GURPS – Generic Universal RolePlaying System GURPS – Generic Universal RolePlaying System

GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition – Cover

You can find an index of all the GURPS bibliographies we have online here. If you spot any broken links or other problems with this page, please report them to webmaster@sjgames.com.


Bibliography for GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition

Below is a list of supplements published for the first three editions of GURPS. Fourth Edition players can use the descriptive material in these books "as is." Rules material will require some adaptation. [The older editions category page and the GURPS ludography are also useful lists of pre-Fourth-Edition material. – webmaster.]

Sourcebooks

"Sourcebook" supplements are not associated with particular game worlds. They provide support material that the GM can mix and match in almost any campaign.

Artifacts and Technology

The following books contain gadgets, magic items, vehicles, weapons, etc. Some of them also include design systems.

Bio-Tech. Rules for cloning, genetic engineering, implants, and other biotechnology.

High-Tech. Guide to real-world equipment from TL4 to TL7.

Low-Tech. Manual on real-world equipment from TL0 to TL3.

Magic Items 1, Magic Items 2, and Magic Items 3. Treasuries of magical artifacts.

Mecha. Rules for designing and using battlesuits and giant robots.

Modern Firepower. Armory of late TL7 and early TL8 weapons.

Robots. Rules for designing robots and playing them as characters.

Steam-Tech. Catalog of "steampunk" gadgetry for TL(5+1).

Ultra-Tech and Ultra-Tech 2. Collections of speculative and superscience equipment for TL8+ games.

Vehicles. Rules for designing and using of all kinds of vehicles. Vehicles Expansion 1 and Vehicles Expansion 2 add design options, while a simplified design system appears in Vehicles Lite.

Warehouse 23. Warehouse of weird items, from UFOs to the Spear of Destiny.

Bestiaries

A "bestiary" is a compilation of animals or monsters – with descriptions and full game statistics – that the GM can use to populate his game world.

Bestiary. Menagerie of real-world animals.

Creatures of the Night. Collection of frightening monsters for horror campaigns.

Dinosaurs. Field guide to prehistoric life, from the Paleozoic to the Pleistocene.

Fantasy Bestiary. Compendium of creatures of fantasy.

Monsters. Rogues gallery of classic and original denizens of horror.

Space Bestiary. Survey of alien animals and monsters.

Characters

All of these supplements deal with characters that are more than just monsters.

Rogues. Character templates for assassins, scoundrels, and thieves.

Supporting Cast. Call list of ready-made NPCs for all genres and tech levels.

Villains. Assemblage of unpleasant characters to use as enemies and adversaries.

Warriors. Character templates for fighters, guards, and soldiers.

Who's Who 1 and Who's Who 2. Encyclopedia of real historical figures, with full character sheets.

Wizards. Character templates for spellcasters of all stripes.

Genre Books

Many supplements explore an entire category of real-world or fictional adventure. They look at tropes, traditions, and conventions, and give advice on how to play true to genre – or true to period, in the case of historical gaming. Thus, they qualify as sourcebooks more so than worldbooks, despite containing considerable background material.

Atomic Horror. B-movie "reality" of the 1950s: commie spies, giant ants, and bug-eyed aliens.

Cliffhangers. Two-fisted heroism in the spirit of 1920s and 30s pulp fiction.

Cops. Police adventure of all kinds, from no-nonsense procedurals to the excesses of action movies.

Covert Ops. Secret wars – whether they involve commandos, criminals, spies, or terrorists.

Cyberpunk. Dystopian science fiction featuring corporate states, bionic implants, and cyberspace.

Espionage. Spy drama, be it a cerebral puzzler or a gadget-filled romp.

Horror. Terrifying tales, supernatural suspense, and gory splatter.

Illuminati. How to run a conspiracy campaign: high weirdness, Men in Black, and Secret Masters.

Space. Adventures in space, from "hard" science fiction to "ray gun and cutlass" space opera.

Special Ops. Hard-core military action involving elite troops.

Steampunk. Historical science fiction in the spirit of Verne and Wells, with steam-powered difference engines and giant airships. The Screampunk supplement gives advice on adding in horror elements.

Swashbucklers. Musketeers, pirates, and swordplay in the cinematic mode.

Time Travel. Science fiction that spans and crosses timelines. The Timeline supplement provides a game-friendly history of the world to use in such campaigns.

Powers and Abilities

These rulebooks provide game mechanics for special character abilities.

Magic. Expanded magic rules and hundreds of spells. The follow-up volume, Grimoire, adds hundreds more spells!

Martial Arts. Combat abilities for dedicated students of the world's fighting systems. Includes plenty of techniques.

Psionics. Detailed rules for powers of the mind.

Religion. Priestly powers, including divine intervention, miracles, and holy magic.

Supers. Complete guide to designing superhuman characters.

Racial Templates

These supplements treat nonhumans as characters, not monsters. All of them include rules for racial template design and many worked examples.

Aliens. Nonhuman species for spacefaring campaigns.

Blood Types. All the world's vampires, both traditional and modern.

Faerie. Dwellers "under the hill" and their cousins in folklore.

Fantasy Folk. Dwarves, elves, orcs, and other fantasy staples.

Shapeshifters. Beings that can change form, from werewolves to far-future constructs of liquid metal.

Spirits. Angels, demons, djinn, elementals, and many other spirit entities.

Undead. The living dead – ghosts, mummies, wraiths, zombies, etc.

Rules Collections

A catchall category for books that are themselves catchalls!

Best Of Pyramid 1 and Best Of Pyramid 2. Digests of selected GURPS articles from SJ Games' Pyramid magazine.

Compendium I and Compendium II. Rules expansions to GURPS Basic Set, Third Edition, based on material collected from many of the other supplements on this list.

Worldbooks

A "worldbook" presents one particular game world in detail. It gives extensive advice on how to run a campaign there, recommends suitable characters, and includes rules and statistics for setting-specific abilities, artifacts, creatures, races, etc.

Historical

The worldbooks below describe real-world cultures and locations. The focus is on facts and realism, but most of these supplements also cover speculative, legendary, or mythical elements commonly associated with the setting.

Age of Napoleon. The world, especially Europe, during the life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821).

Arabian Nights. The Islamic Middle East of the 7th through 13th centuries.

Aztecs. Mesoamerica, from prehistory through the 16th century, focusing on the Aztecs.

Celtic Myth. Britain and Ireland, from prehistory up to the 5th century, with special emphasis on folklore and myth.

China. A broad historical treatment of China, with particular attention to the imperial period (221 BC-1279 AD).

Egypt. Ancient Egypt, from prehistory to the end of the Ptolemaic Period (30 BC).

Greece. The Heroic Age (1600 BC-1150 BC) and Classical Age (800 BC-323 BC) of ancient Greece.

Ice Age. Hominid prehistory, from Homo habilis to H. sapiens.

Imperial Rome. Rome during the Republic (509 BC-28 BC) and Empire (27 BC-476 AD).

Japan. Japan during the Warring Provinces and Tokugawa periods (1456-1868).

Mars. The planet Mars, as it is in reality and as it appears in speculative fiction.

Middle Ages 1. England, 410-1485: the end of Roman rule to the death of Richard III.

Old West. The 19th-century American West.

Places Of Mystery. Locales with mysterious or unusual histories, from all over the world and every historical period.

Russia. Russia during the 10th through 18th centuries.

Vikings. Scandinavia during the "Viking Age" of the 8th through 11th centuries.

WWII. A detailed World War II game setting, supported by the nation books All the King's Men (United Kingdom), Dogfaces (the U.S.), Doomed White Eagle (Poland), Frozen Hell (Finland), Grim Legions (Italy), Iron Cross (Germany), Michael's Army (Romania), Red Tide (Soviet Union), and Return to Honor (France); topical books such as Hand of Steel (special operations); and Weird War II, a volume of alternate histories.

Y2K. An anthology of late 20th-century fatalism by noted GURPS authors.

Original Fiction

These worldbooks contain wholly fictional game worlds created by SJ Games' authors or adapted from the classics.

Alternate Earths and Alternate Earths 2. Samplers of "what if" worlds, split off from Earth's actual timeline.

Atlantis. Several different treatments of the Atlantis myth.

Autoduel. Roleplaying adaptation of SJ Games' Car Wars board game. Warriors in armed cars battle for glory and survival in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Supported by Car Warriors (a collection of NPCs) and seven AADA Road Atlas volumes: The East Coast, The West Coast, The South, Australia, The Midwest, The Free Oil States, and Mountain West.

Black Ops. High-powered conspiracy setting where the PCs are crack troops in a secret war against aliens, evil psychics, and monsters.

Cabal. Horror-conspiracy setting in which the Earth – in fact, the entire universe – is controlled by a secret alliance of powerful wizards and demigods.

Camelot. Historical, cinematic, and mythic takes on the King Arthur legend.

Cyberworld. A near-future cyberpunk version of Earth.

Fantasy. The fantasy world of Yrth, populated by humans and nonhumans pulled from other realities by a massive magical backfire. Supported by the Tredroy city book and a number of adventures: Fantasy Adventures, Harkwood, and Orcslayer.

Fantasy II. The Mad Lands, an early TL2 fantasy world.

Goblins. Twisted, humorous version of Georgian England populated by deformed (and mostly insane) goblins.

In Nomine. Adaptation of SJ Games' In Nomine RPG. The PCs are angels and demons involved in the struggle between Heaven and Hell.

International Super Teams. An alternate Earth that features "metahumans," or supers. This is the nominal backdrop for the supplements Mixed Doubles, Super Scum, Supers Adventures, and Supertemps – but these books would be useful in any campaign featuring supers. IST Kingston, from Modern Myth Publishing, covers Jamaica in the IST world.

IOU. IOU is a university where anything goes, as long as it's weird. The only entrance requirement is your sense of humor!

Ogre. Roleplaying adaptation of SJ Games' Ogre war game. The world is at war, and giant cybernetic tanks rule the battlefield.

Reign of Steel. Grim future history where powerful AIs have subjugated humanity.

Robin Hood. Several variations on the tales of Robin Hood.

Space Atlas, Space Atlas 2, Space Atlas 3, and Space Atlas 4. Each volume describes a "sector" of space, which could be used – separately or with the other volumes – as the setting for a spacefaring campaign.

Technomancer. Alternate Earth where magic awakens in 1945, changing the world.

Terradyne. Near-future setting where the Earth government and a giant corporation (Terradyne) vie for control of the inner solar system.

Transhuman Space. Optimistic future history where biotechnology, cybernetics, and nanotechnology redefine "human" and make it possible to colonize the solar system. The Broken Dreams, Fifth Wave, and Under Pressure supplements describe the Earth; High Frontier covers the Moon and Earth orbit; In The Well and Deep Beyond detail the inner and outer solar system, respectively; Personnel Files presents NPCs; and Spacecraft of the Solar System is a catalog of space vessels. There is also an adventure: Orbital Decay.

Voodoo. Modern-day setting in which sorcerers invoke spirits, both good and evil, in a shadow war for global domination.

Licensed Fiction

SJ Games has also published licensed adaptations of a variety of science fiction and fantasy settings.

Alpha Centauri. Adaptation of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a computer game from Electronic Arts Inc. "Transhuman" science fiction set on an alien world.

Blue Planet. Futuristic adventure on an alien water-world. Adapted from the Fantasy Flight Games RPG.

Bunnies & Burrows. Remake of the classic Fantasy Games Unlimited RPG. View the world from the point of view of a rabbit!

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. Based on the books by Spider Robinson. Callahan's is a place where anything can – and does – happen.

Castle Falkenstein. A world of steampunk and sorcery. Adapted from the R. Talsorian Games RPG. Supported by a supplement on the Near East, The Ottoman Empire.

Conan. The world of Robert E. Howard's barbarian hero. Adventures include Beyond Thunder River, Conan and the Queen of the Black Coast, Moon of Blood, and The Wyrmslayer.

CthulhuPunk. The horrors of H.P. Lovecraft . . . as they would appear in a cyberpunk future! Derived from the Call of Cthulhu RPG from Chaosium, Inc.

Deadlands: Weird West. Adapted from the Pinnacle Entertainment Group RPG. The forces of darkness invade the American West. Supported by Hexes (a book of spells), Varmints (a bestiary), and two "Dime Novels": Aces and Eights and Wanted: Undead or Alive.

Discworld Roleplaying Game. Stand-alone (Powered by GURPS) RPG based on the humorous fantasy of Terry Pratchett. Released first as GURPS Discworld. Supported by Discworld Also.

Hellboy Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game. Stand-alone (Powered by GURPS) RPG based on Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics. Defend the Earth from paranormal threats and evil Nazis!

Horseclans. Based on Robert Adams' Horseclans series, set in a low-tech, post-apocalyptic Earth. Supported by one adventure, Bili the Axe: Up Harzburk!

Humanx. The world of Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth, a planet-hopping far-future setting. Supported by one adventure, For Love of Mother-Not.

Lensman. Space opera on a galactic scale, set in the starkly astounding world of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels.

Mage: The Ascension, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Adaptations of three White Wolf games set in the "Gothic-Punk" World of Darkness.

Myth. High-powered fantasy in a world of never-ending conflict. Adapted from the Myth and Myth II computer games, from Bungie Software Products Corporation.

New Sun. Dark fantasy . . . in a futuristic world. Based on the award-winning novels of Gene Wolfe.

Planet Krishna. Old-school space opera in L. Sprague de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias setting.

Planet of Adventure. Based on the works of Jack Vance. Classic science-fiction adventure on the planet Tschai.

The Prisoner. The authorized RPG worldbook for The Prisoner, the cult-hit television series starring Patrick McGoohan.

Riverworld. Adapted from Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series. A world where everyone who has ever lived is reborn.

Traveller. The GURPS version of the classic Game Designers' Workshop RPG. Space adventure at its finest! Supplements include Alien Races 1-4 (nonhumans); Behind the Claw and Rim of Fire (sectors); Bounty Hunters, Ground Forces, and Star Mercs (professions); Far Trader and Starports (trade); First In (exploration); Humaniti (humans); Modular Cutter and Starships (spacecraft); and Planetary Survey 1-6 (worlds). The Best of JTAS is a digest of JTAS, SJ Games' online Traveller periodical.

Uplift. Far-future space adventure in the universe of David Brin's Uplift series.

War Against the Chtorr. Based on David Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr series. The Earth battles a devastating invasion by an alien ecology.

Wild Cards. Guide to the Wild Cards series edited by George R.R. Martin. An alien virus turns some people into supermen . . . and others into freaks. Supported by the Aces Abroad supplement.

Witch World. Adaptation of Andre Norton's classic science fiction and fantasy series. Magic and technology coexist, and both are used in an epic struggle between Light and Shadow.

Third Party

Two other publishers have released Powered by GURPS worldbooks.

Conspiracy X. Eden Studios' conversion of their own setting to GURPS. An alternate Earth where powerful conspiracies conceal dark secrets about alien invaders and psychic powers.

Prime Directive. Amarillo Design Bureau's RPG adaptation of their Star Fleet Battles space-combat war game.

Adventures

SJ Games also released GURPS adventures not specifically associated with any of the game worlds above. GMs may find these helpful as templates for their own adventures. Titles include: Chaos in Kansas, Cyberpunk Adventures, Deathwish, Flight 13, Martial Arts Adventures, The Old Stone Fort, Operation Endgame, Scarlet Pimpernel, School of Hard Knocks, Space Adventures, Stardemon, Time Travel Adventures, Unnight, and Zombietown U.S.A.


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