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GURPS Fourth Edition
GURPS Space
The Future Is Yours!
GURPS Space puts campaign-planning advice and space science at your fingertips, so you can create a setting that is plausible and fun!
It's the ultimate toolkit for building strange new worlds and alien civilizations.Does your game feature gritty asteroid miners or blaster-waving fighter jocks? Choose the space travel and technology that give the right feel for your campaign.Looking for character ideas? Here are templates and advice to help an adventuring group get together and stay together.Do you want a bug-eyed monster – or a realistic ecosystem? Use the alien-design chapter to build them all!Need a planet? How about an asteroid, or a Dyson sphere? The world-building chapters provide step-by-step instructions.In a hurry to play? Each step of the world- and alien-design instructions lets you roll randomly and get results that make sense. Roll up your next planet and let the adventure begin! GURPS Space will help you create campaigns of every style, from science fantasy to space opera to realistic. Recreate your favorite science-fiction background, or develop an original world of your own. With GURPS Space in your hands, the future is yours!
GURPS Space requires the GURPS Basic Set Fourth Edition. The information and advice on technology, world-building, and alien design can be used as a resource for any space-based game.
This softcover printing is black and white (grayscale). A version with color interior pages is also available separately.
GURPS Space puts campaign-planning advice and space science at your fingertips, so you can create a setting that is plausible and fun!
It's the ultimate toolkit for building strange new worlds and alien civilizations.Does your game feature gritty asteroid miners or blaster-waving fighter jocks? Choose the space travel and technology that give the right feel for your campaign.Looking for character ideas? Here are templates and advice to help an adventuring group get together and stay together.Do you want a bug-eyed monster – or a realistic ecosystem? Use the alien-design chapter to build them all!Need a planet? How about an asteroid, or a Dyson sphere? The world-building chapters provide step-by-step instructions.In a hurry to play? Each step of the world- and alien-design instructions lets you roll randomly and get results that make sense. Roll up your next planet and let the adventure begin! GURPS Space will help you create campaigns of every style, from science fantasy to space opera to realistic. Recreate your favorite science-fiction background, or develop an original world of your own. With GURPS Space in your hands, the future is yours!
GURPS Space requires the GURPS Basic Set Fourth Edition. The information and advice on technology, world-building, and alien design can be used as a resource for any space-based game.
This softcover printing is black and white (grayscale). A version with color interior pages is also available separately.
242 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 2, 2013
GURPS Space has two things going for it. The first is the best (or at least closest to scientifically plausible) random world and star system generation rules on the market (although the hardcover has a glitch in the lunar tidal force equation which is corrected in the PDF). The second is a alien generation system which is an update of the fascinating system used in GURPS Uplift.
September 23, 2026
What a blast.
I got this book specifically because I'm writing space-related magic-systems in a fantasy story as an original project these days. While obviously fantasy and sci-fi stories can have magic systems that are "mysterious and unexplainable", I think it's more compelling to have them at least kind of "grounded in some reality" so that their limitations can also be interesting and readers can have at least a general idea of the "kinds of obstacles the characters will be stopped by" and "the kinds of strategies that could work". (We avoid the "Eric Cartman: 'My power is that I have all the powers'" setup this way IMO).
This guide both gives suggestions and examples and models for writers/game masters to follow AND ALSO just... gives general definitions and leaves room to imply "but you don't HAVE to do it the way I model in this book" too. I'm writing a fantasy story, not a sci-fi game campaign, so I won't do the "dice rolling to create my new type of solar system" method necessarily, BUT it was profoundly helpful to learn genuine science facts such as: "a moon around a giant gas planet will deal with different problems than a moon around a small terrestrial planet will." I... 'knew' that, but, no, that was a great example of a thing I hadn't considered! Reading this feels like two writers sitting together and asking: "but what if I tried THIS????" and the other says "hmmmm that definitely fits BUT then that means [something else] is affected..."
Fun stuff. Maybe after I finish this space-fantasy project I'll go roll some dice and see what star and planet system comes up.
I got this book specifically because I'm writing space-related magic-systems in a fantasy story as an original project these days. While obviously fantasy and sci-fi stories can have magic systems that are "mysterious and unexplainable", I think it's more compelling to have them at least kind of "grounded in some reality" so that their limitations can also be interesting and readers can have at least a general idea of the "kinds of obstacles the characters will be stopped by" and "the kinds of strategies that could work". (We avoid the "Eric Cartman: 'My power is that I have all the powers'" setup this way IMO).
This guide both gives suggestions and examples and models for writers/game masters to follow AND ALSO just... gives general definitions and leaves room to imply "but you don't HAVE to do it the way I model in this book" too. I'm writing a fantasy story, not a sci-fi game campaign, so I won't do the "dice rolling to create my new type of solar system" method necessarily, BUT it was profoundly helpful to learn genuine science facts such as: "a moon around a giant gas planet will deal with different problems than a moon around a small terrestrial planet will." I... 'knew' that, but, no, that was a great example of a thing I hadn't considered! Reading this feels like two writers sitting together and asking: "but what if I tried THIS????" and the other says "hmmmm that definitely fits BUT then that means [something else] is affected..."
Fun stuff. Maybe after I finish this space-fantasy project I'll go roll some dice and see what star and planet system comes up.
August 25, 2013
Fantastic source manual for creating speculative fiction settings for gaming or story-telling. The text adequately reduces to understandable models a number of key astrophysics elements defining our current understanding of stellar mechanics, while also suggesting copious ideas drawn from exemplary fiction on how to set stories in such locales.
March 12, 2016
This is my go to book when it comes to star system generation. By far the best Sci-Fi world building system I came across, so far, for pen and paper RPGs, anyway. It's a bit time consuming if you do it on paper, but at the end of the process you have a scientifically sound star system and you might even learn a bit of basic astronomy along the way.
August 21, 2025
This book laid the foundation for the world I first brought to life as a role-playing game—and later transformed into my novel, [Echoes of the Final Battle](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...).
March 29, 2013
excellent space SciFi primer for any game system
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews