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GURPS Powers is easily the most central of the books released yet for GURPS Fourth Edition. While GURPS Magic and GURPS Fantasy focus on subjects central to many GURPS games, Powers is more generic. Rather than looking at a subset of rules or a specific genre, Powers expands and clarifies the character creation system.
A handy précis for this book has been “GURPS Psionics and Supers in one,” but that’s too narrow an explanation. Fourth Edition did away with the specialized rules for psionics, and integrated many of the abilities seen in the old Supers book into the Advantages chapter of the Basic Set. What Powers really does is explain how best to use the Advantages, Enhancements, and Limitations found in GURPS to emulate abilities common in fiction. The authors are very clear on this – in their examples, style and genre considerations are at least as important as game mechanics. So while supers and psis are covered, they are only among the many possible beneficiaries of Powers’ contents.
What’s New?
When Steve Jackson Games abandoned GURPS Third Edition in favor of the “hacked, jacked, punched, and pulverized” Fourth Edition, many long-time GURPS fans cheered: The new edition would streamline the system and eliminate the need for multiple books or repetition of rules among books. The Fourth Edition’s Basic Set: Characters, they were told, would contain all the Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills they would ever need.
Surprise! That’s not true. GURPS Powers introduces at least five new Advantages (depending on how you count them) necessary to emulate abilities common among fictional characters. Along the way, many new Enhancements and Limitations are introduced to allow more-careful tailoring of the existing Advantages. As was the case in Third Edition, though, few of the new rules are likely to be of interest to players and GMs in most games, so it’s hard to complain too loudly. What this material underscores is that Powers comes closest among the books yet released to being “core” alongside the two volumes of the Basic Set.
The largest addition to GURPS is the lengthy explanations and examples of ways to use Advantages. In essence, that’s the entire purpose of the book, though “GURPS: Enhancements and Limitations Instruction Manual” would probably not have been a big seller. As predicted by the actual title, the discussion begins with “powers” themselves. In game-mechanical terms, a power is simply a set of enhancements and limitations that apply to a thematic set of Advantages. Psi is one power; super is another. As mentioned earlier, the authors are at least as concerned with style and genre as game mechanics, though. Not every Advantage can fit within every power – and many will require specific Enhancements or Limitations before they are stylistically appropriate. An example is the Binding ability within the power of Necromancy. It doesn’t really fit – until given the Environmental limitation “only in death-aspected areas,” where it can be used to emulate skeletal hands emerging from the ground to seize the target.
The 82-page second chapter looks at the full list of Advantages, Enhancements, and Limitations. Here the authors provide new Enhancements and Limitations (most specific to an Advantage, but some generic) and a wealth of ideas on how to use Advantages to emulate fictional abilities. Most useful of all, though, is the “Alternatives” segment under most of the entries. The authors suggest other Advantages that should be considered during character creation, as well as clarifying distinctions among them. Every entry has a “Powering Up” segment to suggest which powers are the best thematic fits. The final sections of this chapter address special problems from fiction, such as invulnerability, as well as matching powers to setting and genre. Some of this material felt as if it would have been better-off elsewhere in the book, but that did little to lessen its utility.
From there, the authors move on to 31 pages of examples (including handy reference tables for Innate Attacks and Afflictions). First comes a lengthy list of powers, with suggested lists of Advantages they contain. Next is a list of abilities, from built-in anti-tank rockets to universal antibodies. GURPS players who have experimented with the Enhancements and Limitations in the Basic Set could have developed most of these on their own, but the math-phobic or time-pressured will find these extremely useful.
Chapter four addresses “Powers in Action,” including clarifications of game concepts, new ways to use powers in combat, and, predictably, the special effects of relying on abilities provided from a specific source. Again, the emphasis on style and genre is obvious. My favorite section is “Stunts,” which attempts to deal with the zany things players will want to do with their abilities, and allow the GM to do more than say “You can’t do that.”
The last two chapters are essentially GM advice, including point levels for starting characters, balancing powers, dealing with plot-breaking abilities, and types of games. It’s all good, useful stuff, if not especially inspired.
What’s Good?
I’ve pointed out my favorite parts of the text already, but I should mention that the layout is clean and easy to follow, and the index is excellent. The text is clean and clear.
What’s Bad?
I wouldn’t say that anything is particularly bad, but there are parts of the book that are mediocre. Beginning with the front cover art, which suggests that Powers will address only supers (the back cover is more diverse for some reason), the art is uninspiring. That’s not to say that it’s bad – I quite like some pieces – but that none of them make me want to break out the dice right now the way even some of the line art from the old (pre-Smif) unrevised Third Edition did. There’s also less art to be found here than in other recent GURPS books, although that means those 240 pages are mostly text. Of course, I would not have minded dropping at least some of the text. The chapter-opening fiction vignettes are dull. My vote would have been to replace them with more art.
What’s the Verdict?
As mentioned, the art is good but uninspiring and the fiction vignettes are bland. The layout is clear, though, and I found no typos in my (admittedly quick) first read. Powers warrants a 4 out of 5 for style.
Substance is where this book really shines. There’s a ton of material to work with, and many examples to let GMs start using it right away. It got me excited about running a GURPS game, easily earning at a 5 out of 5 for substance.
