Pyramid Review: GURPS Prime Directive Core Rulebook

Pyramid Review

GURPS Prime Directive Core Rulebook

Published by Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.

Compiled by Gary Plana

Additional material by Stephen V. Cole and Alex Chobot

Edited by Stephen P. Petrick and Leanna M. Cole

176 b&w pages; $24.95

The "Powered by GURPS" label has pulled the Prime Directive roleplaying game, first published in 1993, out of the mothballs for another swing at the RPG market. Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc. takes advantage of some of the rules from GURPS Basic Set and its Compendia to recreate the Star Fleet Universe.

For those not familiar with ADB's game lines, it is the publishers of Star Fleet Battles and Federation & Empire, a tactical starship game and a galactic strategy game respectively. Like those titles, GURPS Prime Directive is loosely based on the original Star Trek TV series, but since there were only three seasons, a lot of the holes in the narrative were filled with creative license, guesswork, and ingenuity.

The history they've built up strongly resembles the source material, but while they shake hands, ne'er do the twain quite meet. Ambitious Earthlings met with the cool and aloof Vulcans long ago, and this was to lead to the formation of the United Federation of Planets. The Klingons have escaped from a long exile on their own planet, regained warp technologies, and now occupy a lot of territory filled with many subject and conquered peoples. The Humans are still headstrong, the Vulcans still unemotional, . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: August 2, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.