GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: Infinite Earths - Osiris Worlds

 Next on our list, we have Infinite Earths: Osiris Worlds, a collection of Egyptian-inspired Alternate Earths.

This has two chapters:

• Ancient Egypt in the Infinite Worlds: which discusses general concerns, such as interesting dates, cultural familiarity and languages
• Three Key Worldlines: This is what you're here for.  The worlds are:
• Osiris-6: Aliens built the pyramids!
• Osiris-3: Akhenaten and his ghoul armies ravage the world.
• Osiris-7: If you put a woman in charge, you get a  world of clockwork swashbuckling.

I wasn't really interested in this going into it, and after reading it, I'm modestly impressed at the quality.  At least, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Is it good? I don't know.  I think it angles more towards "It's fine." It does the job it sets out to do and I see no major holes.  The book does amount more to "writing prompts" than "detailed worlds" but at least they point you in the right direction. Would I recommend buying it? No. But to be fair, I wouldn't recommend most Alternate Earth books.  I'm also not particular into that genre; I get the sense a lot of that comes down to reading the timeline and then arguing about the plausibility of a particular extrapolation and if that's what you see, only really Osiris-7 is interesting.  The other two are more "interesting adventure ideas" more than detailed worlds.  You can live without this book, but at the price, you're probably not wasting your money either.

Egypt, Expanded across Space and Time

The first chapter does a pretty good job of hitting the minimal highlights of what you need to know for Alternate Earth games set in Egypt.  It hits some good diversion points, it talks about the dating issue, and tackles language and culture. If you have GURPS Egypt, or you've explored Egypt on your own, you probably know most of it, but it's still nice to have. It also has a list of more classic Osiris worlds which is worth a glance over, and fits well into an IW campaign.

That sounds pretty terse, but this is probably the section I found the most interesting.

World after World

Osiris 6 is our first world.  Here, Khufu is using some weird, physics bending power to build the pyramids and various monuments.  Where does this power come from? Well, there's a whole sidebar full of suggestions.  And that's it, that's the world.  The idea is to send in your IW agents, figure out what's really going on, and then go "Oh no, it's from X, and X is bad because of Y" and then you defeat the bad guys.  Or you steal the tech and bring it back.  But this world is more about solving the mystery of the Great Movers than, say, exploring their impact on history.

Osiris-3 is "What if Akhenaten terrorized the world with an army of ghouls?" It has an evocative piece of art, some suggestions about what to do with the idea, and a sidebar that references GURPS Horror for some suggested stats on the monsters. The idea is to send IW agents here, go "Oh crap, ghouls!" fight them, and then worry about Cabal or the Reich finding this world.  Of the three worlds, I'll be honest, I like this one the best.  But it also doesn't feel especially inspired. Like, sure, zombies makes everything better, right? So why not zombies in ancient Egypt? There's not really more meat to it than that.

Osiris-7 suggests an alternate timeline where Cleopatra and Antony successfully fended off the forces of Augustus and Alexandria and its great library became even more important to Rome.  Thanks to this, the scientific revolution came early, and we get a clockpunk world.  It has a pretty substantial sidebar on the technology, though it mostly amounts to how to integrate Steampunk into Egypt (which, as an aside, is likely good advice for Broken Clockwork World, Phil's last PDF challenge work).  This one strikes me as the timeline most like an alternate timeline and the least like a generic adventure idea. Like the Current Affairs section is actually pertinent, and this is the one I could most see expanded out into something.

The Dust of Time

And that's it, basically. Perhaps you can see why I'm not wildly excited about it.  It's not a bad book.  If I had a question, like "Oh, but how do I even run Akhenaten and his ghoul armies?" there's enough support there for me to work the rest out.  It's not like some other books I've read where it amounts to "Hey, here's a neat idea" and then offers no support to run it at all.  But on the other hand, the support is pretty sparse and to my eye, the book reads more like a list of campaign ideas more than it does campaign settings.  But most Alternate Earths read that way to me, even the best Alternate Earths, unless they're going to get a huge, full-book treatment, and even then, I don't use them.  I'd run Cabal or Madness Dossier, but I wouldn't run anything in the old 3e Alternate Earths books, or anything out of the current IW, so I don't feel I'm especially qualified to talk about it.

As I said above, I wouldn't recommend this book, but I wouldn't recommend any Alternate Earths books.  I don't see any gaping holes or anything to get stomping mad about, so if you like this sort of thing, it could be worth your money.