Review: Power-Ups 2 - Perks

Take a look if you want.

The first book in the power-ups system was about an entirely new mechanic. After that, the rest of the series turned into a kind of catalog of fill-in-the-crack spackling for all the mechanical elements that might have been missing from the catalogs. Some are better than others, and some are pretty forgettable. Among them, Perks is probably in the latter category for myself. I like to think of it as a learned lesson though nonetheless, because most of the issues I take with it are remedied in later Power-Ups books which are more interesting in all the ways that this one isn't. So, let's take a closer look.

Review: Power-Ups 8 - Limitations

The cover art is now three
pieces of clipart repeated.
This is not a joke.

Power-Ups 8, like the installment on Enhancements, is pretty much a book aimed at "power-users," and no, that's not a pun. This is a book for people who like being able to control and customize and get things just right right. I think it is kind of an interesting choice to split the enhancements and limitations across two volumes, but meh, I dunno if I even care that much. Altogether, this book is a bit of a pleasant surprise in my opinion in that it is better than I expected, but whether or not it's valuable to you, individually, the lady or gentleman reading this right now, is hard to say, but if you like having all your limitations in one place, this book might be worth it.

Review: Power-Ups 4 - Enhancements

The hand is powered up
with enhancements.

Enhancements are a fundamental building block of the GURPS advantage system. They make advantages slightly better in slightly different ways and are about half of the customization tool we have to get the exact look-and-feel we want from them. This book, though not incredibly novel, and by today might be a smidgen out of date, is still a pretty good resource and more than just a catalog of enhancements. Let's take a look at what's inside.

Review: Power-Ups 3 - Talents

It's ok, friend, daddy's got you.

So decided to get a few books from my "maybe" list this weekend on a splurge, and among them was Talents. Talents as I've said in a previous, recent post, are a core mechanic that help to define a character by giving a bunch of bonuses to tightly related skills. They are also, mechanically speaking, pretty easy to put together with only a paragraphish amount of text needed to adequately describe it in the basic set. That said, how could such a simple idea actually fill out a full supplement? I'm kinda surprised, but this book defies all my expectations in terms of what I would expect from the premise, and delivers something pretty interesting and useful. Let's take a deeper look then.

Review: Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys

Literally an impulse buy
for me.

I've discussed some metagame mechanics a few times on this blog, so as you can imagine, I have been interested in Power-Ups 5 for a while, so I decided to pick it up since I had nothing better going on, and I've already completed the Dungeon Fantasy series, and it was pretty cheap. Impulse Buys is about creating mechanics to spend character points on little pick me ups here and now on a temporary big boost, as opposed to a more modest "permanent" upgrade down the line. It's more than metagaming though, even though that why I picked it up. So let's take a look at this book, which in the end, I think is something that is good for the type of person looking to add that kind of thing to a game, but others might want to pass on.