GURPS Boardroom and Curia out on W23

Work has been a Terribly Dire Polar Bear recently, and today most of all. Fortunately, SJG comes to my blogging rescue by releasing something that was pretty darn interesting in playtest.

GURPS Boardroom and Curia is a book all about groups of people. In a word: Organizations. 

It’s a PC-facing guide to what organizations, from street gangs to multinational conglomerates to multinational conglomerate street gangs (and given the global reach of some gangs, this isn’t really an exaggeration!). From Wayne Enterprises to Intergang to the Peace Corps to the Green Lantern Corps, you can probably figure out what to do.

I had an interesting time on this one, because I’d just threw down quite a long post on this topic thanks to my daughter being precocious. 

This manuscript got a lot of love and attention in the playtest – all of it geared (successfully, based on the revisions brought forward by the irrepressible +Matt Riggsby, the supplement’s author) to ensuring that the manuscript was even more player-facing (and GM-facing) than it had been before.

Organizations – from the merchant’s guild to the Illuminati, from the LiberDemoPublican party to Anarchists United, and (more seriously) many of the organized religions that have and continue to play important roles in politics and society in both reality and fiction – play a defining role in the human world. Every time you shop, go to the bank, go to church to pray, contribute or read something from a political party, you’re interacting with an organization. When you have to deal with the Infernal Revenue Service to straighten out a bit of a problem with your yearly Soul Return, you’re dealing with the people in the organization. Every time you’re stymied on the phone and say “I will speak with your manager, now” you’re interacting with the rules presented in the book. 

Thanks to Pelgrane for JUST the right tone

More importantly, when you need to get the Army to send a squad of gunships to die messily attacking a Lovecraftian Horror – you’re dealing with an organization, and the book will help you do it.

I haven’t re-read it in full yet. But I will. Not only that, but I fully intend to use it to scope out Oliver Enterprises, the fictional megacorporation helmed by my NPC Patron Wayne Oliver (yes, yes, derivative, but deliberately so, and he even makes Tony Stark jokes about himself) for my on-hiatus Alien Menace campaign. 

So check it out – I think it’ll be worth your while. And if not, you can speak to my manager.