Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. I adore a good watering hole at the nexus of realities. Tales from Gavigan’s Bar by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague De Camp, Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke and the World’s End portion of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman are all in a similar vein, and they all draw upon the older tradition of the club tale as established by Lord Dunsany’s Jorkens and, even older, the tall tales of Baron Munchausen. Stories about telling stories. Love ‘em.

Robinson’s series, which also include a couple of novels about the brothel next door, has run across nine books from 1977 to 2001. They take the form of stories told by (and sometimes the hijinx of) the folks who drink at the saloon, which happens to cater to a clientèle from across time, space and different realities. The tone is usually lighthearted and farcical. The characters routinely focus on the positive — Callahan’s even got a law about it: “Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy.”

As ever, it is sort of an odd choice for a GURPS sourcebook (though I suppose it did come out the year after the similarly themed Tales from the Floating Vagabond, so maybe there was a bigger market for bar-centric dimension hopping than I’d expect). True, you get to Callahan’s from anywhere and anywhen, and from there go to the same, but it feels more like a fun place to visit rather than a base of operations. Pass through, have a pint or two, move on. Again, I am sure the overlapping portion of the Robinson Fan and RPG Player Venn diagram were stoked while the rest of us were kind of perplexed. Again, though, that’s sort of the charm of GURPS!