GURPS Cliffhangers 2nd Edition

Rating:
Summary: An Era Revealed
Review: GURPS Cliffhangers, like almost all GURPS books, is a gamemaster's delight. The book gathers handily in one place almost all the information you will want on the history and background of the 1920's - 1940's in one place. It not only covers the events and the background information for North America, but for almost all of the world. The layout is clean and well organized, and GURPS-specific rules are, as with all GURPS sourcebooks, confined to one chapter. This means that the book is easily usable as a source for GM's running campaignes set in the Cliffhanger era using different rulesystems. Several pages at the end are reserved for a very thorough bibliography of othe sources - not just books, but comics, films, and other games. If you're looking at running a cliffhanger/pulp style game, you can't do wrong by using GURPS Cliffhangers as a starting point.

Rating:
Summary: Incomplete
Review: This sourcebook is designed to help you build a campaign along the lines of the pulps of the 30's and 40's. It gives a lot of history for the period and a few character types, but I found it to be incomplete. It doesn't give enough information for running a game. For example, if you want to run an Indiana Jones type game, you'll need to buy the WWII sourcebook for information about Nazis. If you want to do the Mummy, you'll need to buy the Egypt sourcebook for information on mummies and pyramids. If you want to steal jewels in an ancient Aztec temple, you have to buy the Aztec book. The list goes on and on. If you have a good idea of what kind of story you would like to play, it would be better to get the sourcebook directly related to that story. If you feel like playing a pulp-style game, but you don't have any story ideas, then this book may help you think of a few.