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What I'll Be Reviewing

The GURPS 4th Edition GM's Screen is not a standalone purchase. It comes stuffed with a catalog and two surprisingly useful booklets that deserve as much mention as the screen itself -- something I wasn't expecting as I strolled into my FLGS to pick this product up. This review will cover all four components:

• The four-panel GM's Screen itself
• Where We're Going, the 8-page color catalog*
• GURPS Lite, a 32-page distillation of the basic rules
• GURPS Character Creation, a 48-page grab bag of helpful information and custom forms

*Don't worry. I don't spent a lot of time on this one, promise.

Ready? Onward we go...

GURPS GM's Screen

One of the things I was most impressed with about Basic Set: Campaigns was the almost-last chapter, "Tables". It was well-organized and easy to use, with every table you might need being right at hand. So it should come as no surprise that the same designers have made a very useful GM's Screen. The physical layout is four vertical sheets, for a total of eight pages. Two of the pages (the middle back) are filled with artwork, while the remaining six pages are packed with useful charts, tables, lists, and rules.

When I say "packed", mind you, I don't mean "squeezed in". Each entry is clearly separated from the others and easy to read. The font is large enough to read in good light from a few feet away, and I never found myself squinting or having to lean in while running my first 4th Edition game. The titles of each entry are big and bold, and every page is laid out in a unique style so your eyes tend to fall right to the page that you need each time.

The Data Within. Here's what you get, with the front pages (i.e., the ones that face the GM by default) first, then the two "wing" pages (i.e., the ones that face the players, but can be folded in easily).

• Front Page One: Melee Attack Modifiers, Active Defense Modifiers, Hit Location Table (with effects of damage to each hit location).
• Front Page Two:Ranged Attack Modifiers, the Size and Speed/Range Table, Firearm Malfunctions.
• Front Page Three: Fright Check Table, Probability of Success (for skill rolls), Posture Table, Long-Distance Modifiers, Critical Spell Failure Table.
• Front Page Four: Reaction Table, Effects of Injury, Effects of Fatigue, Throwing Distance, Maneuver Table, Damage Table (for ST).
• Left Wing Page: Critical Hit Table, Critical Head Blow Table, Critical Miss Table, Unarmed Critical Miss Table, Damage From Thrown Objects.
• Right Wing Page: Task Difficulty, Task Modifiers (all the stuff from the first chapter of Campaigns), Critical Success and Failure rules, Cover DR, Size Modifier and Reach.

Of course, Steve Jackson Games is still all about the artwork after launching the new edition, so the GM Screen has a fair amount of that as well. Small illustrations break up the flow of text on each page (contributing to their uniqueness, as mentioned above), but the centerpiece is the John Zeleznik painting that spreads across the two middle "player pages". Depicting the Iconic Characters from Characters in combat with Mooks on Pterodactyls, it does justice to GURPS' central theme of Infinite Worlds. A very nice piece for a very well-done screen.

Where We're Going

I only mention this 8-page color catalog because it's included. Obviously, it won't be a huge draw for anyone, but it is nice to read a summary of how the new edition is doing and where Steve Jackson Games is taking GURPS in the near future. News on price cuts of certain items, pictures of their new Cardboard Castles, and a list of all SJG products currently available rounds out this insert.

GURPS Lite

The 576 pages of GURPS Fourth Edition distilled down to 32 pages? Well... yeah, basically. The character creation rules in Lite save an amazing amount of space by assuming that you're making humans (as opposed to the elves, aliens, transforming vehicles, and intelligent computer programs running on a network that Characters lets you build), that you don't need to tweak their secondary stats, and that you don't need any optional or extra-detailed rules about task resolution, combat, and special situations. Combat, for example, is almost a verbatim copyover from the "Basic Combat" presented in Characters, a section that already had everything a player needed to know to slash away.

GURPS Lite presents the "three rolls" of GURPS (success rolls, reaction rolls, damage rolls) and some advice on how to use them. Then a sizable chunk is taken up by character creation rules, with a list of Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills that, while humanocentric, are applicable to anything from Ice Age to Cosmic Sci-Fi. You get some weapon tables and explanations, some rules for important physical feats, and then the combat rules. The last section covers injury and recovery before closing with special situations (like colliding/falling, disease, fire, heat, cold, and suffocating) that are likely to come up in a game.

Does GURPS Lite really have everything you need to run a game? Sure. Does it replace the core GURPS books? Of course not. In fact, considering that anyone who buys this GM's screen is almost certain to already have the core books, I'd say the greatest value of Lite is two fold. First, it's a useful reference tool during a game -- if you already have your Campaigns book open to a crucial section and just need to reference a quick combat rule, it's easier to just pick up your Lite. Second, its simplified format and smaller size may make it less intimidating to new players who want to learn the basic rules without getting into the details.

Please note that GURPS Lite is available in PDF format for free download here. Therefore, it's hard to put too high a value on its inclusion in the GM's Screen. However, speaking as a person who had already printed out a copy, the professionally printed, stapled version is easier to flip through and takes up a lot less space when stuck in a folder along with a few character sheets. So I'm dubbing its inclusion a definite plus.

GURPS Character Creation

Ahh, the meat. I was very pleasantly surprised by this 48-page booklet. Like Lite, it contains a professionally printed version of a PDF available as a free download. Unlike Lite, it also contains some very useful stuff not currently available anywhere else.

Character Creation starts off with the 24-page GURPS Update, a methodical document which carefully covers how to convert Third Edition characters (as well as animals, monsters, etc.) to Fourth Edition. All of the Attributes, Advantages, Disadvantages, Skills, and Psionics from Third Edition's Basic Set and Compendium I are listed, with conversions for each one! More importantly, all the new things from Fourth Edition are addressed here, such as Cultural Familiarity and other social abilities. The conversions range from simple match-ups (e.g., "Sanity [5] = Above Suspicion [1]") to detailed descriptions (e.g., the seven paragraphs dedicated to converting Allies). Those not picking up the GM's Screen can still obtain Update as a free download here -- but I find the version in Character Creation far more useful, both for being professionally printed and bound, and for being bundled with other material (keep reading) that compliments it so well.

After Update, you get my favorite "crunchy part" of this whole package: The customized character sheets. Yep, this is what a real GURPS geek drools over. Easily photocopied, these ten pages mix and match fronts and backs so you can make any kind of character sheet you could imagine! You get:

1. Front: Standard sheet
2. Back: Standard sheet
3. Front: "Racial Template" sheet with room to notate race and racial bonuses
4. Back: "Racial Template" sheet with room for Template Traits
5. Front: "Full Combat Info" sheet with all Traits removed and replaced with Ranged and Melee weapon boxes, Armor and Possessions, Hit Location, and an expanded Speed/Range Table
6. Back: "All Traits" with almost the whole back of the sheet replaced with huge boxes for Advantages, Disadvantages, and a ton of Skills
7. Front: "Skill-Heavy" sheet with the Social Traits squashed down to make room for more skills.
8. Front: "Advantage-Heavy" sheet with the Social Traits squashed down and Skills and Disadvantages squeezed underneath, to make room for twice as many Advantages.
9. Back: "Spells" sheet, omitting the Speed/Range and Hit Location, and shortening the Weapons and Possessions boxes to make room for up to 60 spells on the back.
10. Front: "Partial Combat Info" sheet with all Social Traits except Reaction omitted to fit extra Armor and Weapons boxes onto the front.

The mind glees at the combinations available. Making a super? You'll certainly want an Advantage-Heavy front and Standard back, then! Making a wizened mage? Then combine the Skill-Heavy front with the Spells back! This sort of thing is useful and fun.

Then we get the two page "Character Creation Cheat Sheet", with 98% of the tables, charts, and rules that you normally flip back to when building a character. All attribute costs, wealth costs (and effects), social costs and rules (including Cost of Living), the Build Table, Skill Table, Technique Table, Size Modifier Table, Damage/Basic Lift Table, and the Tech Level/Starting Wealth Table are here. Even the advice on how to select your attributes and skill levels is here. These two pages alone have become the "GM's Screen of character creation" to me. It's all here.

Finally, enhanced versions of other available resources make up the rest of the booklet. You get a sheet with four blank NPC Record Cards on it, a GM Control Sheet with more room and more lines, a Campaign Planning Form, and then the piece de resistance, the Master List of Traits. This eight page list sums up the names and costs of every Advantage, Disadvantage, Modifier, Skill, and Technique in Characters. Such a list is already available at the back of that book, but it becomes far more useful when you can keep it side-by-side with the big book as a reference instead of constantly flipping pages.

I was not expecting this booklet with my GM's Screen, and I was amazed at how useful I've found it. GURPS Character Creation is an indispensably useful tool to keep by your side when building characters. It has become as useful to me when building characters as the screen itself has been when running games.

Final Analysis