Gurps Alternate Earths 2

Rating:
Summary: More fun with alternate history
Review: After the fun GURPS Alternate Earths 1, Steve Jackson Games publishes another volume with six different alternate histories: Worlds that resemble Earth, but whose history diverge from our own after a certain point in time. This time, it includes the following:

- Midgard, a world where the Vikings successfully plundered Byzantium, and went on to build successful colonies in North America and elsewhere.

- Caliph, an Islam-dominated world where the early invention of the moveable type printing press allowed an early scientific revolution, and in which several other solar systems are being colonized - but Earth itselfs is on the brink of a global war after centuries of peace.

- Cornwallis, a world where the American revolution never happened. Now the corrupt monarchies of Europe and revolutionary Russia face each other and wait for the first shot to start a world war.

Each alternate history gets about twenty pages. This is sufficient to get a good general impression of the world, but I often wished that this world had been made into w sourcebook of its own...

The alternate histories are all fairly logical, and suspending one's sense of disbelief isn't difficult. In my opinion, they are even better than the ones in GURPS Alternate Earth 1 - some of the worlds in there (especially Reich-5 and Dixie) were too stereotyped for my taste (though still well executed).

There is something in this book for most gamers. Do you want a fantasy world? Use Midgard and change it slightly to make it more magical? Do you want an innovative SF background? Use Caliph. Do you want to play a fighter for freedom and democracy? Play in Europe of Aeolus and fight the evil Hapsburg empire...

Rating:
Summary: Six more lessons on dimension hopping
Review: GURPS Alternate Earths 2 may be made to order for a dimension hopping campaign such as GURPS Time Travel, but I believe it also gives gamers another opportunity to see how our own world "might have been" if just one event in history was changed. And it provides more opportunities to set whole adventures, and even whole campaigns in those worlds.

The six different "Earths" in this book are more examples of the now popular "What If" line of SF stories. The first world, "Cornwallis", give us a good idea as to what might have happened if the British had won the American War for Independence. The second world, "Ming 3" gives us a look at a world under the Chinese Dynasty. The third world, "Midgard", assumes the Viking fury caught fire and captured most of the known world. The fourth world, "Caliph", assumes the Muslim faith converted the world. The fifth world, "Aeolus", has details for a strange Earth where the might of the English and French monarchs is unsurpassed.

The final world is the "opposite" of the one in GURPS Time Travel. Fans of that game have wanted to see "Centrum" for a long time, and this supplement does not disappoint. The overwhelming thought on Centrum is "The Ends Justify The Means" and all the possible terror that this political theory causes. Although the book also gives an opportunity to make Centrum a nicer place, GM's for GURPS Time Travel will welcome the chance to design NPC's that will be a thorn in the players sides for adventure after adventure.

There are even more ideas for adventures, characters, and even whole campaigns for each of the worlds, including several paragraphs about more strange worlds that diverged from these six again. These "reality seeds" give creative GM's even more alternate worlds to explore.

People wishing to use books like Mike Resnick's wonderful alternate series need look no further for ideas of how to recreate those books for a parallel worlds campaign. Highly recommended for GURPS GM's and recommended even to SF fans wanting to explore the ramifications of what might happen if...