Which alien books are for me?

[Morte]

I've noticed that there are some sets of alien books available (CT reprints, the GURPS books, maybe MT CDROM to come). I'm thinking of buying myself a set.

I want it partly to read out of interest, and partly as a reference and source of ideas for refereeing. I'm chiefly looking for description -- history, biology, culture, politics, society, economics, technology etc. Good adventures and seeds are always welcome, too. I'm not so interested in crunch (chargen, ship designs, whatever).

If it helps to see where I'm coming from, I've read CT Alien module 1 (Aslan) which was OK but didn't wow me. The background stuff is fine, but could have been deeper -- the T20 rulebook does this almost as well. The CT specific chargen is useless to me, though I would certainly have liked to read an essay on the careers and opportunitues available to Aslan. The adventure was uninspired and badly organised.

It seems the choice is between GURPS and the CT reprints. I wonder if anybody can describe how these compare, and hazard whether they would suit me?

 

[Spinward Scout]

You'd probably want to pick up Solomani and Aslan: the RimWard Races from DGP - probably on eBay. This is most likely what you are looking for for background material. The system is MegaTraveller, tho.

Scout

 

[kaladorn]

And IF you can find it, and IF you can afford it. It seems to be an incredibly rare and valuable supplement. I'd direly like a copy, but I've never seen it on eBay yet when I've looked and I hear it fetches ludicrous prices.

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by kaladorn:
And IF you can find it, and IF you can afford it. It seems to be an incredibly rare and valuable supplement. I'd direly like a copy, but I've never seen it on eBay yet when I've looked and I hear it fetches ludicrous prices.

Doesn't sound like me. I buy books to read and use, not to worship. [But thanks for the suggestion, Mr Toth.]

I'm leaning towards the GURPS books. They get good reviews on rpg.net and appear to contain the sort of material and depth that I want. Also, there's a UK store offering all four in a half-price bundle. If SJG could just fix the three broken sampler PDFs on their website...

 

[Dynamo]

Really I didn't like the GURPS books, some of it was the art and some of it was the presentation... heh I must be an old curmudgeon but I like GDW's old alien books much better.

 

[Ben W Bell]

The GURPS Alien books are very good. Rules light in general, but the detail given to the races is good. One thing Traveller has always suffered from was bits of information spread all over the place and not available in one place, the GURPS Aliens books solve this problem admirably.

 

[Vargas]

Fundamentally, what you get in the GURPS books is what was in the original GDW modules with some extra minor details tacked on. (As well as GURPS rules, but since I don't do GURPS, I can't really comment).

 

[Morte]

I got the GURPS books, in a half-price bundle of four from Legend Games in Worcester.

From what I've seen so far, I like them. They're clear and well organised. There's far more depth than the Alien Module I read, and not much that's sytem specific. In other words, it's just what I wanted.