GURPS Monsters is a 128-page soft-bound book compiled by J. Hunter Johnson and published in 2002 by Steve Jackson Games as a supplement for the GURPS role-playing game system. It contains biographies and gaming statistics for forty-eight monsters for various campaign settings.
Contents A Mythological Menagerie Amenhotep the Mummy, an undead pharaoh Asterius the Minotaur, half-man, half-bull Curupira, a Tupi protector of the forest The Golem, the Jewish legend of a clay man The Great Leech of Tlanusi'yi, a 350-foot worm Lilith, Adam's first wife La Llorona, the Weeping Woman of the Rio Grande Medusa, a woman with a petrifying gaze Scylla, a six-headed dog-woman Tiamat, the Sumerian dragon-goddess Yama Uba, a Japanese witch
The Cryptozoo The Beast of Le Gévaudan, a giant wolf Bigfoot, a shy simian biped El Chupacabra, the Puerto Rican goat-sucker The Great Sphinx, the guardian of Egypt The Honey Island Swamp Monster, the Louisiana Wookiee Hughes De Camp-D'Avesnes, French 11th-century nobleman and werewolf The Jersey Devil, a hoofed, winged near-man The Mothman, the prophetic insectoid creature Specimen Alpha-39, an intelligent sewer alligator Spring Heeled Jack, a red-eyed, leaping trickster
Legends of Literature The Big Bad Wolf, a cautionary tale about carnality The Doppelgänger, an identity-stealing manipulator Dracula, the world's most celebrated vampire Frankenstein's Monster, Mary Shelley's famous creation Geryon, a demon from Dante's Inferno Grendel, arch-enemy of Beowulf Headless Horseman, the pumpkin-headed Hessian mercenary The Phantom of the Opera, a deformed but cultured man The Queen of Air and Darkness, a cold-hearted faerie Shub-Internet, a Lovecraftian transdimensional entity suffusing the internet
Original Monsters Barclay Thormon, the disembodied brain of a cruel businessman Benny the Fox, a sadistic cartoon come to life Elrond Carver, a radioactive gangster for GURPS Technomancer Gill Man, an homage to the Creature from the Black Lagoon Hachi-Otoko, a man-shaped swarm of bees Harvester, a gigantic, hungry mass of writhing tentacles Ixis, a shapeshifting imposter for a fantasy campaign Leatherjacket, a dismembered killer held together by his harness Leviathan, a conglomeration of many human victims Lord K'Han the Giant Ape, inspired by King Kong The Maylum Spirit, a vicious ghost trapped in an insane asylum Pusan Chen, an undead dragon Special Agent Thomas Johnson, a Man in Black like Agent Smith Stitches the Patchwork Clown, a murderous doll Sylvia Sternenkind, a beautiful bioroid serial-killer for GURPS Transhuman Space Tamok the Conqueror, a telepathic leader of an alien space fleet The Woodbury Blob, inspired by The Blob
Publication history GURPS Monsters is a 128-page soft-bound book compiled by J. Hunter Johnson and published in 2002 by Steve Jackson Games as a supplement for the GURPS role-playing game system.
Writer/compiler Hunter Johnson is a freelance game designer, author, and translator. He has translated many game rules and websites from German for Mayfair Games. He authored or co-authored six books for Steve Jackson Games, including GURPS Monsters, GURPS WWII: Frozen Hell, and the second edition of GURPS Japan. Johnson served for five years as the first coordinator of GURPS errata for Steve Jackson Games. He has also designed a few computer games, including gToons for Cartoon Network. (published by White Wolf Publishing) and Quizgle.com.
Reception GURPS Monsters won a rating of A in a review published in Games Unplugged. Print magazine contains review. The url given in this reference directs to an rpg.net site, which reports only the score of the review. The actual issue is reported to be available at , but as of August 13, 2014, the link is not responding. John G. Snyder of gamingreport.com rated the book at 4 1/2 stars, saying, "You will be pleasantly surprised and not a little disturbed." Freelance writer Craig Oxbrow says in a 2001 review of the book for rpg.net, "GURPS Monsters is a wealth of ideas and inspiration for monsters as characters," and that it "will see use beyond the GURPS system."
See also Other GURPs publications
References
External links RPGNet review Short bio and credentials of one of the contributing authors