Here is my review of Arsenal.

GREATEST BOOK EVER.

No, seriously. Augmentation had too much NERPS and the data it had was sparsed out and relatively useless. Street magic was a bit better than AUG, but it had no room for more in the realm of gear options or rules. The core was so full of holes that it barely held water (I still hate square root) Emergence might have been fun if it had been anything but 100% fluff about technomancers and AI.

Arsenal had well referenced pages, loads of new toys, patched and fully explained rules on Two weapon fighting, using a weapon in two hands, expanded arrow types, martial arts maneuvers, extra explosives, and FFS a chart listing the prices of the drugs. Near the area on drugs no less!

The only thing that i've found so far that would need improving is the section on drones. While its awesome that its alphabetical, then broken up by chart, each of those section chunks needs a bold linebreak.

In short, Syn, you may have completely dropped the ball on cyberzombies, bloodspirits, technomancers, trollbows, brains in jars, advancing Docwagon's medical proceedures and countless other things. BUT Arsenal... Makes it all worth it.

He's to hoping Wired has rules that make running the matrix work as more than "Everyone but the person with 90 BP specced into matrix ninja sits out".

Cheers!

Just goes to show. Ask 3 Dumpshockers for their opinions and get 5 different answers.

Seriously though, I happen to like and I'm quite satisfied with the way cyberzombies, blood spirits, technomancers, and jarheads came out. I'm also quite pleased with the overall quality of all the core books Arsenal included (though more than the other books, it needs some errata).

I enjoyed it, but there are a few mechanics I want to try out just to see how well they work at the table. The fluff fiction was nice, and I like the fact that they are getting back into the habit of giving us pictures of what all of the weapons look like.

Honestly though, I do miss the catalog like feel that the old supplements (circa 2nd edition) had. The less obvious side benefit of that layout was that it let a player actually feel like their character a little bit, flipping through a catalog of the latest gear prior to calling up their fixer.


By the way, I am back from the dead and my site is going to be updated over the course of the next 2-3 weeks to bring everything in line with canon from the new supplements.

Also, I have a small mountain of new gear to add as well. Sorry for the long haiatus!

Rigger 3 Revised?

But the Segway is LISTED as quintessential runner gear
every hacker is expected to have one now
Welcome to SR4

To dispell what seems to be a common misunderstanding Arsenal is not and was not intended to be a Shadowrunner Gear book. It is a Shadowrun Gear book and it includes a number of weapons, devices, and vehicles that are useful across the board to runners, corporate security, and civilians.

The case has been made regarding the reasons for the inclusion of PMVs. Whether you agree or not, the writers and the developers felt such vehicles make perfect sense in many urban jurisdictions for street policing and a number of other functions in large enclosed habitats and arcologies.

I've played Shadowrun for almost 20 years now and I've yet to see a PC runner drive a Jackrabbit, and yet it's been there through all editions. We choose a varied and diverse sampling of vehicles runners might encounter. And, as a developer, I definitely see more common use and greater likelihood of a typical street-level runner needing to use a Segway, than the spacesuits or cyborg anthroforms described in Arsenal. YMMV.

<----Drove a Jackrabit with missing bodypanel and bad motor(GM cut me a deal on a used one because its all I could afford).

Umm i was referencing this


Besides i like the automated rigger or hacker idea

I'm pretty sure that "some" does not equal "quintessential" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And Peter, my games have certainly involved the Jackrabbit. How else can you hope to be just like Dirty Dirk?

Well, there are always the odd ducks. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) But, seriously, I don't think I can remember ever seeing a Jackrabbit on a PC character sheet in all this time.

What, you've never seen a player act deliberately obtuse and crazy for the sake of 'role-playing' their character?

Dang, it must just be me....

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) Well if you think the jackrabbit is little used,,,,the segway will be even more so.

FYI in previous iterations of SR many of my characters ie the non rigger ones had jackrabbits for vehicles.

WMS

All real Shadowrunners drive Jackrabbits! I'm more a used Ford Americar kinda guy myself, but the jackrabbit is a good reliable form of transportation. I stopped dumping money into supping up my car when I realized it is easier to just blend in. BSD's stick out you know? Also, for anyone else looking for motivation, try reading this CLUE file.

Case #26: Born to be Wild

Oh come on, a little hyperbole is getting slammed, here?

I'm not slamming you -- your post didn't read like hyperbole, it read like a misunderstanding of what was actually in Arsenal and how it was portrayed.

I too am a used Ford Americar kinda guy.

That and a Dodge Scoot as a disposable piece of gear.

Hell yeah! Just load it up in the back of the bulldog, with the Drone rack, explosives depot, and the family of mexicans (extended family, mind you).

I'm pretty certain some of my chars have driven a Jackrabbit. On a recent character, I picked a Spirit over the Jackrabbit solely to save 500 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and then switched to a bike to save more.

In all honestly, I found the basic weapons provided in Arsenal to be too inconsistent in pricing (put Gas Vent 2 on a Predator IV vs Smartlink a Colt Government 2099) and the choices too similar. The vehicles provided more variety but fewer choices within a category (Sports cars, luxury, muscle cars, mini sports, non-armed ATVs, etc)

Actually, I suspect that one would see fewer low-end vehicles in SR4 among shadowrunners because of the linear character design system. In the old priority system, it was possible to end up with Not Much Jing At All, which would precipitate the purchase of cheaper vehicles. The same goes for lifestyle; you don't really see a lot of Street or Squatter lifestyles, especially when Middle costs one Build Point and Low costs less than a half of one.

You can't put a Gas Vent on a Predator, Cabral-- Gas Vents are explicitly listed as only being available for machine pistols, SMGs, assault rifles and machine guns. This is why integral recoil compensation of any sort is generally worth it when it comes to pistols-- your only other options are a personalized grip or electronic firing, which unfortunately are mutually exclusive for the purpose of recoil compensation. Incidentally, this means that a Savalette Guardian with a personalized grip is probably the best overall heavy pistol for users looking to avoid recoil penalties-- simply use semi-automatic rather than its burst fire option and you're good to go.

Bulldog? I usually just tuck it in my backpocket when I'm not using it...

But seriously, how much did a scoot cost in SR3? Like 5 grand or something?

Ha, the jackrabbit have been THE most used vehicle by me for any character (and by several other players characters in our group). Unless the character needed a heavy vehicle or had a bike they took the jackrabbit or the americar mostly due to being cheap and affordable and as a secondary perk one of the most common vehicles on the street making it harder to track and also easier to steal.

The biggest disappointment I had with arsenal: there are no rules for custom vehicles. More than the tanks or airplane carriers, I liked the fact that there were rules to build vehicles from scratch in Rigger 3. The rules themselves were messy and thus difficult to use and would have benefited from a overhaul, but they were there.

Okey dokey, miscommunication then.
I would say that this is a first fore the internet, but then i would have to take a career in politics to justify that big a lie.

It's an alright book, added many good options and fleshed out the equipment lists quite a bit, which I suppose was the whole point. My only major complaint is form fitting body armor. From what I've seen of it in action, it's too good. The ability to stack with other armors and apply only half it's rating for the purposes of encumbrance makes it remarkably easy to get asinine amounts of armor fast. This is of course aside from my complaints with the gear in Shadowrun as a whole, which are mostly related to grenades, grenade launchers, and how the latter makes the former pointless, as well as the fact that Shadowrun seems to have some demented hatred of the number 30.