Robert Jordan's ``The Wheel of Time'' is much more than the series of books via which the readers perceive it. This series of books represents a very thoroughly planned world with a history, a set of physical and mystical laws and a wide variety of cultures and peoples. As with every other work of fiction in the past 10 years, which has met the above criteria, someone had to turn it into a role playing game. This book uses GURPS (by Steve Jackson Games) as the underlying mechanics.
For those of you who have not yet dared to tread the 700+ page books (8, so far), this is the executive, non-spoiler summary (though much of the information elsewhere in this world-book may be considered minor spoiler material for mechanics, but not plot):
There are two primary forces. One is a force of absolute evil (as represented or promulgated by the Dark One). One is called the Wheel of Time, and seems to favor some sort of constant balance between good (as represented by the general needs of people) and evil. There is also an oft-mentioned, but rarely (ever?) heard from, Creator who is rumored to be the arch-enemy of the Dark One, and thus of evil.
As the Wheel turns, so the saying goes, ages come and pass. The story takes place in the Third Age, an age after a near loosing of the Dark One, and the tainting of the male-half of the source of all magic, The One Power (which is derived from the True Source, of which little is known other than that it is said to power the Wheel of Time....) Got that? Ok, let's try again.
The source of all magic working is the One Power (well, almost all) and that Power is divided into saidin (male only) and saidar (female only). No man may touch saidar (well, almost), nor may any woman touch saidin (well, almost). Saidin has been touched by the Dark One, so any man using magic goes nuts... eventually.
Now, it gets interesting (and hard to avoid spoilers). A certain figure of ages gone past, known as The Dragon, is supposed to be re-born in this Third Age, and save everyone from the return of Shai'tan (the Dark One) at Tarmon Gai'don (the Last Battle for the good guys). That's the back-plot, but through the course of these books we witness the people involved in bringing this prophesy to fruition, and share in their pain and joy, while creeping ever closer to this fabled Last Battle.
There's a lot more than that to it. There are Aes Sedai, a powerful society of women who use the One Power to their own ends, supposedly in the name of public good (and sometimes it is....) There are whole nations of people that aren't part of the story, initially, but slowly get drawn in. There are other figures than the Dragon Reborn who have huge parts to play. But read the books if you want to know it all. This book is just an attempt to aid those who want to use GURPS to roleplay in the world set out by these books.
GURPS is like the Wheel of Time, in that it represents a monumental effort (in this case, on the part of many) which provides gamers with a rich set of options. One could simply use the Basic Set and this book to play in a WoT game, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are rules for Psionics (see Speaking with Wolves), Martial Arts (see Aiel for uses of Martial Arts) and many other things which fit into WoT. An adventurous GM could also combine WoT with other genres (at least one person in the series has mentioned that during the Age of Legends, powerful Aes Sedai would travel to other worlds, though she may have been lying). Or, you could decide that one of the Ages gone past developed high-tech, and you want to use GURPS Ultra-Tech or GURPS Bio-Tech for artifact remnants. You could also transport a WoT character to a non-WoT game (say, as a result of a badly botched Unweaving). The point is that using GURPS means that none of these options are closed to you. You don't have to march out and buy 20 books to play, but they are there if you need them.
That said, the requirements for this game are this book and GURPS Basic Set. You will almost certainly want Compendium I as well, and Psionics and Martial Arts would be useful, but are not required for most of the rules.
Page references are in the standard GURPS style. B28 would be page 28 GURPS: Basic Set. The other abbreviations are: M: Magic; MA, Martial Arts; CI, Compendium I; P, Psionics. See p. CI181 for a complete list. In other works, this should be referred to as WoT, and, since page numbers are not too helpful, you should use section headings. e.g. WoT:Magic.