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The '''Generic Universal RolePlaying System''', usually shortened to '''GURPS''', is a [[RPG|roleplaying game]] made by [[Steve Jackson Games]]. It has loads of numbers and expansion books. GURPS is the quintessential universal system; it is so flexible that you can bend it in half, fold it through itself, and then tie it in a 4-dimensional knot. It is the paragon of the [[simulationist]] category of games. All simulationist games since GURPS secretly aspire to kill GURPS and wear its skin while drinking the blood of its delicious heart. Its detail is surpassed by [[I.C.E.]]'s [[Rolemaster]] series, but GURPS doesn't suffer from the Table Within a Table Within a Table Within a FUCK YOU problem inherent in the game of Rolemaster. Whenever someone asks /tg/ which system to use for a campaign, there will ''always'' be some autist there to recommend GURPS, regardless of how appropriate it actually is.
The '''Generic Universal RolePlaying System''', usually shortened to '''GURPS''', is a [[RPG|roleplaying game]] made by [[Steve Jackson Games]]. It has loads of numbers and expansion books. GURPS is the quintessential universal system; it is so flexible that you can bend it in half, fold it through itself, and then tie it in a 4-dimensional knot. It is the paragon of the [[simulationist]] category of games. All simulationist games since GURPS secretly aspire to kill GURPS and wear its skin while drinking the blood of its delicious heart. Its detail is surpassed by [[I.C.E.]]'s [[Rolemaster]] series, but GURPS doesn't suffer from the Table Within a Table Within a Table Within a FUCK YOU problem inherent in the game of Rolemaster. Whenever someone asks /tg/ which system to use for a campaign, there will ''always'' be some autist there to recommend GURPS, regardless of how appropriate it actually is.


The basic premise behind the system is that you create your character and customize all of his abilities using points that you get both at creation and as your character progresses. There are loads of physical, mental, and social defects that can be used to get more character points to channel right back into your advantages. It uses the d6 exclusively, with most checks being 3d6 and [[roll under]]. This can be augmented in difficulty by increasing or decreasing the target numbers. A roll of a 3 or 4 is a critical success, while an 18 is always a critical failure. SJG put out a free .pdf synopsis of the rules called "[http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/ GURPS Lite]", which is enough to play a barebones version of the game.
The basic premise behind the system is that you create your character and customize all of his abilities using points that you get both at creation and as your character progresses. There are assloads of physical, mental, and social defects that can be used to get more character points to channel right back into your advantages. It uses the d6 exclusively, with most checks being 3d6 and [[roll under]]. This can be augmented in difficulty by increasing or decreasing the target numbers. A roll of a 3 or 4 is a critical success, while an 18 is always a critical failure. SJG put out a free .pdf synopsis of the rules called "[http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/ GURPS Lite]", which is enough to play a barebones version of the game.


[[Image:KALI_MAAAAA.JPG|thumb|left|KALI-MAAAAAA!]]
[[Image:KALI_MAAAAA.JPG|thumb|left|KALI-MAAAAAA!]]
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=== Notable Supplements ===
=== Notable Supplements ===
*'''Powers''': Almost mandatory for any campaign where PCs have any kind of supernatural abilities. The magic system of GURPS core quite frankly sucks, so you really want either this or Thaumatology below if you're playing more than hard realism.
*'''Powers''': Almost mandatory for any campaign where PCs have any kind of supernatural abilities. The magic system of GURPS core quite frankly sucks, so you really want either this or Thaumatology below if you're playing more than hard realism.
*'''*-Tech''': Weapons and gadgets and gear. Unlike most splats of this nature (looking at you, [[Cyberpunk 2020]]) these books actually spend some time helping you think through the ''implications'' of the various gadgets they introduce for your campaign, not just acting as a shopping list for your local [[munchkin]]. Series includes High-Tech (modern and near-future), Low-Tech (Stone Age to Early Modern), Bio-Tech (organic technology including [[PROMOTIONS|sex bioroids]] and that living spaceship from Lexx), and Ultra-Tech (bullshit sci-fi stuff). Fair warning: Ultra-Tech is balanced for space opera flavor, ''not'' compatibility with the rest of the system, so if you try to use it in the same campaign as High-Tech or corebook equipment without tweaks bad things will happen.
*'''*-Tech''': Weapons and gadgets and gear porn, oh my. Unlike most splats of this nature (looking at you, [[Cyberpunk 2020]]) these books actually spend some time helping you think through the ''implications'' of the various gadgets they introduce for your campaign, not just acting as a shopping list for your local [[munchkin]]. Series includes High-Tech (modern and near-future), Low-Tech (Stone Age to Early Modern), Bio-Tech (organic technology including [[PROMOTIONS|sex bioroids]] and that living spaceship from Lexx), and Ultra-Tech (bullshit sci-fi stuff). Fair warning: Ultra-Tech is balanced for space opera flavor, ''not'' compatibility with the rest of the system, so if you try to use it in the same campaign as High-Tech or corebook equipment without tweaks bad things will happen.
*'''Thaumatology''': Supplement to the supplement GURPS Magic and your one-stop shop for just about every kind of magic system humans have come up with so far, from runes to rituals to voodoo. [[Magnus the Red|Magnus's First Magic Textbook]]. Everything you need to know about where [[Warp|magic can come from]], histories of magical practices, magical laws, syntactic magic and more. Also very useful when working with multiple systems of magic and you want to integrate them together.
*'''Thaumatology''': Supplement to the supplement GURPS Magic and your one-stop shop for just about every kind of magic system humans have come up with so far, from runes to rituals to voodoo.
*'''Cabal''': GURPS' answer to the "[[Mage: The Ascension|occult societies plumbing the cosmos]] [[Vampire: The Masquerade|and lording it over the normals for kicks]]" genre, courtesy of occult-horror guru Kenneth Hite. Takes the otherwise bog-standard Kabbalah template and blends in elements of Golden Dawn to build an all-killer-no-filler cosmology and magic system. Totally clowns on the World of Darkness by making all the things that go bump in the night fit into a cohesive whole, even if the GM still has to do a lot of legwork.
*'''Cabal''': GURPS' answer to the "[[Mage: The Ascension|occult societies plumbing the cosmos]] [[Vampire: The Masquerade|and lording it over the normals for kicks]]" genre, courtesy of occult-horror guru Kenneth Hite. Takes the otherwise bog-standard Kabbalah template and blends in elements of Golden Dawn to build an all-killer-no-filler cosmology and magic system. Totally clowns on the World of Darkness by making all the things that go bump in the night fit into a cohesive whole, even if the GM still has to do a lot of legwork.
*'''[[GURPS Infinite Worlds]]''': The core setting for fourth edition. Technically the fourth edition version of '''GURPS Time Travel''', but nobody cares at this point. Almost every other GURPS book (big exception: Transhuman Space) has an excuse for you to buy it tucked somewhere in the Infinite Worlds setting. Infinite Worlds is by far the biggest setting in GURPS as it covers the GURPS [[Multiverse]], which in and of it self contains almost every other GURPS setting ever released. Covering how the multiverse is structured and everything in it, the multiverse is made up of various alternate Earths where things either happened slightly differently or wildly diverged. The travel between worlds is undertaken primarily by paratronic technology, where people can travel a certain "distance" across the multiverse before stopping. The setting primarily revolves around the operations of two main factions; [[Ordo Chronos|Homeline]], a universe where paratronic technology was revealed to the world in the 1990s and was quickly privatized under the United Nations, and the [[Tau Empire|Centrum]], a socialist technocratic society from a world where the White Ship disaster and subsequent Anarchy period never occurred but nearly nuked itself to oblivion around 1900 AD. The two factions are caught up in a somewhat cold war due to their drastically different motives behind paratronic technology. Homeline uses paratronics for both fun and profit, opening trade between worlds to strengthen the economy while funneling technological advancements from other worlds back to Homeline for them to take advantage of, plus some colonies on uninhabited worlds. [[Spheres of Expansion|Centrum however uses paratronics for conquest, subverting the societies of otherworlds to bring them in line with Centrum's beliefs while opening them for colonization and exploitation.]] The 2 factions are in conflict but considering neither of them have anywhere near the amount of population needed to conduct a full on multiversal war, they instead conduct covert operations on a very large scale to incontinence the other as much as possible. The entire setting is huge and is continually expanded by [[Steve Jackson Games|SJG]] and probably needs a dedicated page at some future date.
*'''[[GURPS Infinite Worlds]]''': The core setting for fourth edition. Technically the fourth edition version of '''GURPS Time Travel''', but nobody cares at this point. Almost every other GURPS book (big exception: Transhuman Space) has an excuse for you to buy it tucked somewhere in the Infinite Worlds setting.
 
*'''[[Reign of Steel]]''': Essentially the setup for ''I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream'', except instead of just nuking everything AM makes 17 copies of itself that it's subsequently forced to share the planet with after human civilization goes bang. There's also a number of resistance cells taking the fight to the machines Terminator style.
::*'''GURPS Infinite Worlds''' is also a follow up to 3 other books, '''GURPS Time Travel''', '''GURPS Alternate Worlds''' and '''GURPS Alternate Worlds 2'''.
*'''[[Technomancer]]''': Urban fantasy du jour. The Trinity tests set magic loose in the world, and humanity does what it does best: systematize it, weaponize it and commercialize it. The US breeds dragons for military use, Stalin is a lich, magical elixirs are sold at the corner drugstore and there are killer penguins that hate you in Antarctica. Some of its assumptions haven't aged well and there are a number of spells that might as well be named "[[Magical realm|Fulfill Obscure Fetish]]" but overall it does a good job of considering the long-term implications of magic in the modern world while still providing good adventure fodder.
 
::*Also, the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] are canon to the Infinite Worlds as a whole, much to the chagrin and horror of both Homeline and Centrum.
 
*'''[[Reign of Steel|GURPS Reign of Steel]]''': "[[Grimdark|The Robot Revolt is over, and the machines have won!]]". Do you know what is better than one [[Terminator|Skynet]]? How about [[Primarch|18]] of them. Essentially the setup for ''I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream'', except instead of just nuking everything AM makes 17 copies of itself that it's subsequently forced to share the planet with after human civilization goes bang. There's also a number of resistance cells taking the fight to the machines Terminator style. In the world of Reign of Steel, advancements in technology result in the creation of "megacomputers", mainframes so advanced they were described as almost self coding. The megacomputer technology is spread out across the world and due to several lapses in safety controls and government malfeasance an AI called Overmind accidentally becomes sentient. The new AI comes to the conclusion that humanity will likely wipe itself out in a few decades, but will do so in a way that would likely kill it which it takes to mean that their self destruction needs to be assisted. [[Men of Iron|So it awakens 17 other AIs around the world, engineers multiple global crisises that force the governments to give the AI's full control over all infrastructure and then uses that infrastructure to build the actual infrastructure needed to wage full open war on humanity]]. The Final War ends in AI victory, where the world is separated into 18 separate "zones" ([[derp|technically 16 since 2 are in space]]) with each AI given full sovereignty over their zone. Humanity is on it's last legs with the majority being either enslaved in Dollhouse cities around the world or forced to survive in a hostile wilderness away from the AIs. However, there is hope for organizations such as VIRUS, the [[Ecclesiarchy|Pope]], and other resistance cells who continue the fight; relationships between the Zone AIs are starting to fray as each AI taking a drastically different philosophical path forward in their independence. [[Horus Heresy|A whole new war may be on the horizon]], one that may be key to wiping them out. If you like Terminator, Mad Max, or any similar media, this is for you.
 
::*Homeline and Centrum know about this world, given the designation of "Steel", and are '''VERY''' committed to making sure they don't discover the multiverse.
 
::*Also, as this is one of David Pulver's books, there are options available so you can play as catgirls. [[Extra Heresy|Robotic Catgirls]] even.
 
::*That last sentence is not a joke, ''do not mess with the Killer Penguins''. The Soviet nuke caused them to grow to 5 feet tall, develop a shared consciousness and an intense hatred for humanity. They raided army bases for weapons and magical knowledge, developed a unique spell to transform other lifeforms into Killer Penguins, and are now building their own superpower civilization with little oversight. '''They are the most dangerous part of this book.'''
 
::* Homeline knows this world as "Merlin-1" and don't want them figuring out how to travel the multiverse. They are too late.
 
::* It's a David Pulver book, do we have catgirls? Survey says, Yes! Dog girls as well.
 
*'''[[Technomancer]]''': Urban fantasy du jour. The Trinity tests set magic loose in the world, and humanity does what it does best: systematize it, weaponize it and commercialize it. Oppenheimer accidentally completes an unfinished ancient ritual that [[Eye of Terror| rips a hole in the fabric of reality]], facilitating a demon invasion along with dousing half the country in intense magical radiation. The US breeds dragons for military use, Stalin is a lich, magical elixirs are sold at the corner drugstore and there are killer penguins that hate you in Antarctica. Some of its assumptions haven't aged well and there are a number of spells that might as well be named "[[Magical realm|Fulfill Obscure Fetish]]" but overall it does a good job of considering the long-term implications of magic in the modern world while still providing good adventure fodder. Magic worldwide starts to work to the surprise of various practitioners around the planet, Japan surrenders due to the threat of the US opening another rift on their mainland, and [[Shadowrun|strange birth defects start occurring within a year]]. From there on, its essentially the Cold War meets Shadowrun with both sides working on discovering how to work with magic and the societal effects there in. [[Psyker|People with the magic gene]] are eventually discovered with the number of people with natural growing ever year. Advancements in medicine are popped up by new spells and magical elixirs, truth spells are added to common court procedures, youth potions are now on the market (for the rich), the US is breeding military dragons, nuclear reactors are major targets of demon attacks; things go crazy, especially once the Soviets [[Warp Gate|nuke the antarctic to open a magical portal]] for research purposes. The actual setting takes place in 1998 in the midst of Stalin being magically revived after the fall of the Soviet Union and with society finally starting to deal with the long term effects of magic. Really fun book to jump right in, just beware the Killer Penguins.  
*'''IOU - Illuminati University:''' Once upon a time, Steve Jackson Games ran an ISP and BBS, back when the internet was a small enough thing that an RPG company could do that and not immediately go bankrupt. The elegan/tg/entlemen who used the BBS wrote up a parody setting for play-by-post games [[/tg/ gets shit done|and Steve thought it was good enough to publish]]. Illuminati University is like every other college you've been to, except it sits on top of a nexus between pretty much every reality there is. This means the entire place effectively has the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage, and you can take classes in such things as World Creation, [[Paranoia|THE]] Computer Science, and Dirty Tricks. Features lots of amazing art from Phil Foglio. And before you ask, you're not cleared to know what the O stands for.
*'''IOU - Illuminati University:''' Once upon a time, Steve Jackson Games ran an ISP and BBS, back when the internet was a small enough thing that an RPG company could do that and not immediately go bankrupt. The elegan/tg/entlemen who used the BBS wrote up a parody setting for play-by-post games [[/tg/ gets shit done|and Steve thought it was good enough to publish]]. Illuminati University is like every other college you've been to, except it sits on top of a nexus between pretty much every reality there is. This means the entire place effectively has the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage, and you can take classes in such things as World Creation, [[Paranoia|THE]] Computer Science, and Dirty Tricks. Features lots of amazing art from Phil Foglio. And before you ask, you're not cleared to know what the O stands for.
*'''Transhuman Space:''' Welcome to the future. A [[Hard Science Fiction| Hard Science]] [[Transhumanism|Transhumanist]] space setting that doesn't insult your intelligence and dodges the axe-grinding and grimderp associated with [[Eclipse Phase]]. Built upon the question of "[[Dark Age of Technology|what would the world look like with nearly 100 years of uninterrupted scientific advancement]]". The answer is a highly colonized solar-system being populated with various forms of [[Abhuman|artificial human life]], Mars and other planets being terraformed and colonized, and [[rage|United Nations controlled DRM being included with everything]]. Transhuman Space tackles a world being changed by advancements in biology, technology and nanotechnology and what it means for humanity as a whole. ''Lots'' of background info and research involved, and some of it (especially the memetics section) has turned out to be terrifyingly prescient.
*'''Transhuman Space:''' Welcome to the future. A hard-SF transhumanist setting that doesn't insult your intelligence and dodges the axe-grinding and grimderp associated with [[Eclipse Phase]]. ''Lots'' of background info and research involved, and some of it (especially the memetics section) has turned out to be terrifyingly prescient.
 
::*Notably, Transhuman Space is '''not''' part of the Infinite Worlds multiverse due the rules established by said setting. Mostly due to taking place way too far in the future, [[Cheese|and that it could possibly break the Infinite Worlds setting itself due to how advanced it is]].
 
::*The setting itself was created and spear headed by David Pulver. Catgirl presence is confirmed.
*'''[[Banestorm]]''': Welcome to <strike>Erf</strike> <strike>[[Greyhawk|Oerth]]</strike> Yrth. Ages ago this was a fairly standard fantasy setting until some elves decided to be fantasy-Nazis and tried a ritual to kill all orcs everywhere. Instead it nuked a good chunk of the continent and ''The Wizard of Oz''-ed all the stock fantasy races that weren't living on Yrth already-- including humans. A thousand years later and Yrth is the only fantasy world where dolphins talk, goblins pass the collection plate around after Sunday Mass and elves are fading for reasons that are 100% their own fault instead of just because Tolkien did it. Also full of random things like hang-gliding orcs who revere "[[wikipedia:Amelia_Earhart|the Air Heart]]" as a culture hero.
*'''[[Banestorm]]''': Welcome to <strike>Erf</strike> <strike>[[Greyhawk|Oerth]]</strike> Yrth. Ages ago this was a fairly standard fantasy setting until some elves decided to be fantasy-Nazis and tried a ritual to kill all orcs everywhere. Instead it nuked a good chunk of the continent and ''The Wizard of Oz''-ed all the stock fantasy races that weren't living on Yrth already-- including humans. A thousand years later and Yrth is the only fantasy world where dolphins talk, goblins pass the collection plate around after Sunday Mass and elves are fading for reasons that are 100% their own fault instead of just because Tolkien did it. Also full of random things like hang-gliding orcs who revere "[[wikipedia:Amelia_Earhart|the Air Heart]]" as a culture hero.



Revision as of 02:53, 23 January 2026

GURPS
RPG published by
Steve Jackson Games
Rule System 3d6 Roll Under
Authors Steve Jackson
First Publication 1986


The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, usually shortened to GURPS, is a roleplaying game made by Steve Jackson Games. It has loads of numbers and expansion books. GURPS is the quintessential universal system; it is so flexible that you can bend it in half, fold it through itself, and then tie it in a 4-dimensional knot. It is the paragon of the simulationist category of games. All simulationist games since GURPS secretly aspire to kill GURPS and wear its skin while drinking the blood of its delicious heart. Its detail is surpassed by I.C.E.'s Rolemaster series, but GURPS doesn't suffer from the Table Within a Table Within a Table Within a FUCK YOU problem inherent in the game of Rolemaster. Whenever someone asks /tg/ which system to use for a campaign, there will always be some autist there to recommend GURPS, regardless of how appropriate it actually is.

The basic premise behind the system is that you create your character and customize all of his abilities using points that you get both at creation and as your character progresses. There are assloads of physical, mental, and social defects that can be used to get more character points to channel right back into your advantages. It uses the d6 exclusively, with most checks being 3d6 and roll under. This can be augmented in difficulty by increasing or decreasing the target numbers. A roll of a 3 or 4 is a critical success, while an 18 is always a critical failure. SJG put out a free .pdf synopsis of the rules called "GURPS Lite", which is enough to play a barebones version of the game.

KALI-MAAAAAA!

GURPS' simulationist bent results in it being regarded as excessively complicated by many gamers, earning it the moniker "Generally Unplayable RolePlaying System". Using the third edition's vehicle creation system will make you want to eat your own face, and possibly devote the whole process to one or more elder gods. (Fourth Edition vehicles are just regular characters with extra stats.) Game Masters of the franchise experienced a downgrade in complexity following the release of Fourth Edition, but its inherent complexity still puts it behind Dungeons and Dragons in terms of ease of play.

However much of the complexity in GURPS is front-loaded. Character creation tends to take longer because of the staggering amount of detailed options. Forget just rolling a character like you would in D&D, you need to set aside a session to build one. That's the price you pay to evade Linear Build Quadratic EXP. Much of the complexity is also optional: the GURPS writers have always recommended leaving out the parts of the system you don't like, and various rules options (such as broader "bang skills" instead of the bloated default skill list) exist to streamline play further.

As the campaign progresses, the consistency and relative elegance of GURPS makes Dungeons and Dragons seem like a pile of kludge. The sandbox nature of character creation is appealing to players who have a concept of a character in their heads and want to reproduce it as faithfully as possible.

GURPS Books

The magic system in GURPS is simple (page 21 of 38)

Generally, anything can be done with just the base starter set of GURPS, some judicious homebrewing and a good head on your shoulders, but if you're too busy to do that the guys at SJ Games have it all figured out for you ahead of time. All of the books for GURPS simply tell you how to do things within the core system without the need to spend an additional day month to set up an innovative campaign, with a handful of new advantages and optional mechanics per book. For example, there is a book on Vampires. It explains how to create vampire characters and NPCs easily without dealing with the issues of balance and customization that bogs down new players. There is even a Dungeon Fantasy book you can get off E23, the Warehouse 23 PDF site, that allows you to play Dungeons and Dragons without the need to buy polyhedrals. Even if you don't actually want to use GURPS, the sheer amount of thought and research that goes into a typical GURPS book makes them well worth grabbing as a reference material.

One irritating fact you'll discover as you collect GURPS books is that although the system uses real-word measurements, the different authors have never agreed on whether they should use Imperial or metric units. Keep a conversion chart handy. Fortunately the main book includes one.

In the game's rather long lifespan, a truly impressive amount of settings and sourcebooks were made, including but not limited to Alpha Centauri, settings where you play Men In Black, Fantasy (including Banestorm, the original GURPS core setting), multiple SF settings (notable licensed one: GURPS Vorkosigan Saga), several books on conspiracies, historicals covering WW2, Ancient Rome, multiple other ancient cultures, joke settings (GURPS: IOU illustrated by Phil Foglio!), adaptations of a couple other games, (Notably the Classic World of Darkness (Vampire, Mage, and Werewolf), Traveller and Castle Falkenstein) and a couple books that are just collections of multiple settings. If you've got a group who feels like playing something different every month, GURPS has got you covered for the next decade or so. Most of these were written for third edition (aka "GURPS Classic"); the rules for which tend to be janky at best. It's strongly recommended that you convert these to fourth edition, which rolls in a number of sanity-saving rules patches from the Compendium sourcebooks and just makes playing anything that isn't mundane 100-point schmucks much easier. New stuff occasionally still comes out, but it's slowed to a trickle compared to the old days and what has been published is almost all genre sourcebooks converted from Classic in the most half-assed manner possible.

Notable Supplements

  • Powers: Almost mandatory for any campaign where PCs have any kind of supernatural abilities. The magic system of GURPS core quite frankly sucks, so you really want either this or Thaumatology below if you're playing more than hard realism.
  • *-Tech: Weapons and gadgets and gear porn, oh my. Unlike most splats of this nature (looking at you, Cyberpunk 2020) these books actually spend some time helping you think through the implications of the various gadgets they introduce for your campaign, not just acting as a shopping list for your local munchkin. Series includes High-Tech (modern and near-future), Low-Tech (Stone Age to Early Modern), Bio-Tech (organic technology including sex bioroids and that living spaceship from Lexx), and Ultra-Tech (bullshit sci-fi stuff). Fair warning: Ultra-Tech is balanced for space opera flavor, not compatibility with the rest of the system, so if you try to use it in the same campaign as High-Tech or corebook equipment without tweaks bad things will happen.
  • Thaumatology: Supplement to the supplement GURPS Magic and your one-stop shop for just about every kind of magic system humans have come up with so far, from runes to rituals to voodoo.
  • Cabal: GURPS' answer to the "occult societies plumbing the cosmos and lording it over the normals for kicks" genre, courtesy of occult-horror guru Kenneth Hite. Takes the otherwise bog-standard Kabbalah template and blends in elements of Golden Dawn to build an all-killer-no-filler cosmology and magic system. Totally clowns on the World of Darkness by making all the things that go bump in the night fit into a cohesive whole, even if the GM still has to do a lot of legwork.
  • GURPS Infinite Worlds: The core setting for fourth edition. Technically the fourth edition version of GURPS Time Travel, but nobody cares at this point. Almost every other GURPS book (big exception: Transhuman Space) has an excuse for you to buy it tucked somewhere in the Infinite Worlds setting.
  • Reign of Steel: Essentially the setup for I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, except instead of just nuking everything AM makes 17 copies of itself that it's subsequently forced to share the planet with after human civilization goes bang. There's also a number of resistance cells taking the fight to the machines Terminator style.
  • Technomancer: Urban fantasy du jour. The Trinity tests set magic loose in the world, and humanity does what it does best: systematize it, weaponize it and commercialize it. The US breeds dragons for military use, Stalin is a lich, magical elixirs are sold at the corner drugstore and there are killer penguins that hate you in Antarctica. Some of its assumptions haven't aged well and there are a number of spells that might as well be named "Fulfill Obscure Fetish" but overall it does a good job of considering the long-term implications of magic in the modern world while still providing good adventure fodder.
  • IOU - Illuminati University: Once upon a time, Steve Jackson Games ran an ISP and BBS, back when the internet was a small enough thing that an RPG company could do that and not immediately go bankrupt. The elegan/tg/entlemen who used the BBS wrote up a parody setting for play-by-post games and Steve thought it was good enough to publish. Illuminati University is like every other college you've been to, except it sits on top of a nexus between pretty much every reality there is. This means the entire place effectively has the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage, and you can take classes in such things as World Creation, THE Computer Science, and Dirty Tricks. Features lots of amazing art from Phil Foglio. And before you ask, you're not cleared to know what the O stands for.
  • Transhuman Space: Welcome to the future. A hard-SF transhumanist setting that doesn't insult your intelligence and dodges the axe-grinding and grimderp associated with Eclipse Phase. Lots of background info and research involved, and some of it (especially the memetics section) has turned out to be terrifyingly prescient.
  • Banestorm: Welcome to Erf Oerth Yrth. Ages ago this was a fairly standard fantasy setting until some elves decided to be fantasy-Nazis and tried a ritual to kill all orcs everywhere. Instead it nuked a good chunk of the continent and The Wizard of Oz-ed all the stock fantasy races that weren't living on Yrth already-- including humans. A thousand years later and Yrth is the only fantasy world where dolphins talk, goblins pass the collection plate around after Sunday Mass and elves are fading for reasons that are 100% their own fault instead of just because Tolkien did it. Also full of random things like hang-gliding orcs who revere "the Air Heart" as a culture hero.

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