Some people have called this the "Third basic set book for Gurps fourth edition." And, in many ways they're right. Powers greatly expands on how to utilize the options in the basic set to emulate many abilities in fiction. It also adds a few new advantages like the ability to control or create (or destroy) matter. There are also hundreds of example abilities ranging from turning someone into a frog to having a built-in weapon. Most importantly it covers what makes an ability a power. This is about what differentiates a bird’s ability to fly from a superhero's. If you want to play Gurps in any genre that uses extranormal abilities be it super powers, magic (if you aren't using the default magic rules), chi abilities, divine gifts or any other type of power you need this book.

Although the title seems counterintuitive this is perhaps the most usefull of the Power-Ups Line. Often when translating an ability from fiction or defining something you came up with on your own making it unique is as much what you take away from the stock advantages as what you add. This book compiles and expands on the existing limitations in GURPS in marvelous ways alowing far more customization of abilities. If you use Gurps it's well worth buying.

A great free introduction to a great game system.

GURPS has gained a reputation as an overly complicated RPG. This 32 page PDF shows how simple it realy is to play. The game is complicated, I won't lie. However, GURPS is no more complicated than Dungeons and Dragons or Shadowrun. GURPS has gained it's reputation because it loads the complexity into starting the game. While D&D allows you to just pick a race and class and learn more as you go GURPS requires an understanding of the system to create a character. GURPS Lite helps this process by reducing the list of abilities you have to chose from to some common ones usefull in most genre. The full rules offer other means of simplifying the character creation process for new players such as using templates. Once play starts the game becomes fairly simple with rules to adapt to many play styles, levels of realism and different genre.

If you're tired of having to learn new rules every time you want to play in a different setting or want to have adventures that jump from one genre to another GURPS is probably the best system available. It's also great for adapting your favorite book, TV show or movie into a game setting or just adventuring in a setting you cook up yourself.

Best of all GURPS Lite is free so if you decide you don't like it all you lose is the time it took you to read 32 pages.