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When the first edition of GURPS was released in the 1980’s, it was believed that it worked for fantasy but little else. Since then the emphasis of the system has tilted far away from traditional RPG-style fantasy (which bears little resemblance, when you come right down to it, to what actual fantasy writers write), but every so often they have come back to it. Their newest attempt at the genre is this genre book, designed to give GMs the basis for building their own fantasy milieus. It is teamed with the new edition of GURPS Magic, which provides the meat of the spell list, and GURPS Banestorm, yet another attempt to get people interested in the Yrth setting. These two books will be dealt with in other articles.

The book in hand is, like the entire 4e line, a glossy hardcover, which makes it an expensive buy for a genre book. Because it is much more toolkit than setting, it not only invites comparison to last year’s Fantasy HERO but ties you up and holds you hostage until you give one. What we have here is a collection of ideas for do-it-yourself fantasy campaign setups, one sample setting that is too small and too expansive at the same time, and a whole bunch of archetypes that can be useful for designing PCs and serve to illustrate how heavily the GURPS line has invested in the template concept.

The book is divided into sections on genres, on various ways to use magic, and sections on characters. Although there is some information provided, the basic gist of these sections seems to be “it’s your world, and if it makes internal sense you can do it your way”. The internal consistency is the key, however. GURPS when gamemastered well approaches just about everything with exacting rigor. It may not be the best idea to try and pull things out of your hat in this game, because GURPS players expect a logical cosmos even if gods are walking the earth transforming people into poultry at whim.

The really useful section doesn’t begin until the sixth chapter, when character and racial templates are brought in. If nothing else, this section shows how template-driven GURPS has become. Fifteen races are provided, in addition to several “Undead lenses”. There are some campaigns where they will require tailoring, but for generic purposes they work. The occupational templates that follow provide numerous good starting points for characters of specific types, not quite a true class system but decent starting points. With work it would be possible to turn a D&D character class into one of these templates if you can find ways to convert the abilities. One of the more interesting such templates is the True King, a rightful ruler of a nation who at the moment happens to not be sitting on the throne. The only new rules are several additional techniques, which are one of the dodgier parts of the system to begin with.

The sample ideas that follow for magic systems and adventures make for neat reading, but nothing especially original. More interesting are the adventure seeds scattered throughout the sections, which include some nifty little ideas.

The setting provided, Roma Arcana, is a fantastical roman empire that never fell but is nonetheless in a state of considerable decay. Imperial Rome was always a favorite of the GURPS historical books and Roma Arcana GMs would benefit from reading that 3rd Edition tome. It’s a very interesting setting, which deserves more coverage, although it’s not always exactly crystal-clear what adventurers will do there. The start of the campaign is apparently intended to be the petty intrigues of a frontier town and the surrounding area.

I don’t want to damn this book with faint praise, but although it is well put-together the lack of originality seems to be the book’s main weakness. This is designed to give players the fantasy they expect – which, as I have said before, seems to have little resemblance to what the people who write fantasy for a living are actually writing. There’s plenty of meat here, but a few more out-of-the-box ideas would have made GURPS Fantasy an even more appetizing dish.