March 24, 2008: Coming In July

Ever since we began using POD technologies for short print runs of e23 projects, we've been asked, "Can I buy this from my Friendly Local Game Store?" In July 2008, the answer will be "Yes!"

Three, two, one . . . Blast off!

GURPS Spaceships is the long-awaited companion to GURPS Space, presenting rules for TL7-12 spacecraft, from tiny lifeboats to giant dreadnoughts. It covers spaceship design, travel, and operations, along with a (mapless) space-combat system.

The ship design and operation rules in GURPS Spaceships are more abstract than those found in GURPS Vehicle Design or GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars . . . making them much faster, with a minimum of math and a maximum of colorful options. It takes only minutes to build even the largest spaceship . . . and wrapped around the design system are basic space-travel and combat systems to get you into space right away.

GURPS Spaceships doesn't include detailed finance, trade, or hex-grid-based combat rules . . . but these are on the way! It's the core book in a series whose other volumes will present examples of ready-to-use spacecraft and comprehensive rules for commercial space flight, warfare, exploration, ports, industry, and other aspects of space travel.

GURPS Spaceships requires only the GURPS Basic Set, but GURPS Space is highly recommended for its guidelines on stardrives, characters, campaigns, and settings.

72 black-and-white pages. Softcover. Stock #01-6199, ISBN 978-1-55634-775-7. $14.95.

GURPS Supers

Men Like Gods

The 20th century gave birth to a new genre of fiction: the super-powered adventure. Men and women with strange powers gave a visible expression to the reader's sense of wonder, as they protected ordinary mortals from a variety of threats, from street crime to world-shattering disasters. When roleplaying games were invented, supers quickly became one of the most popular genres - and one of the most challenging to do right.

GURPS Fourth Edition provides the game mechanics and tools for the job, and GURPS Supers is your guide to applying them: a comprehensive playbook to the supers genre and to capturing it in your campaign. Focused on drama and characterization, it provides:

• A history and analysis of the supers genre, its precursors and variations.
• A guide to character creation, including powers and other abilities, codes of conduct, dual identities, and personal relationships.
• More than 20 new wildcard skills.
• 22 templates for super characters, each customizable to higher or lower power levels.
• Rules for creating equipment, vehicles, bases, automata, and magical spells.
• A guide to creating and running supers adventures.
• Continuity-creation guidelines and tools, so your supers universe can have the same depth as published worlds.
• New game mechanics for character creation, including new interpretations of advantages, disadvantages, and skills, and newly defined perks, quirks, enhancements, limitations, and techniques.
• Guidelines for running superhuman feats and combats under existing rules or adjusting those rules to fit the genre, and new game mechanics specifically for superhuman action.

GURPS Supers is a new work, but it draws inspiration from the previous editions of GURPS Supers. Using it to run a GURPS campaign requires the GURPS Basic Set and GURPS Powers. The material on genre conventions, character concepts and relationships, scenario creation, and supers universes can be used with any game system.

152 black-and-white pages. Softcover. Stock #01-7998, ISBN 978-1-55634-771-9. $24.95.

GURPS Mysteries

A Dame Walks Into Your Office . . .

A dead body, no witnesses, and a room full of suspects with perfect alibis. Can you find the killer and bring him to justice? Learn the secrets of mystery fiction &ndash and what will, and will not, work in RPG mysteries. Learn how to be a better investigator. Discover the problems you are likely to encounter in a low-tech, magic, super-tech, or horror mystery.

GURPS Mysteries covers:

• Creating mysteries as stand-alone adventures, as part of an existing campaign, or as a campaign in their own right, with specific discussions of the low-tech, modern-tech, future, magic, and horror settings.
• Setting the crime scene, including detailed forensic information on causes of death, investigation methods, and a forensics timeline.
• Creating interesting villains, and matching their disadvantages to their motives and means of carrying out a crime.
• A template-based character-generation system for iconic investigators, including the genius detective, the hardboiled shamus, police detectives, investigating magicians, even "that darn kid."
• Sample detective and investigative agencies to hire or bedevil characters.
• Expanded rules for questioning and interacting with NPCs.

GURPS Mysteries, by the author of GURPS Cops, is designed both for the GM who wants to create and run mystery adventures and for players who want to play investigators in any setting.

128 black-and-white pages. Softcover. Stock #01-7999, ISBN 978-1-55634-761-0. $19.95.