Gurps Who's Who 1: 52 Of History's Most Intriguing Characters

Rating:
Summary: 52 History Making characters
Review: GURPS: Who's Who I - the first volume of a (currently) two volume set of some of history's greatest and worst characters, make 52 people from history come to life for your GURPS and gaming campaigns.

Although another reviewer has listed all the characters that are covered by this book, it should be noted that they are not in alphabetical order in the book. Rather, they are in time period order, making it slightly harder to find a specific character unless you already have a good idea of when that character lived. Admittedly, there is a good Table of Contents and a good Index should you wish to find specific people who were written up using the GURPS RPG system for this book.

The book covers people who lived in the Ancient World and Dark Ages, The Middle Ages, The Renaissance, and the modern era. There are two small appendixes in the back that cover a few other characters and how the GURPS game mechanics were used to recreate these famous and infamous people.

And that is the strength of this book. These people were real people from history. It is very enlightening to see how real people are seen when measuring up to GURPS standards. Most people, when making themselves as a player character, or when creating historical NPC's for campaigns, tend to overestimate the amount of points that would be necessary to create that character.

There are also adventure seeds for each character, as well as a small group of people who never were that changed the history of their worlds. These "alternate earths" make a wonderful addition to this book, showing how history could be changed in strange ways by only one person.

I'd highly recommend this book to GURPS GM's that have historically based campaigns, and recommend this book to any student of history that might want to try to recreate a historical figure for another campaign. Non-GURPS GM's wil find the character stats fairly easy to convert to their favorite systems.

Rating:
Summary: 52 History Making characters
Review: GURPS: Who's Who I - the first volume of a (currently) two volume set of some of history's greatest and worst characters, make 52 people from history come to life for your GURPS and gaming campaigns.

Although another reviewer has listed all the characters that are covered by this book, it should be noted that they are not in alphabetical order in the book. Rather, they are in time period order, making it slightly harder to find a specific character unless you already have a good idea of when that character lived. Admittedly, there is a good Table of Contents and a good Index should you wish to find specific people who were written up using the GURPS RPG system for this book.

The book covers people who lived in the Ancient World and Dark Ages, The Middle Ages, The Renaissance, and the modern era. There are two small appendixes in the back that cover a few other characters and how the GURPS game mechanics were used to recreate these famous and infamous people.

And that is the strength of this book. These people were real people from history. It is very enlightening to see how real people are seen when measuring up to GURPS standards. Most people, when making themselves as a player character, or when creating historical NPC's for campaigns, tend to overestimate the amount of points that would be necessary to create that character.

There are also adventure seeds for each character, as well as a small group of people who never were that changed the history of their worlds. These "alternate earths" make a wonderful addition to this book, showing how history could be changed in strange ways by only one person.

I'd highly recommend this book to GURPS GM's that have historically based campaigns, and recommend this book to any student of history that might want to try to recreate a historical figure for another campaign. Non-GURPS GM's wil find the character stats fairly easy to convert to their favorite systems.

Rating:
Summary: 52 of history's most intriguing characters
Review: Note that these are 'most intriguing', not necessarily 'most influential', although many of them were pivotal historical figures. This book is interested in characters who would be fun and interesting in games - not just 'remove this person and the world would change forever'.

The book lists them in chronological order. In alphabetical order, they are: Akhenaten, Alexander the Great, Alexius I, Aristotle, Boudica, Tycho Brahe, Aaron Burr, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Byron, Julius Caesar, Chaucer, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, Clive of India, "Two-Gun" Cohen, Constantine the Great, Cortes, Cromwell, Cyrus the Great, Darwin, David ben-Jesse, da Vinci, John Dee, Catherine di Medici, Alberto Santos Dumont, Einstein, Elizabeth I, Harald Hardradi, Ibn Battuta, Joan of Arc, Justinian I, Kipling, Leif Eriksson, Lovecraft, William Marshal, Mata Hari, Lola Montez, Mozart, Emperor Norton, Paracelsus, Peter the Great, Richelieu, Bartholomew Roberts, Shakespeare, Sei Shonagon, Tesla, Theodora, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Harriet Tubman, Vlad the Impaler, Xenophon, Shaka Zulu.

On the front cover of this edition are shown (clockwise from upper left, starting below the title): "Two-Gun" Cohen, Ahkenaten, Lovecraft, John Dee, Bartholomew Roberts, Mata Hari, ?, ?, Kipling, and Justinian.

Each character is profiled at a specific point in his or her life, with character generation information as well as a brief (usually 2-page) biography. The authors are careful to note which statistics need to be modified if the character is to be younger or older, or if you choose to use a different spin than GURPS did. A sidebar is generally included as well, speculating on how tampering with this character would change history.

For instance, the basic profile of Akhenaten just states that he's ugly. (The picture on the cover is incredibly flattering, compared with some statues.) Some of the alternate possibilities then listed are: Marfan's syndrome (add Bad Sight), Froelich's syndrome (add Sterile and figure out who fathered his children), a woman (add Secret, account for the kids), eunuch (possible Secret, again account for the kids). If you've never heard of him, he is the legendary heretic pharaoh, husband of Nefertiti; Tut succeeded him. If he had never lived, or had died young, Egypt might have continued as a strong empire for a much longer time, but the history of the world's religions might be quite different.

The GURPS basic profiles here are fairly neutral and objective (for instance, while they'll tell you how to put an Illuminated conspiracy-theory spin on a character, the base profile statistics don't make that kind of assumption).

Other books that might interest you:

- For examples of a *really* Illuminated Burton and Ch'in Shi Huang Ti, try Robert Doherty's _Area 51_ novels.

- For Emperor Norton (the first and only Emperor of the United States), see Neil Gaiman's _Brief Lives_ and (for a cameo, not mentioned in Who's Who) Barbara Hambly's _Ishmael_.

- Terry Pratchett's Leonard da Quirm is an even closer parody of da Vinci than he seems, once you've read about da Vinci's eccentricities. (See especially Pratchett's _Jingo_.)

- For a time-travelling spin on Caesar, try _The Cleopatra Crisis_ by Simon Hawke.

- For women in the Montez mold, try Rex Stout's _Under the Andes_.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Gurps Who's Who I
Review: This is another great resource book for GURPS. You know, if you are a medium-time GURPS player, it is often intriguing to figure out a normal person or even a historical one in atributes, advantages and disadvantages, skills, etc. This book just hands you out lots of information on those historical figures so you can know how much you should fear them (or not!). Well, anyway, i just loved this book, and i sure would advise you to seize the opportunity!