GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: Space Atlas: Grissom

 

Next in our challenge round-up, I have Grissom, the latest (first?) addition to our Space Atlas (for 4e, at least).

It has one chapter:

• Why So Stubborn? Which details Grissom. It includes a map.

I like it.  I would welcome more books like this. In fact, I suspect it's probably the most underrated development of the PDF challenge.  That said, it's not setting my world on fire.  I'm not having mad dreams about trying to write up an entire set of campaign framework around it.  On the other hand, I would absolutely use it. Is it a recommend? Yes.

Exploring Grissom

The book gives us the requisite GURPS Space boiler plate that I have personally never used in a game, and one of those hex maps.  It also does more than most atlas entries I've read to give us a sense of what the rest of the star system looks like, and actually makes the rest meaningful. It's not a single world orbiting a single star with "Oh technically I don't know a gas giant or something out there." Not that there's anything wrong with those sorts of systems (most Psi-Wars systems work like that), I just wanted to give it kudos for going the extra mile here.

Then we get into the culture and the environment, and the environmental details are rather sparse, but the cultural ones are pretty good. You get a real sense of who they are as a people, and how they would differ from the rest of the galaxy. I do want to knock it on a couple of points here.  So one premise of Grissom is that the rest of humanity lost contact with them for awhile.  It's a system that's coming out of isolation.  How long of an isolation? It doesn't say, because it depends on the campaign, but this is presumably the reason why they are culturally distinct from the rest of the setting in some way.  But there's no discussion of language or cultural familiarity.  Perhaps this is because the author didn't know what the language elements of your setting would be and so didn't want to mess with it, but Ctrl+F "language" reveals nothing.  Do they all speak the same language? Does something prevent any linguistic drift over all of this time? What's going on? My guess is the author didn't think of it.  A lot of us don't think in terms of language barriers, but presumably there would be one after a long period of no contact, and it's not like UT characters don't have the tools to overcome that. It wouldn't need to be much: one quick mention of this fact would be nice.  But this is more of a quibble than a problem.

Then it turns out there's a BIG SECRET on Grissom.  Guess what the secret is! I'll wait.  IT'S AN ALIEN ARTIFACT! There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but I would caution writers to not overuse them. The first new star system we get has an alien artifact in it, which means that fertile field is already tapped. What are the chances that the next one, and the next one, will want to have an alien artifact too? So this is less of a criticism of it, and more of a cautionary note not to over use this if this series continues.  That said, the artifact is rather novel: it's not a dead spaceship or a super-weapon: it's turning a gas giant into a star. This was the plot of Space Odyssey 2010 (and given the emphasis on the rest of the star system on Grissom, this feels a bit like Space Odyssey 2010: the setting), sure, so it's not the most wildly original concept, but most of the time we get alien artifacts, they're a macguffin you can hold in your hand, not planet-scale megastructure that you didn't notice until you scratch the surface.  So as far as alien artifacts go, it's a decent one.

And then we get some campaign seeds, so we can drop it in a campaign, and we get distinct ideas for off-worlders and natives.

I double checked (I own every Space Atlas book) and the average space Atlas entry is 2 pages, with one page essentially being a map and the GURPS Space Boilerplate. So this is way more info than we traditionally got on planets.  And it's more than enough information to run this sort of setting.  I rather think a space atlas entry is a great use of a 10-page supplement, and I might use it as an outline for some of my own material.

Could I use it in Psi-Wars? Sure, I guess. The real problem it runs into isn't that it doesn't fit, it's more than it's a bit shrugworthy as far as Psi-Wars is concerned: the culture described is essentially a bog-standard Westerly culture, and the excitement levels of some artifacts slowly igniting a new star is, for Psi-Wars, small potatoes.  It's not to say that I can't use it, but this is really aimed more at "Star Trek" than "Star Wars."  That's not a problem, it's just a matter of genre. But I must say that the fact that it could slip into Psi-Wars relatively unnoticed does speak to how good a job the writer did at keeping it generic.

So I think it's worth your time and I don't regret having it. There are some issues with how sedate the material is, so some readers might snooze on it, but if you're willing to accept that not every setting needs scantily-clad space princesses and rogue alien mafiosos and giant space dragons to be exciting, then this setting could be great for you.  I expect I'll get some use out of the book.  I also hope this becomes a thing, where we get at least one new Space Atlas entry, of about this heft, a year. Or more.  I think that's the best part of the book: if you can do this once, you can do it more often than that. It's also why I offer that cautionary note: because I'd like to see more of these.