A new PDF-only product Gun Heaven, is on sale now (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG) in case you have a craving for more SR weapons. And who doesn't? Here are the basics:


A Gat in the Hand Means the World by the Tail

Look, we all know that there are plenty of runs that go best when you don’t fire a shot. But we also know how foolish you’d be to go out without your trusted sidearm, because you never know when things are going to go south. Or when you’re going to be hired simply because you’re the person who’s got the right weapons for the job.

If you’re looking for a new weapon to add to your arsenal, Gun Heaven is the place to go. Featuring thirty-two guns—complete with descriptions, information on their use, game statistics, and full-color illustrations of each item—Gun Heaven collects older weapons and newer designs, ranging from the SIG P298 hold-out pistol, with its slim-line design, to the massive Ogre Hammer and its devastating punch. Get caught up on the predecessors of the legendary Ares Predator IV, or check out one of the most recent offerings from Onotari Arms, the assault-rifle/shotgun combo Xfactor III.

Gun Heaven will help any team of runners pack out the way they want, while also providing opportunities to make a few nuyen by finding and selling pristine versions of older models to collectors. Gun Heaven is for use with Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.


Jason H.

From the several sample pages at RPGnow, it looks like the '1 per page' image+facts format, with fluff description and testimonials. Fancy.

Yeah, browsing through it now. With the PDF-only books, space isn't as much of a premium, so they can afford to go back to the one-per-page layout. Nice.

One thing that jumps out at me, though, as a gun enthusiast - a number of the artwork pieces look nice but are clearly done by someone with limited knowledge of firearm mechanics. It's not a major issue, but the pedantic inner voice in my head is screaming "guns do not work that way!"

They did finally establish what mechanics to use with Battle Rifles. Sporting Rifle ranges, takes Assault Rifle mods, uses Automatics skill.




-k

A lot of artists don't. A while back, I was involved with... Something. Let's leave it at that, and had to work with a graphic artist who had zero concept of weapons outside of a fantasy element (He was GREAT at swords!).

I found a bunch of YouTube Videos and showed him a Sten-II firing to show him how a bolt worked back and forth in a SMG. Slow-motion shots of a Semi-Automatic (Colt M1911A1, IIRC and knowing me.). And a few other things. After a few things like that, the concept art dramatically improved. It helps that I was also describing the mechanism for the weapons and so on as well... An engineer might go, "Oh dear $Deity!" but anyone less would go, "Yeah, that might work that way...".

EDIT: Also just picked it up and now have to postpone sleep for Gun Porn. DAMN YOU!!! Giving me what I want!!!

OK, gone through it. Yes, the new firearms are, "Oh dear $Deity, firearms don't work that way!", but the classic weapons are nicely drawn out (Some nice old friends as well!). And, *GASP*, are those CALIBERS I see? Yes, yes they are! Who'd have thunk it?

Also, the addition of a sorely lacking part of the firearms portion of Shadowrun: Machine Pistols! They finally get some lovin'!

Some additional information that could work as an equivalent of Errata is a nice addition as well, although a part of me hates for having to pay for it.

Now I'm wishing that at least one of those three groups I had contacted had actually happened and I could finally play. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Final score: 9/10. I deduct some from a lack of research on the artists part and "Having to pay for errata", otherwise, I gots me some gun porn to go with my vehicle porn at long last. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Fantastic. They now publish errata to books hidden in other books you have to buy ...? I guess I should be happy they publish Errata to their crapbooks at all, but somehow I'm not.


Caliber-specific ammo?

This may be relevant to your interests. Just sayin.

Also, I approve of more guns in shadowrun. Especially with a nice layout and lots of information on each one. I <3 gun porn.

Well only the last one of those wasn't spelled out in WAR, but even it was pretty easy to figure out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Review

Ok, let's have a look at this. I disapprove of this presentation of errata, but at least it's not too expensive and come with more gear, despite the quite insulting delivery, being hidden in a pdf product like this (it's bad customer service, at the very least). Also, there are several other problems with this product.

First, check the login screen.


Is THAT the wrapup of the nameless poster plot? I sure hope not. It seems like it, though. Pity, this was just starting to get interesting. Who, why, when? Those questions will forever remain unanswered. That's a wholly unsatisfying way to wrap this up.

I'll refrain from commenting on the Texas Rangers piece, as political discussion is against the TOS. Unfortunatly, this tone prevails throughout the book. And I seriously doubt Picador is a humanis policlub / Archconservatives fangirl, so the narrative voice is way off, too.


This made me laugh, considering the hacking rules - sacrifice any security for downing friendly fire a peg. Besides, you can run an image link/gait analysis program on your internal smartlink and save gait/image profiles of friendlies, so your safety kicks in when pointing the gun at them (SR1 through 3 smartlinks had that as a standard feature, so it's not rocket science). Same effect and your unit is not instantly compromised.

Now, on to the meat of the thing. It introduces two new qualities - incompatible and vintage - that roughly do the same as the obsolescent/obsolete qualities of This Old Drone. So far so good. It also introduces a new weapons category, some new add-ons, and new rules issues. And it sneaks in an errata for an old issue.

The art ... is about 60% photomanipulations, it seems - sources seem to be wikipedia, since I felt I knoe some of those images. 40% are hand drawn, and those look decidedly space age. Style of Photomanip and lineart don't mesh well with each other - here photorealism dimmed slightly by PSP filters, there strong, comic-esque inking and almost no shading. Not a pretty mixture, though both styles work on an individual level. Also, the resolution of the images seems bugged, both in Foxit and in Adobe reader. Low resolution, especially in the background, scaled up, it seems. That's one large step down from Unfriendly Skies' artwork's quality, which only had one glaringly obvious photomanip (something I personally disapprove of, but ymmv).

The guns ... the numbers seem mostly okay on a first glance, but I'd gladly leave that to better rules lawyers than myself - missing add-ons their fluff explicitly refers to and bizarre discrepancies between caliber and classification of weapons occur, though. Lessons learned form That Old Drone? It seems not. A substantial step back from Unfriendly Skies here, too. Also, the stats for the vintage predators don't mesh with the old stats at all. Ammo capacity seems to change with age in weapons. Who'd have thought that.

Fluff ... goes towards the bizarre. There are free-selling guns in Europe and Japan now? Excuseme? Japan? The setting where half the point is the extreme firearms ban and a return to everyone wearing a tanto to fight off frequent ninjapunk attacks? Whoever wrote this seems to have little to no idea how weapons laws in countries that are not America work (and seems decidedly tea-party-esque and lets that flow much more freely than I would like). It's not like "Licenses for every piece of gear" isn't a core mechanic of SR4 SINs either, but then again, the rules have meshed badly with old rules lately anyway. Same tone as in War!, and it pisses me off in the same ways, even though not on the same magnitude. Summed up, this PDF has a general tone to it that I just find unpleasant, bizarre fluff, and sloppy rules.

More fluff issues:
- The US Navy SEALS were all killed in the fighting when the US split into UCAS and CAS. The fighting ... that all other sources say did not take place because the partition was peaceful. And their weapons disintegrated when they died, apparently. Right.
- Actually, the HK Urban Combat and the HK MP7 are one and the same weapon. Pegasus gave CGL all their added weapons for Arsenal. They should be lying somewhere on Jason's HDD. If they are gone, just send an email to Tigger to get a new file. I'm sure he still has it. So much for international coopertation, I guess. Research? Seems not a high priority at CGL.
- They used the MAC-10 in 1900? Errr ...no. Neither were action movies very prolific back then. Didn't you mean the 1990s?
- A .40 cal light pistol? Seriously? That would be more like a heavy pistol, right (like the Mk23)? Nevermind the P99 was established as heavy pistol in fiction already. Research, people. It can be done.
- The M16 hardly is the standard assault rifle of the western world. There is no standard western assault rifle.
- Whoever wrote "Chinese Communist Regime" both again introduces entirely unwelcome politcal commentary and totally omits that the PRC isn't dead, but lives on in Henan, for better or worse. Research failure and tea party meet for a rather unpleasant mix here.
- Ogre Hammer? Since when is Ares Human Nation Central (for interested authors: That's actually GENOM of Switzerland)? Ares having a strong enough racist subculture to justify calling a weapon Ogre Hammer is totally new, and should really, really infuriate the pro-Meta lobby that seemed extremly strong in the setting up to this publication, what with civil rights for everything that can spell it's name and all. Totally inconceivable, but another expression of the general, rather detestable tone of this publication.

Rules issues:
- Smartlink systems never, ever used fiberoptic cables since SR1 - and there it was a dated option. The induction pad was absolute standard ever since SR2. Declaring a smartlink of the 2060 requires a fiberoptic cable is a mind-bogglingly stupid retcon AND shows inability to do research.
- The Walther P109 fluff talks about an integrated recoil compensation, and barrel-mounted extras are banned, but there is no recoil compensation noted in the accessories.
- An all-2 commlink for weapons management? Get real. This Kyoto Upgrade Pack really ought to have been statted, at the very least, to make this even remotely viable (and I'd really like to see that IC. Optimised (6), ergonomic, one program package for everything? Even then it's practically limited to one IC in the node.
- The Ares Canadian Sportster is ridiculously underpowered compared to all other hunting rifles in Arsenal or the Core Book. Research!
- I like the idea of introducing new add-ons in sidebars next to the weapon where it was introduced. However, a table with all relevant stats for easy reference really, really should be standard in gear books again. It's not even hard to type! And handing out Errata like this is a new low.

Overall impression: Meh. Mixed feelings. It's substantially worse than recent releases like Unfriendly Skies or Spy Games. However, it's not quite as bad as War!, because apparently the munchkinism has been reined in to levels I am familiar with from the old FanPro German supplements (the H&K X is like the Ares Y, only with [raised stat] and costing d6*100 nuyen less), so it's not a total disaster like War. It delivers some good weapons and some that ... are various levels of crap. This still gets only 5/10 from me, because of the many factual errors, wonky stats, in parts bizarre artwork (re the chinese assault rifles attempts atabstract art?), the integrated hidden errata, rules issues, and the overall tone in the writing, as well as getting the shadowtalk voices all wrong (so Sunshine is a weapons nut now?).

Rating: 5/10.

Edited for a less fire-and-brimstone tone. And the thing about machine pistols. MMy bad.

There's something I don't get here. Are Gun Heaven "machine pistols" anyway different from the corebook and Arsenal "machine pistols" (Ceska Black Scorpion, Steyr TMP, Ares Crusader, FN 5-7C and PPSK-4) ?

Yeh this point of his really confused me, as Machine Pistols really are an existing weapon category, not a new one.
Or did the writers really fail so hard that they introduced a new weapon category with a same name as an existing one (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

and so the gnashing of teeth continues...

Still, as i have been on the devs case about fighter aircrafts for years now (i think) i guess i should accept that others will verbally flay them over firearms.

You're right. Withdrawn. Review edited accordingly.


One book was good, so it's improper to say another book from the same publisher isn't? Or what do you want to say?

Only shows up on the art, so no big deal...

So the standard question, anything useful? Or just cheap equipment which might be useful for gutterpunk NPCs?

Also, I'd say the name "Ogre Hammer" was chosen but because it embodies some of the supposed qualities of its namesake. Same reason why military hardware IRL is named "Apache" or "Leopard" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

ACME Arms, should we be worried?

Yeah, but those conventions usually don't allow anything.


As is pointed out in the article, rather not. ^_^

As for usefulness: Yes, there is useful stuff in there. It's just that it's in parts more or less abhorrent.

I love the full page presentation, takes me back (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Mostly skimming around it, I see nothing that will become the next Slivergun, which is good. Basically, it's just more options. All in all, I give it my endorsement.

*Sighs* No. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) I'm just happy to see it for the first time in anything other than random shadowtalk about how military rounds are rare, and hunting rounds are common, with a statement of actual calibers. I think it was a 1st Ed book I was reading.
Oh yeah, that's it, work it for Daddy!
A "Machine Pistol" is a light-caliber weapon in the same style as a SMG. The difference is caliber, that's about it. It uses the Automatics skill.
I'd rather buy from a Nanoforged Non-RFID'd design from a bunch of Neo-@s than I would the Corps.

If they were hand-making the weapons, I'd be worried.
Same here, back to my days of flipping through the SSC (Still kicking myself for not buying it way back when!).

At least it's not just deckers/hackers commenting on military hardware now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) And loved what FastJack had to say about the Ares Predator I!

Poor old Hatchet. Sure loved his P1.


To be fair, there was old art that had the caliber of weapons detailed as well. But I dn't really mind it either way. Just, then I'd like to see the editor coordinate art and writing so that light pistols and heavy pistols don't both shoot S&W .40 ... of course, that requires an editor working on this.

Speaking for experience, herding artists is harder than herding cats. And I've done both.

Well thats pretty minor, compared to other art mistakes found all over these PDF only releases, like weapon mounts on vehicles that by rules have none or the picture that points out a grenade luncher for a rifle that doesn't have one.

OK, one more error and problem I just thought of, just dawned on me: Cased Versus Caseless Ammo.

Once again, we've had talk in fluff about it, with no crunch going behind it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

I guess it comes down to the GM being anal about tracking the runners by ballistic forensics or not.

if he is, then it becomes important. If not, then who cares?

the worst that can be done is the GM springs it on the group after a couple of sessions with no prior warning.

Pink Mohawk or Ice Cold then. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Of course, you could always use Revolvers and not have to worry about policing brass. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)