Product Description

All the Gear is Here!
In 256 meticulously researched pages, GURPS High-Tech gives descriptions and stats for hundreds of kinds of historical weapons and personal armor, vehicles from the stagecoach to modern helicopters, and much more.
GURPS High-Tech also has the gear and gadgets characters need. Communication, from early telegraphs to modern computers; tools of the trade for detectives, spies, and thieves; camping equipment, rations, and first-aid kits; business cards, watches, and fashionable duds - this book has everything, for encounters from the wilderness to high society and everything in between.
GURPS High-Tech is the complete resource for equipment from the 18th century through the modern age, and will be appreciated by Game Masters no matter what system they use!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #253742 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Another solid performance from SJ Games
Like many 4th edition GURPS books, this is a major rewrite of an existing book. Like Ultra Tech, this book goes so much further beyond its original material that it is essentially a whole new book.

The greatest weakness of the original High-Tech book was that it was primarily about guns and their history and it was organized as an historical reference rather than a roleplaying reference. Another issue was that one slender volume attempted to cover all equipment from the beginning of the age of gunpowder to the modern era.

In spite of the authors best efforts, this was simply too much material for a single book and it tended to either get lost in the details or was so vague as to be nearly useless. I bought the original book and loved it for quite a while because it fit a niche in my military history library, not because it was useful for roleplaying (although the authors added some desperately needed charts that did help considerably on that front).

The new book reduces it's area of coverage to about 225 years instead of nearly 500 years and does a tremendously better job of explaining the effects of the items on roleplaying. The book has marvelous illustrations and quotes and the now-ubiquitous short stories that add a lot of interest to their rules explanations. Admittedly the history suffers a bit but that's a price I'm willing to pay.

Another advantage is that the new book is a lot bigger as well, with 256 pages instead of the original 128. This provides room to give detailed histories for particular items such as the AK-47 that the characters are likely to encounter more frequently.

There's still a LOT of weapons and the nicely written descriptions don't cover all the weapons in the book but the enormous effort that went into this book was most definitely NOT wasted. This is another welcome addition to the GURPS universe!

High tech brings goodness to modern campaigns
GURPS attempts to satisfy campaigns across pretty much every genre, in pretty much every time period. The standard basic characters/campaigns books, plus perhaps Magic, Fantasy, and Banestorm make life pretty easy for a fantasy GM, while the basic books plus perhaps UltraTech, Infinite Worlds, Space, BioTech, or Traveller Interstellar Wars make life easy for a sci fi GM. Until now, it has been a bit problematic running a campaign set between the civil war and near-tech cyberpunk.

High Tech addresses this time period. It concentrates on ironmongery, with real world examples of weapons and ammunition as used throughout history. It includes dates of introduction and wide reproduction for time travel games, and enough information for people generally unfamiliar with firearms to sound the part of their gunslinger characters.

It also has many, many pages of non-weapon/armor equipment, and frankly, that was the part I liked the most. My players enjoyed being able to look up a diving bell, a WW2 tank, and a napoleaonic-era timepiece.

For what it is worth, my minimal set of GURPS books is the main two, plus magic, ultra tech, and now high tech. With those, I can generally convert items from other systems or wing it, regardless of era.

Great book for historical Gaming
Gurps High Tech is a great sourcebook for historical or modern gaming set from the mid 1700's to today. Unlike previous editions of the book High Tech isn't just about firearms (though the chapter on weaponry is half the book) it also includes information on a wide variety of other historical technology. There's information technology from printing presses to word processing software, information transfer tech from hand caried mail to e-mail, and protective gear from summer clothing to space suits. Best of all the book doesn't just list game stat's for everything (although it has them too) it describes it in real world terms so you can create your own stats for other games.