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Like the other books in the Dummies catalog, GURPS for Dummies is intended as a neophyte’s introduction to the subject. The general Dummies structure is kept intact here, including icons signaling important paragraphs, cartoons on the splash pages for each section, and a tear-out reference sheet that the authors generously refer to as a GM’s screen. Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies made a certain amount of sense, given that game’s domination of the market, but GURPS for Dummies came as a complete surprise. Even stranger, it is one of three titles currently promoted in the “games” section of the Dummies.com site, the other two covering Chess and Xbox 360. It was also the only GURPS title available at my local Books-A-Million, which had hundreds of D&D books, two copies of Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies, and a lone copy of Vampire: the Requiem.
The authors are longtime GURPS players and GMs, and two of the three have written other how-to books. They look at only Fourth Edition GURPS, although there are a handful of references to Third Edition to indicate where important changes have been made.
Part the First: Being the Player
The first 13 chapters are addressed to the new GURPS player. Naturally, they focus on creating a character and getting into the role. The first six chapters discuss basic elements of the game and elements of character creation common to every GURPS character. The next four add magic, powers, technology, and non-human character races to the mix. Chapter 11 looks at combat, chapter 12 deals with keeping track of everything during the game session, and chapter 13 suggests ways to breathe life into the character.
The problem with a character creation system as flexible as GURPS is that new players become overwhelmed by choices. In my mind, a competent guide would steer players toward a solid character concept and then aid in making decisions that complement that concept. From the beginning, the authors emphasize the flexibility of GURPS. Their introduction suggests characters as diverse as wizards, cops, Amazon princesses, space opera Cosmic Rangers, and Lovecraftian investigators. Unfortunately, the character creation advice is primarily a survey of the possibilities of GURPS, with very little guidance.
Advantages, disadvantages, and skills are discussed in turn, with three sample characters included as examples. These are a detective, a Halfling mage, and a low-level superhero. I found them only moderately interesting, and because the authors spend so little time explaining the rationale for the decisions made for each character, they don’t adequately illustrate the character creation process. Because powers and racial templates are described later, two of the three completed characters come out of nowhere.
Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies has been criticized for its emphasis on character optimization. GURPS for Dummies doesn’t quite ignore the issue, but the advice it does present is vague and limited to attribute levels relative to skill costs. That’s something of a mixed blessing. Powergamers can be a nuisance, but inefficient point allocation can be a problem as well, if it leads to unexpectedly weak or useless characters. Chapter two does suggest a few basic “functional roles” (such as combat specialist, sneak, brainiac, and medic), and tells players to choose a focus for the character, but later chapters do little to tie those functions and foci back into trait selection. A full discussion of every trait in GURPS would be impossible, but the authors appear not to have considered including criteria with which to choose among the possible traits. The discussion of disadvantages is a partial exception, in that it suggests choosing weaknesses orthogonal to the areas the character’s strengths. Better than nothing, perhaps, but far from complete.
GURPS Basic Set puts traits in several categories to indicate the sorts of games and characters for which they are appropriate. The Dummies authors largely disregard those categories here. Silence is an advantage that provides a bonus to the Stealth skill, based on an ability to breath or move quietly. It is an “exotic” trait, meaning that normal humans cannot have it without “ultra-tech body modifications or similar tampering.” The authors are in the habit of allowing a single level of it among normal humans, and say so. But other exotic traits, such as Arm Strength, are inserted without comment. This kind of lax treatment might not create significant difficulties in the game, but putting that sort of house rule in what’s supposedly an introduction to GURPS (i.e., Steve Jackson Games’ flagship RPG, not Stuart J. Stuple’s Wednesday night game) was an unfortunate decision. Other recommendations, such as buying down a character’s Health, also seem specific to the authors’ play style and campaigns, rather than being reflective of the GURPS rules.
Similar problems show up elsewhere in this section. In places it’s impossible to tell whether the authors are presenting the rules as they use them or simply don’t know what the Basic Set actually says. Two examples: First, according to the authors, Karate and Judo allow “two attacks and two parries.” They actually allow no more attacks than any other melee skill, and the two parries are merely a consequence of having two “weapons” ready – something easily duplicated with any melee skill by carrying a weapon in each hand. Second, the pick is listed as a favored weapon for characters with Strength 10, because it does swing+1 impaling damage. What the authors omit is that it also does damage as it is pulled out of the victim, which requires a Ready maneuver and hence another turn, and has a chance of getting stuck (rendering it useless for the duration of combat).
Chapter 13, though brief, is an acceptable introduction to the roleplaying part of the game. It covers basic game etiquette, character biographies, and the other interstices left between the rules and the game experience. It seems to me that much of this material would have been better to have introduced at the outset of character creation.
Obviously, these mistakes, misrepresentations, and omissions would, in many games, be handled by the GM. In an introductory book, though, it seems odd to rely on the players having a GM who will be competent to do all that work. A GM who has to be told that it’s okay to reject a player’s character concept should not be put in the position of having to reject or amend the depiction of a character trait in a how-to book. Fortunately, the GMs’ section is better; a new GM reading this book stands a pretty good chance of eventually becoming competent.
Part the Second: Being the GM
Two hundred pages in, GURPS for Dummies begins to speak directly to the GM. The first three chapters deal with the basics, including managing players and keeping them happy. The second five look more carefully at setting elements and world building.
After the players’ section, I had low expectations for the authors’ advice for GMs. Initially I was disappointed not to see more advice geared specifically toward GURPS GMs. Among other things, points-based “buffet style” character creation create problems that even experienced GMs might not have thought about, and that new GMs can be expected to struggle with. Most of the material is far more generic, which while a boon to the new GM makes the book much less useful to experienced GMs who are switching to GURPS.
Chapter 14 introduces basic GM issues, and covers the most important facets of the job: You have the power to and have to be willing to say no, for example. An interesting decision here is to fully endorse the use of a laptop with Microsoft Excel to manage the game session. At times it felt almost like a primer on the use of Excel (the authors even include a formula for calculating skill levels based on the number of points spent), but it’s obvious that the techniques described have the potential to make sessions run more efficiently. Chapter 15 looks at what goes into a simple adventure. Chapter 16 is extremely brief and deals with what chapter 14 skipped over – dealing with and motivating players during the game. Most of what is presented here has nothing to do with GURPS, and much of it is more about general socialization than gaming per se. It’s all good stuff for a new GM to know, though.
Chapters 17 to 21 are a thoughtful and comprehensive look at the campaign. I’m not clear on why chapter 15, on adventures, was separated from this material, and even within these chapters the organization is suspect. Still, the authors work hard to get GMs to think about the world surrounding the campaign events. This material is almost completely generic, and worth a read by GMs of every experience level. The sample game world, called Avonlea, has some nice ideas and the authors do a good job of using it to illustrate the decision points described in the text. As in the players’ section, their preferences and play style influence what is presented here; their distaste for PC-as-demigod and hack-and-slash play styles is evident, for example.
I also appreciated the advice on dealing with NPC-related character traits. Enemies, allies, patrons, and contacts get specific treatment in the authors’ discussion of NPCs within the game. However, there are other traits perhaps more deserving of commentary. If the authors are going to recommend Flight as an advantage for player characters, it seems only fair to provide the GM with tips on dealing with characters with Flight. If they allow Silence for normal humans, it would have been nice to see a list of other “exotic” traits that they think can be taken by normal humans without affecting the game too much. And so on.
Had I been presented with these chapters when I first tried to run a game almost two decades ago, I probably would have ignored them. Still, I’m confident that they would have helped me if I’d read them, and am confident that a new GM who takes their contents seriously will also be a far better GM than he would have otherwise. Much of what people like me had to learn by trial and error is presented succinctly and clearly.
Part the Third: Appendices
This is the “Part of Tens” and the glossary. Given that these are part of the Dummies formula, their mediocre content, and the complete lack of integration with the rest of the book, I have to wonder whether they were tacked on. The “Part of Tens” consists of three lists with ten items each: “Rules for Spending Points,” “Advantages We Like,” and “Disadvantages That Aren’t Too Painful.”
I found the guidelines for point expenditures interesting, and generally agreed with them, but the other two lists are too campaign-specific to be of much use. Why occupy space on a short list with a items like Flight and Damage Resistance that are “not available in most campaigns”? Weapon Master is suggested without mentioning that it is a cinematic ability, repeating the problems seen in the players’ section.
“Disadvantages That Aren’t Too Painful” is a subjective standard, but I disliked the list the authors put together. Part of that is naturally the problem of presenting a disadvantage as “not too painful” – “painful” may not be synonymous with “restrictive,” but if a disadvantage doesn’t hurt there has to be some question of whether it’s worth any points. I would have preferred a list of “disadvantages that are fun” or “disadvantages you’ll actually want to take.” The list here seems to encourage players to avoid integrating their characters into the setting.
These lists are followed by a fairly complete glossary and, mercifully, an index. The index is structured oddly and seems to have a few omissions, but was still useful when I used it while writing this review.
The Verdict
This was a difficult book to review. After finishing reading the players’ section, I was disappointed with the content. The GMs’ section impressed me far more, though, making me rethink how I might rate the entire book. If I could, I would provide separate ratings for each, but the tyranny of RPG.net continues, and I meekly obey its strictures.
While the text of the book impressed me more as I went along, the style of the book became increasingly annoying. The distinct authorial voices of the three authors stand out in places, which is a problem only insofar as at least one of them needed more help from his editor. But the text is vastly better than the organization and visual components.
To be fair, the authors say early on that the book is intended to be used a single chapter at a time. Reading a reference book cover-to-cover is, to a certain degree, missing the point. My fatigue in reading the book is probably understandable. Still, the advice in some chapters seems to conflict with what is said elsewhere, and certain topics are spread out or repeated in unfortunate ways. Number 10 among the “Advantages We Like” is Talents, but in the players’ section Talents get only brief and ambivalent discussion, and they are not mentioned at all in the discussion of character specialization, even though they may be the single best tool in GURPS for ensuring niche protection. The “Part of Tens” is apparently a standard feature in Dummies books, but separating lists of suggested Advantages and Disadvantages from the advice on character creation seems mindless. At minimum, there should be a cross-reference to those lists amid the more general advice, but it does not exist.
Worse, the “Part of Tens” is missing two chapters. Given the limited number of GURPS titles released for Fourth Edition, chapter 26, “best books GMs should own,” is a reasonable cut. However, chapter 25, “ten skills every character ought to have,” might have been helpful in character creation and is not adequately compensated for elsewhere. The margins and font size are already generous, and formatting decisions such as indented lists create even more empty space, so the approximately 400 pages of material (the rest of the book being filled with things like Fifth Wave cartoons and advertising for other Dummies products) are heavily padded. Why two lists had to be cut is a mystery to me.
Without a doubt, the worst parts of the book are Rich Tennant’s Fifth Wave cartoons, appearing on the splash pages for each section of the book. The artist must have taken some time to look over the text, because elements of the game are incorporated, but it’s also obvious that he has no idea what the game is about. His sense of humor is not entirely evident, either. The cartoons are almost endearing in their cluelessness, like a parent trying to be “cool” around her kids, but these verge into the pathetic and desperate, like a single dad showing off for his daughter's friends. They’re a waste of space, and with lots of potential artists around who actually get it are pretty much unforgivable.
The cover art is taken from the GURPS GM’s Screen, complete with the infamous suggestive firearm. I don’t object to it nearly as much as some people, although I have to wonder what its effect on new gamers would be. How many people get into gaming because they want to be involved in the story of a vampire with an enchanted blunderbuss invading the fortress of the pterodactyl riders? Other art in the book is taken from the GURPS Basic Set. Not all of it survives the transition to grayscale, and none of it is placed with any apparent connection to the text. Instead, it seems to be intended purely to fill space.
Despite my problems with the players’ section, GURPS for Dummies earns a 4 (rounded up) for its substance. The GMs’ section is as good an introduction to the job of running a roleplaying game (if not GURPS in particular) as I have seen anywhere. The “GM’s Screen” tear-out in the front of the book also adds some value. For $21.99 I’d expect more, but I’ve found large discounts at Amazon.com, Warehouse 23, and Books-A-Million, making GURPS for Dummies a reasonable value. However, the uneven writing, sloppy organization, bizarrely unfunny comics, and the sparse art (and its haphazard selection and placement) drag the book down to a 2 for style.
