 Goto [ Index ] |
GURPS Rogues
It Takes A Thief...
GURPS Rogues is the latest in a series of Template-based character supplements for GURPS. It's the first of them that I've seen so I can't compare it to GURPS Warriors or GURPS Wizards but I believe that it's very similar in design.
The basic idea is that GURPS Rogues gives you a ton of character templates and example characters for different sorts of rogues, thieves and ne'er-do-wells. A "template" is just a list of suggestions for making a specific character type. For example, the entry on the plain-old "Goon" discusses what sort of stats a typical thug would have, recommending a ST and HT of 12 each and a DX of 11. They further suggest leaving IQ at 10 and using various mental disadvantages to represent a goon's poor brainpower, rather than just making them stupid. This is followed up by a writeup that describes a 65 point Goon template. Basically, they give you the suggested stats and their costs, then let you take 30 points worth of advantages from a list of likely candidates (each one with its own point cost listed) and -30 points of disadvantages from a similar list of choices. Then they tell you to spend 8 points on combat skills, making sure that at least one is at the 12+ level. Finally, it suggests 7 points worth of secondary skills from a list of appropriate ones.
So if you follow all of their guidelines, when you're done you'll have spent 65 character points and have a fairly stereotypical goon of some sort. That leaves the typical 100 point character a lot of room for further customizations... or your GM could just use this to crank out a ton of generic thugs at 65 points each. Naturally, it's easy to tweak the template. Nothing is based on other choices elsewhere; they tell you how many points to divide up between what skills, but they don't try to predict what the final values of those skills will be, because that would depend on you sticking to their suggested stats exactly.
To then demonstrate the use of the goon template, they give four example characters from four different game settings. In this case, we get Greg Crowe (a zombie slave), Hideo (an artifact spirit from GURPS Japan), Vitus (a gigantic slave from GURPS Imperial Rome) and my favorite, Wolf. Wolf is a K-10A Postcanine for GURPS Transhuman Space. A genetically uplifted intelligent guard dog, Wolf makes for a nasty thug but at heart he's still a dog. You'd be more likely to successfully bribe him with a scratch behind the ears and a doggie treat than a wad of cash. As an aid to creating similar characters, they also provide a short writeup of the K10-A Postcanine package, which consists of a huge number of advantages and disadvantages and ends up at a total of just -1 points. Of course, you'd probably need Transhuman Space to look up what all of the advantages and disadvantages do. I mean, I can make a good guess at the game effects of "Horizontal (-10)" and "Chummy (-5)", but I'd rather have the rules handy to see for sure.
The templates take up the vast majority of the book. There are only about 10 pages of additional material not directly related to specific templates, and 7 of them are on how the templates were constructed and various ways to use them. There are a lot of ways. They even suggest stuff like "Lenses" and "Filters", mini-templates that can be combined to produce specific character types (e.g.- create a "Nobleman" lens that can be applied to any character to give them the appropriate Status advantages and etiquette skills), but you'll have to make these yourself, probably by just taking sections out of existing templates. Still, it's nice to see the various options discussed.
We get 29 fully developed templates, covering a diverse gallery of rogues such as Con Artist, the Evil Mastermind, Pickpocket, Saboteur... and even some less obvious ones like Prostitute and Street Doctor. The example characters are probably the most interesting part of the book. Some of them were clearly chosen to show how broad the template could be. For example, one of the Assassins is a military sniper, more of a war hero than a hired killer. One of the Cat Burglars actually has a racial template that's worth -76 points because he's not human... he's a trained parrot. It's these sort of creative uses that show the versatility of the template system.
The art is decent. It's a huge mix of styles, but that's kind of appropriate considering all of the myriad settings that this book is aimed at. None of the pieces were particularly striking or especially bad. I think it's about typical for GURPS books, which generally have better ideas than art.
While it's generic, it's very system specific. So, unlike a lot of GURPS products, I wouldn't recommend this one to people who don't play GURPS. There are some nice ideas, sure, but they're going to be buried in a morass of system-specific information. Which brings me to an aside: what the heck does the "Starglazing" skill do? It's some sort of thief/rogue skill, but I couldn't find it in any of my old GURPS books. Since GURPS Rogues doesn't define any of the abilities it mentions, but just refers to them by name, you really do need to have the other books handy to use this product.
For people who do play GURPS, this is a nice set of templates and doubtless an excellent companion to the first two template books. I like the fact that they often discuss why something is recommended instead of just listing it. Oh, and it does have a 1 page index. I give it a 3 for Style and a 4 for Substance. For non-GURPS players, though, the Substance would probably be 2 at best. Stick with their more generic supplements in that case.
