The Inside Scoop on Gaming

This is, of course, very much a self-review. Yes, I'm one of the credited authors. (And yes, I naturally give it top marks for both style and substance. You were expecting something else?) However, despite the fact that the book has already been reviewed once on RPG.net, it seems to have slipped under a lot of people's radar. (Perhaps the title is too close to the original GURPS Discworld.) So I thought that I'd put a few notes here.

The point about GURPS Discworld was, of course, to adapt the Discworld novels for RPG purposes, and I like to think that it worked. However, it thus had to spend most of its pages describing that setting - there were these twenty-something novels to summarise. Apart for covering new stuff from the most recent novels GURPS Discworld Also was an attempt to move on from there - to emphasise the use of the setting as a location for games.

Hence, the book has four more-or-less new campaign settings, designed to support four different styles of story; one for pirates and martial artists, one for Arabian Nights stuff, one for fairly conventional urban adventuring using new stuff from the new books without the baggage that comes with using Ankh-Morpork, and one for Car Wars/Mad Max adventures, Disc style. It also has three fairly substantial scenarios, and a whole lot of scenario seeds, borrowing blatantly from (okay, parodying) anything that took my fancy, including Beowulf and Call of Cthulhu.

Which reminds me; the book also gave me an excuse to do stuff that I thought that GURPS fans might appreciate in general. SJ Games don't publish many full scenarios for the game, for various reasons; as I said, this book has three. It also has a chapter full of character templates, which isn't a new idea - but most of these could be useful in almost any not-too-serious fantasy game, from "Beggar" to "Noble" to "Engineer-Inventor".

Oh, and there's the game's first moderately detailed rules for mechanical semaphore telegraphy, far as I know.

So try it. It's got dinosaurs, too.

GURPS Discworld Also
GURPS Discworld Also Capsule Review by Phil Masters on 15/12/01 Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 5 (Excellent!) Extends the idea of Discworld roleplaying by providing both an enlarged toolkit and specific examples. And it's got jokes. Product: GURPS Discworld Also Author: Terry Pratchett and Phil Masters Category: self-review of RPG Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Line: GURPS Cost: $20.95 Page count: 128 Year published: 2001 ISBN: 1-55634-447-3 SKU: SJG02095 6061 Comp copy?: yes Capsule Review by Phil Masters on 15/12/01 Genre tags: Fantasy Comedy	This is, of course, very much a self-review. Yes, I'm one of the credited authors. (And yes, I naturally give it top marks for both style and substance. You were expecting something else?) However, despite the fact that the book has already been reviewed once on RPG.net, it seems to have slipped under a lot of people's radar. (Perhaps the title is too close to the original *GURPS Discworld.) So I thought that I'd put a few notes here. The point about GURPS Discworld* was, of course, to adapt the Discworld novels for RPG purposes, and I like to think that it worked. However, it thus had to spend most of its pages describing that setting - there were these twenty-something novels to summarise. Apart for covering new stuff from the most recent novels *GURPS Discworld Also* was an attempt to move on from there - to emphasise the use of the setting as a location for games. Hence, the book has four more-or-less new campaign settings, designed to support four different styles of story; one for pirates and martial artists, one for Arabian Nights stuff, one for fairly conventional urban adventuring using new stuff from the new books without the baggage that comes with using Ankh-Morpork, and one for Car Wars/Mad Max adventures, Disc style. It also has three fairly substantial scenarios, and a whole lot of scenario seeds, borrowing blatantly from (okay, parodying) anything that took my fancy, including Beowulf and Call of Cthulhu. Which reminds me; the book also gave me an excuse to do stuff that I thought that GURPS fans might appreciate in general. SJ Games don't publish many full scenarios for the game, for various reasons; as I said, this book has three. It also has a chapter full of character templates, which isn't a new idea - but most of these could be useful in almost any not-too-serious fantasy game, from "Beggar" to "Noble" to "Engineer-Inventor". Oh, and there's the game's first moderately detailed rules for mechanical semaphore telegraphy, far as I know. So try it. It's got dinosaurs, too.