Review: GURPS Underground Adventures

Review: GURPS Underground Adventures

In the previous review, I mentioned that GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3 has two pages on excavation and mining, but it was pointed out to me that I forgot about GURPS Underground Adventures. And that’s right, I did forget about that book. I often do, despite using certain rules from it relatively often. Still, this book often just escapes my mind, just like such books as GURPS Future Histories. So, let’s have a short review of GURPS Underground Adventures to give it some spotlight!

GURPS Underground Adventures was written by William H. Stoddard, which usually is a sign of quality. It is 36 pages long and is devoted to a narrow topic – underground exploration. The first chapter, titled “The Foundations of the Earth” is entirely fluff – there is no game mechanical information there. It describes the evolution of geological theory, from ancient legends to medieval and renaissance times, to modern geology and speculative theories. It’s concise, interesting, and well-written.

The next chapter, titled “Tight Places” is mostly crunch. It’s only 4 pages long, but it’s packed with new rules and some old revised rules. First, it touches on the subject of perception underground. The questionable rules for darkness that you’ll find here are not new – you can find them in other books, but the new rules for Infravision really are new. I ranted about them in another post devoted to Infravision, so you might want to check it out. However, Perception is not limited to vision, and Hearing also works differently in underground environments, and this book does describe that. GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions reprints these rules and expands them.

Then there are new navigation rules for underground environments. I don’t think they exist in any other books. They are pretty nice, and very valuable in fantasy games set in the Underdark, for example. Honestly, I find it surprising that GURPS Basic Set doesn’t have the Underground specialty for the Navigation skill.

The rules for movement include something that for some weird reason was never printed before – the base Hearing range for melee combat! I can imagine this being very relevant in many situations, so I’m puzzled as to why this isn’t in GURPS Basic Set. There also are rules for trying to fight quietly.

There are rules for unstable terrain that is often found underground, but for some reason, there are no rules for moving under a low ceiling – to find those, check out GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions. There also are rules for climbing and crossing gaps and chasms using a rope, which became relevant in the game I’m playing in as I’m writing this script.

The rules for squeezing through narrow passages are unique to GURPS Underground Adventures, you won’t find them anywhere else. At least I think so. These rules came up in at least two of my games.

In the past, when I was comparing swing and thrust attacks, I mentioned that GURPS Underground Adventures has a very interesting rule that makes positioning and weapon length more important – and that’s Fighting in Confined Spaces. The rule is pretty intuitive and basically is an extension of the rules for using long weapons in close combat from GURPS Martial Arts (p. MA117).

Then, we have rules about the underground environmental conditions, such as temperature and atmosphere, and those are important if you are developing a realistic underground cave system. There also are rules for tunneling and digging that are more detailed than those in GURPS Basic Set and even GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3. If you plan to dig something in the game, and you want to use realistic rules for a tunnel’s structural integrity, definitely use these rules.

The third chapter has several character templates – from a normal miner to a chthonomancer. I have no complaints about them.

Then, it lists some advantages that might be useful underground, and provides new variants for some advantages. For example, Scanning Sense gets two new variants – Ground-Penetrating Radar and Seismic Sonar. There is also something that makes me mad – one new advantage is hidden in a box in a different chapter instead of being presented here – Magnetic-Ripple Comm variant of Telecommunication. However, I appreciate the inclusion of many examples for the Detect advantage. Here’s another interesting thing. Apparently, there are two ways of detecting seismic vibrations in GURPS. If you’ve read GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses, you know that Subsonic Hearing does it. But this book says that Sensitive Touch also provides the same benefit. This is quite nice, as Sensitive Touch may feel overpriced with how situational it is.

The skill section is nice, even though it doesn’t provide much new stuff. My favorite is, as I’ve already said before, the Underground specialty for Navigation and Survival.

There are even some new spells for the vanilla magic system. Nice.

The equipment section not only introduces new gear, but also lists gear from other books that may be useful in an underground environment, making it easier to find all the useful stuff. There are even some new vehicles for tunneling. I remember complaining about the table not saying what skills you use for them, but that is actually mentioned in the skills chapter.

Chapter 4 is all about underground creatures. Some of them are described as monster statblocks without point costs, but some of them have proper templates. The creatures range from mythical spirits of the underworld to semi-realistic cave creatures to sci-fi underground-dwelling aliens. I have no complaints.

The final chapter is titled Adventures Underground. It just talks about underground-centered adventures and campaigns. To me, it feels a bit underdeveloped, probably due to a word limit. I think almost all the ideas there could be explored in more depth (see what I did there?) in something like GURPS Hot Spots, Locations, or maybe as an Infinite Worlds parallel.

Overall, I think this is a good book for its length, but I wish it were bigger. I brought up GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions multiple times, as many of the rules were reprinted there, but not all of them, so these two books complement one another. Some rules presented in Underground Adventures are useful on the surface as well, such as that melee combat loudness thing, so even if you don’t like dungeons, you can get some use out of this book. Although, it’s probably not worth buying it for just that rule alone. Anyway, despite saying that it’s a good book, especially for realistic underground environments, I wish it had more about fantastic underground environments. But I have the D&D Underdark book for that, and that’s a great one too!