GURPS settings appreciation thread

[Swanosaurus]

Since a lot of GURPS settings habe been mentioned in the thread about Revised 4rth edition, I thought I'd start a thread were people can gush about GURPS settings old and new.

I'll make a start with Banestorm: I never played it and read the new version only cursory a few years ago because I wasn't expecting to play it anytime soon (if ever), but I love it's core concept of having imported earth cultures (along with religions) that have already gained a strong foothold in a fantasy world. It gets around all the awkwardness of obvious non-XY-cultures, while at the same time, it provides ample space for pseudo-historical gaming without actual history getting into your hair. Plus, the elves being the ones who f***ed it all up is kind of a nice bonus twist. I just realized that the fantasy folk series for GURPS includes info on most of the fantasy folks within the Banestorm setting, so there even seems to be a lot more setting material than I expected.
(BTW, I never checked out Banestorm when it was still GURPS Fantasy, because I thought it was mainly a portal fantasy setting where people from our time travel to Yrth, bringing along their machine guns ... I wasn't into this and realized only much later that while that theoretically is a possibility in the setting, it's not at all what the whole banestorm thing is about!)

I think I finally should give it a proper read. While the next rules system I want to try is Daggerheart, Yrth could be a good setting for it.

 

[Staffan]

I'll copy over my post from the other thread.

GURPS Technomancer is a nice bit of genius IMO. It's just too bad it's extremely strongly tied to the GURPS system.

The idea is that the first nuclear test explosion created some kind of rift that increases the ambient mana in the world, turning the world from the "normal" low-mana real world into normal mana, with high mana within some distance of the explosion (I want to say about 100 miles but I can't be bothered to check – anyway, a fair bit into Mexico as well). Now it's 50 years later and magic has become an industry, very much based on how GURPS magic works assisted by rules from a supplement (Grimoire?) that had stuff about using mundane power to enhance magic. So you have assembly-line mages working to create magic items, which include things like kevlar magic carpets used by special forces for surreptious intrusion. If a high-value worker calls in sick, they teleport in a healer who casts cure disease on them. And rocketry never developed much beyond the V2 – because of the effects of that first nuke (and a second one the Soviet Union used in Antarctica, which caused a MUCH larger effect which in turn discouraged further testing) nuclear weapons were pretty much abandoned. The space program is alive and kicking though, but uses teleportation instead.

Addendum: a really cool detail is that since there's little focus on outer space in culture (since there was never a space race), the modern-day mythology of alien abductions has been turned into fey abductions instead. Mostly the same thing except that instead of being taken to a spaceship, you're taken into a fey mound.

Oh, and one of the effects of the nuke the Soviets set off in Antarctica was that a whole bunch of penguins became intelligent and have created a commmunist magic-based society.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Although I never actually played it, GURPS Goblins was a fun read.

The setting was Georgian England, but everyone is a goblin.

An important campaign conceit is that goblins are basically un-killable. They are also just awful, awful people. And so all sort of comedy violence ensues.

There were silly rules for character design that randomly determined the sort of awful things that happened to you as a child and the stat mods that that gave you. e.g. being hung from a clothes line, giving you long shapely legs.

 

[MGibster]

GURPS books were always good about giving you ideas for how to use the universal nature of the game to your advantage. Take GURPS Rome for example. It had information for running campaigns during different periods of Roman history, but it also had ideas for how to run an alternate history where Rome never fell and continued into the modern age. GURPS Horror is filled with great ideas on how to run a horror campaign including different types of monsters and what fears they represent.

 

[Tonguez]

My favorites are Cliffhangers, Swahbucklers, Age of Napolean and Ice Age

Japan Egypt, Camelot, Dungeon Fantasy Martial Arts, Powers, Lowtech and Fantasy Races are good too

 

[jdrakeh]

I am an unabashed fan of Bungie's Myth computer games, so it probably comes as no surprise that I also adore the GURPS sourcebook for the setting of those games.

GURPS Reign of Steel is hands down one of the best post apocalypse RPG setting books ever written. That said, I've never run it with GURPS (mainly because the GURPS Robots book is Complex Math: The Supplement). Instead, I (after somebody suggested it to me) ran it using a modified version of MSPE (Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes).

Finally, I used the world building in GURPS Autoduel combined with the AADA Road Atlases (Car Wars) to explore the world of Car Wars (using the minimalist Car Wars rules for pedestrians in Sunday Drivers rather than the GURPS rules).

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I have four feet of GURPS supplements from back when I was buying them. My favorite handful would be High Tech, Ultra-Tech, Space, Swashbucklers, and Middle Ages 1. Low Tech I found to be relatively disappointing after High and Ultra-Tech.

 

[pawsplay]

Transhuman Space is just a neat little sci-fi setting. It has a certain Heinleinian vibe to it, despite being directly descended from more recent sources.

 

[darjr]

So many! I do like the Traveller version of the setting they made.