The Inside Scoop on Gaming

GURPS Aliens allow you to build aliens for GURPS, and includes over 20 aliens, with complete templates and descriptions.

Aliens has the complete rules for building aliens for GURPS. They are almost exactly the same rules as found in GURPS Fantasy Folk and Compendium I. They are an excellent well-balanced set of rules, but they are GURPS-centric and are unlikely to be useful for other games.

To supplement this, they include over two dozen aliens built with these rules and fully fleshed out. Interesting playable races include the Cidi, tiny cute creatures that spend a lot of time using or complaining about being treated 'cute' and the Jaril, giant engineers who are rebuilding their race. They also offer something of a universe to play them in.

The races get about four pages each, and completely filled out in these four pages. What they think, how they react, how they act are all filled out. As the advertising blurb says, they aren't men in bug suits, they're real aliens.

However, the downside outweights the goodside, IMO.

The alien creation rules have pages of errata on them to conform to the latest version of the GURPS rules. (The general trend made racial abilities cheaper, age advantages cheaper, and age disadvantages less valuable.) Even with the errata, somethings seem too expensive (Regrowth, and Mindshare cost too much, and Slow Metabolism doesn't give nearly enough points (a problem shared with Fantasy Folk and Compendium I.))

On a similar note, all of the racial creation rules have been reprinted. Fantasy Folk may cost too much for the science fiction GM who doesn't need the fantasy, but Compendium I offers all the racial creation rules from Aliens, and is almost required for a GURPS GM anyway.

As for the races, ... Most science fiction brings along its own bunch of races. This group of races is mostly 'soft' science fiction (anthropormophic or psionics). If I start up a generic science fiction campaign, I may use a couple of races from the book, and I've considered creating an IOU campaign with Truuls. Is it worth $20 dollars for a couple races?

The universe is more of an annoyance than a help. There is little detail on this universe in the book. Having the universe there forces the GM to extract the races from the universe. However, it's not a big deal, and it does force the GM to place them in his universe.

In summary, I enjoyed this book. Really. If you're looking for an enjoyable read and 28 mostly well-thought out aliens, this is a good book to buy. If you're looking for some aliens for a campaign, well... you'll get 28 aliens, and hopefully a couple will fit with your campaign. If that's worth $20 to you, go for it. However, if you're looking for the GURPS alien creation rules, check out Compendium I. If you're looking for a well developed universe with aliens, this isn't it. If you're a GURPS fan, Traveler is coming out, and Terradyne, Humanx and Uplift are OOP. If you're not, sit and stew. (Actually, there are several great non-SJG science fiction settings in print, but this isn't one of them.)

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

GURPS Aliens<
Author: Chris W. McCubbin Category: game Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Cost: $17-$25 Page count: 128 ISBN: 1-55634-089-3 Capsule Review by David Starner on 06/02/98. Genre tags: none	GURPS Aliens allow you to build aliens for GURPS, and includes over 20 aliens, with complete templates and descriptions. Aliens has the complete rules for building aliens for GURPS. They are almost exactly the same rules as found in GURPS Fantasy Folk and Compendium I. They are an excellent well-balanced set of rules, but they are GURPS-centric and are unlikely to be useful for other games. To supplement this, they include over two dozen aliens built with these rules and fully fleshed out. Interesting playable races include the Cidi, tiny cute creatures that spend a lot of time using or complaining about being treated 'cute' and the Jaril, giant engineers who are rebuilding their race. They also offer something of a universe to play them in. The races get about four pages each, and completely filled out in these four pages. What they think, how they react, how they act are all filled out. As the advertising blurb says, they aren't men in bug suits, they're real aliens. However, the downside outweights the goodside, IMO. The alien creation rules have pages of errata on them to conform to the latest version of the GURPS rules. (The general trend made racial abilities cheaper, age advantages cheaper, and age disadvantages less valuable.) Even with the errata, somethings seem too expensive (Regrowth, and Mindshare cost too much, and Slow Metabolism doesn't give nearly enough points (a problem shared with Fantasy Folk and Compendium I.)) On a similar note, all of the racial creation rules have been reprinted. Fantasy Folk may cost too much for the science fiction GM who doesn't need the fantasy, but Compendium I offers all the racial creation rules from Aliens, and is almost required for a GURPS GM anyway. As for the races, ... Most science fiction brings along its own bunch of races. This group of races is mostly 'soft' science fiction (anthropormophic or psionics). If I start up a generic science fiction campaign, I may use a couple of races from the book, and I've considered creating an IOU campaign with Truuls. Is it worth $20 dollars for a couple races? The universe is more of an annoyance than a help. There is little detail on this universe in the book. Having the universe there forces the GM to extract the races from the universe. However, it's not a big deal, and it does force the GM to place them in his universe. In summary, I enjoyed this book. Really. If you're looking for an enjoyable read and 28 mostly well-thought out aliens, this is a good book to buy. If you're looking for some aliens for a campaign, well... you'll get 28 aliens, and hopefully a couple will fit with your campaign. If that's worth $20 to you, go for it. However, if you're looking for the GURPS alien creation rules, check out Compendium I. If you're looking for a well developed universe with aliens, this isn't it. If you're a GURPS fan, Traveler is coming out, and Terradyne, Humanx and Uplift are OOP. If you're not, sit and stew. (Actually, there are several great non-SJG science fiction settings in print, but this isn't one of them.) Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

GURPS Aliens<