U (College of Temporal Happenstance, Ultimate Lies and Historical Undertakings), which is run by seven different versions of one man, Dr. What. Silly as hell? You bet. Also as entertaining as all get out, especially with the perfect match of Phil Foglio's art.

In short, it's a gloriously silly mess; serious enough for anybody to run a decent campaign and/or adventure, silly enough to entertain players for weeks on end. The authors wisely decided to throw the silliness onto a rough framework - each department of the university is described, with the silliness mostly being provoked by the sheer amount of technology and power that they wield. In the C.T.H.U.L.H.U department, for example, time bends and stretches like taffy - as the book proudly claims, it's "the only department where you have take classes again before you take them the first time." Each department has a rough specialty - while WUSE handles the mad scientist aspect, the College of Metaphysics handles the wide array of magic available to students. The departments are explained very broadly, while sidebars details the exact nature of schools within the general departments, including recommendations for appropriate statistics and powers, and classes available to that department - for example, PT516 - Winning Debates with Mind Control.

Campus organizations are also detailed in much the same manner, and there's enough plot hooks here to sink the Titanic. Campus security travels in packs and lays down heavy fire in the hopes that the collateral damage will eliminate the problem; the campus Health Center resurrects the dead and occasionally does unneccesary surgery when the wires get crossed; the Student Liberation Organization kidnaps freshmen (freshthings, as the game puts it) and tries to deprogram them. There's a Campus Crusade for Cthulhu, for cultists in their off-season. The campus sport is moopsball, which involves "bicycles, Frisbee brand flying disks...three-valued logic [and] a great deal of body contact." The Archdean shoos away Elder Gods by threatening to publish pictures from last year's party. Hilarious stuff.

There's sample characters to play included, more as examples of what players are like and NPCs, but they're still funny and interesting to be worth reading. A list of places runs from the weird (a statue of the campus founder is older than the universe, and looks just like Cthulhu) to the truly weird, like the public T.O.I.L.E.T (a public toilet that serves as the temporal conveyance for Dr. What). The steam tunnels under the university act let you use your old dungeon crawling scenarios, and there's enough monsters - like zombie rats, vampire squirrels and mall rats - to stock them. There's a wide array of weird science gadgets to mess around with, skills for weird magic and weird science - here called "Science!" - and a game balance table to inflict assorted disadvantages to prevent PCs from getting permanent access to game-skewing gadgetry.

There's also a decent list of disadvantages and advantages here, as well - stuff like varying levels of Mundane, which disrupts weird happenings (they turn into props and costumes until the mundane leaves) and Cast Iron Stomach lets you choke down the food that the University's meal plan doesn't provide for. In a nod to those whose tastes may not run to the silly, there's also two other variants provided for the university - Weird, and Darkly Illuminated. The Weird option allows for relatively normal students where everybody else happens to be weird in subtle ways, while the Darkly Illuminated option is something like playing The X-Files; everybody knows more than you do, and you have to move carefully or risk being turned into sausage in the gears of their machinations. Unfortunately, the book really doesn't adjust well to the latter two - a weird campaign would wind up causing more confusion at the sheer scope of the weirdness, while the book just doesn't have the heart to go for a truly Darkly Illuminated setting. (Miskatonic University, though - boy howdy!) There are alternate versions for all of the major characters provided, but Illuminati University just works a lot better as a silly game - it's tailor-made for it, as a matter of fact.

It's hard to review a book like this without spoiling all of the jokes within. With perfectly suited artwork, a small army of great ideas, and a huge dose of high weirdness, I'd recommend GURPS IOU for any group that's looking to try to break new records for silliness contained within a single gaming session.

-Darren MacLennan

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

GURPS IOU
Author: Elizabeth McCoy and Walter Milliken Category: game Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Line: GURPS Cost: $18 Page count: 128 ISBN: 1-55634-206 SKU: SJGO1795 Capsule Review by Darren MacLennan on 01/06/00. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Modern_day Historical Horror Far_Future Comedy Anime Espionage Conspiracy Old_West Vampire Gothic Asian/Far_East Superhero Generic	You know, I was initially a touch intimidated by IOU - not so much because of the content, but because of what it suggested about college. Obviously, it's an over-the-top look at what colleges are like - godawful food, tiny living quarters, students from every walk of life and so forth - but it also makes college sound like a gigantic playground for those who were in on the joke. It's a cross between nostalgic "the crazy stuff that we did in college" stories and every SF and fantasy pop culture reference that you can throw into it. Which is a touch intimidating when you don't go to Berkely; are you missing out on something big? Not really. If there's any lesson to be learned, it's not to let somebody else's experiences dictate your experience of a situation.With that out of the way, on to a review of IOU. Imagine every wacky situation in the universe colliding in one spot and you'll have a pretty good idea of what IOU is like. Witches, cavemen and Yrth elves attend the same campus; the (Arch)dean may be both a fallen angel and a fallen demon; character death isn't a problem, since there's a mechanism in the university that resurrects everybody the next morning. Departments - including WUSE (School of Weird and Unusual Sciences and Engineerings) and C.T.H.U.L.H.U (College of Temporal Happenstance, Ultimate Lies and Historical Undertakings), which is run by seven different versions of one man, Dr. What. Silly as hell? You bet. Also as entertaining as all get out, especially with the perfect match of Phil Foglio's art. In short, it's a gloriously silly mess; serious enough for anybody to run a decent campaign and/or adventure, silly enough to entertain players for weeks on end. The authors wisely decided to throw the silliness onto a rough framework - each department of the university is described, with the silliness mostly being provoked by the sheer amount of technology and power that they wield. In the C.T.H.U.L.H.U department, for example, time bends and stretches like taffy - as the book proudly claims, it's "the only department where you have take classes again before you take them the first time." Each department has a rough specialty - while WUSE handles the mad scientist aspect, the College of Metaphysics handles the wide array of magic available to students. The departments are explained very broadly, while sidebars details the exact nature of schools within the general departments, including recommendations for appropriate statistics and powers, and classes available to that department - for example, PT516 - Winning Debates with Mind Control. Campus organizations are also detailed in much the same manner, and there's enough plot hooks here to sink the Titanic. Campus security travels in packs and lays down heavy fire in the hopes that the collateral damage will eliminate the problem; the campus Health Center resurrects the dead and occasionally does unneccesary surgery when the wires get crossed; the Student Liberation Organization kidnaps freshmen (freshthings, as the game puts it) and tries to deprogram them. There's a Campus Crusade for Cthulhu, for cultists in their off-season. The campus sport is moopsball, which involves "bicycles, Frisbee brand flying disks...three-valued logic [and] a great deal of body contact." The Archdean shoos away Elder Gods by threatening to publish pictures from last year's party. Hilarious stuff. There's sample characters to play included, more as examples of what players are like and NPCs, but they're still funny and interesting to be worth reading. A list of places runs from the weird (a statue of the campus founder is older than the universe, and looks just like Cthulhu) to the truly weird, like the public T.O.I.L.E.T (a public toilet that serves as the temporal conveyance for Dr. What). The steam tunnels under the university act let you use your old dungeon crawling scenarios, and there's enough monsters - like zombie rats, vampire squirrels and mall rats - to stock them. There's a wide array of weird science gadgets to mess around with, skills for weird magic and weird science - here called "Science!" - and a game balance table to inflict assorted disadvantages to prevent PCs from getting permanent access to game-skewing gadgetry. There's also a decent list of disadvantages and advantages here, as well - stuff like varying levels of Mundane, which disrupts weird happenings (they turn into props and costumes until the mundane leaves) and Cast Iron Stomach lets you choke down the food that the University's meal plan doesn't provide for. In a nod to those whose tastes may not run to the silly, there's also two other variants provided for the university - Weird, and Darkly Illuminated. The Weird option allows for relatively normal students where everybody else happens to be weird in subtle ways, while the Darkly Illuminated option is something like playing The X-Files; everybody knows more than you do, and you have to move carefully or risk being turned into sausage in the gears of their machinations. Unfortunately, the book really doesn't adjust well to the latter two - a weird campaign would wind up causing more confusion at the sheer scope of the weirdness, while the book just doesn't have the heart to go for a truly Darkly Illuminated setting. (Miskatonic University, though - boy howdy!) There are alternate versions for all of the major characters provided, but Illuminati University just works a lot better as a silly game - it's tailor-made for it, as a matter of fact. It's hard to review a book like this without spoiling all of the jokes within. With perfectly suited artwork, a small army of great ideas, and a huge dose of high weirdness, I'd recommend GURPS IOU for any group that's looking to try to break new records for silliness contained within a single gaming session. -Darren MacLennan Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 4 (Meaty)