GURPS Supers

GURPS Supers is a superhero roleplaying game written by Loyd Blankenship and published by Steve Jackson Games. The first edition was published in 1989.

GURPS Supers is a supplement of rules for comic-book superhero characters and campaigns for GURPS. The first edition book includes new combat rules, 24 superpowers, bionic superlimbs, gadgets and equipment, and rules for creating new powers, sample heroes and villains, and a briefly described campaign world. GURPS Space was one of the broad genre books that was published after the GURPS Basic Set.

The 2nd edition of GURPS Supers was published in 1990 and featured a cover by John Zeleznik. A PDF release by William H. Stoddard covers the genre specific information in a similar style to GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Space books for the fourth edition of GURPS.

Reception

In the August 1989 edition of Games International (Issue #8), James Wallis liked the design and layout of the book, but pointed out that "the rewriting of a large number of rules [...] shows that GURPS is not a truly generic rolegame and makes GURPS Supers substantially harder to learn". He disliked the additional complexities around character generation, and was disturbed that the book did not spend much time on the creation of character background, saying this was a failure of the system to properly engage with the nature of comic books. He also commented that GURPS combat was frequently deadly, whereas in comic books combat is not usually lethal. Wallis concluded by giving this book a below average rating of only 2 out of 5: "For my money, GURPS Supers is flawed [...] There is too much emphasis on rules changes; it fails as a superhero rolegame because of the overrealism of the GURPS rules, and it fails as a generic sourcebook because it is not generic".

In the September 1996 edition of Dragon (Issue #233), Rick Swan compared the second edition of GURPS Supers to Champions, and commented that "GURPS Super takes a more realistic route, stressing personality over punch-outs. That's not to say it's stodgy; a typical chapter is titled 'Unnatural Multiple Limbs from Another World'. The Second Edition streamlines the occasionally awkward mechanics of the First Edition and adds some nifty new powers".

In the May 1996 edition of Arcane (issue #6), Steve Faragher gave the second edition of GURPS Supers a below-average rating of only 6 out of 10, and called the background setting "rather dull", saying it is "fine if you want to recreate a Saturday afternoon TV show, but not so great for a more fantastic, underground campaign of the Watchmen variety". Faragher concluded that "it's a competent enough set of rules - and one that's well presented - but GURPS Supers is not exactly compulsive playing material".

Contents

Reception

Other reviews

References

External links