Review of GURPS Supers

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This review is in response to Brandon Blackmoor's review as well as being a complete review. As such, I have referred back to his review a couple times.

GURPS Supers is Steve Jackson Games's Supers book. It contains the complete rules to play super characters with the Basic Set, discussion of super characters and super worlds, a sample campaign setting and 16 sample character.

Contrary to the other review, you only need two books to run a supers campaign - GURPS Basic and GURPS Supers. There is no reason that you have to have psionic or mage characters in a supers campaign, but if you do, there is ample rules for magic and psionics in the basic set to run either. (Psionicists with mind-control wreck havoc at this level (Supers mentions some fixes to this.) Mages may be built better using the Supers rules, like Necron (pg SU124), than the Magic rules.) I have yet to understand the compaints about having to buy Basic to run GURPS games, instead of having them in the book. I don't have to pay another 5-10 dollars each time I want a new GURPS supplement for rules I have, and there are no slight differences between the rules of this game and the rules of that game. I have three slightly different copies of the Palladium rules, and I paid for each copy (when I don't even like the Palladium rules.)

Sorry about the raving.

As for additional rules, GURPS Psionics, Magic and Martial Arts (hey! you missed martial arts characters! GURPS Supers doesn't cover those either!) offers expansions that might be helpful for your Supers campaign. GURPS Wizards includes some interesting rules on super mages that might be helpful also. None of these books are required or even necessary, though.

I don't quite understand Blackmoor's complaints about the system. GURPS Supers offers a fairly complete list of powers for you to pick from. Speak with Animals, Speak with Fish, and Speak with Plants are all seperate, because they are seperate powers with different prices. Insubstantiality gives you the effect, and lets you pick the exact description. Powers are bought GURPS-style, with complete freedom of choice and seperately (which is what I assume he was complaining about it being cafeteria-style). I don't understand what's wrong with letting the player design the character, instead of forcing him into what the game designer thinks is logical.

My big complaint is what the other reviewer only alluded to. Supers is way above GURPS's normal level of play, and high level Supers play doesn't work well. High enough levels of strength to model the Hulk or Superman are tens of thousands of points if not more. Abilities are not always balanced at 500-1000 points, and it seems easy to produce characters of widely varing power. It's also a very tedious to make a super charater. I'm looking for GURPS Wild Cards, a lower level Supers setting (250-300 points), because I think GURPS Supers might play well at that type of power level, with a less 4-color type setting.

Another complaint was that it doesn't seem to be well point-balanced internally. Claws are extremely expensive compared to an attack power. Regrowth seems costly, compared with Regeneration. Gadget power rules (not the gadgeteering rules found elsewhere) are really cheap, and almost force the GM to take away or break the item to justify the cost break - then having taken away all the character's powers, the player needs a new character to play.

Most of the useful rules of this book have been reprinted in Compendium I and II. I picked up this book as a major GURPS rulebook, to be complete. Having never seen any of the other super roleplaying games, I can't compare them, but Supers seems to be the one setting where GURPS really breaks down. (Cover art by Romas; courtesy of SJ Games)

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)