This book 2 of the GURPS basic set (4TH EDITION) The last edition was a single book of 256 pages plus instant characters section, but so much material was add to the new edition it would have weighed in at a total of 576 pages, while suitable for stoping bullets, a but unwieldy for gameplay, so Steve Jackson games have divided everything a player has to have is in book one, basic system rules and everything for character creation, just enough combat to get a player into the game. The rest of combat is this book. This book goes into detail for what a GameMaster needs to know about physical feats and combat (in greater detail). It covers vehicles and technology. It includes stats for animals and some monsters, along with a guide for world design and Game Mastering itself. "Tool kit chapters let the GM make artifacts, character abilities, and entire game worlds (in fact an infinity of worlds, alternate, parallel, cross-genre, etc.) Don't get me wrong this is just for GMs. Players who enjoy detail and the creative side of the game will find this book inspiration for beginning their own campaigns. My point is it's not required, but Basic Set GURPS: Characters and Campaigns are designed to work together, pages and chapters are consecutively numbered and the index covers both books and repeated in both. SJ games has made the system easy to play, easy to learn and easy to get hooked. They have also made the new Basic Set easier to carry around. GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System and it is just that, it is the perfect for linking already existing d20 systems, creating cross-genre campaigns or making campaigns based on any book, movie, TV series or concept you or SJ Games can brainstorm (before the Wizards of the Coast edition we used GURPS to run Star Wars and Dr. Who campaigns).
www.sjgames.com/e23/ is an excellent resource for pre-generated PDS ranging from short adventures to whole sourcebooks. Like D&D, there is a considerable amount of GURPS material out there, either new and updated or old and out-of-print, anything you can imagine (Fantasy, the Prisoner, Horror, Swashbuckler, and loads of other supplements). The GURPS main web site is good too, www.sjgames.com/gurps/ most books and supplements hotlink from Amazon.