Arsenal review, What are your thoughts? Options

[Zhan Shi]

Picked up my copy at the local game store today, and read through most of it. Impressions: ok, so the cover was not to my liking. But so what? The text is first rate. Many did not like the inclusion of martial arts in SR3, but I think the current version is far superior. Interior art is excellent. Also I like the fact that Arsenal is a one stop shop for weapons, vehicles, drones, and armor, plus modifications for all four, as well as chemicals, drugs, gear, toxins, and environmental hazards; it's several sourcebooks rolled into one. An index would have been nice, but that's a very minor quibble about a fine product. Cheers to the devs/writers. Questions:

1. Has Dikote been removed from SR4, or have I just missed it (either in Arsenal or a previous book)?

2. The Jackpoint segment. Crater lake was a spike point through which some horrors broke loose (Worlds Without End). Were those civilians not acting under their own volition? Also, I seem to recall something about a Toxic dragon inhabiting the SOX; did the attacks have something to do with that?

3. Is the art on p. 43 just intended to be a great piece of art, or something else as well? After all, it does appear (I think) to depict a mummified troll wearing the regalia of a pharoh.

4. Was Firefight inspired by Equilibrium? BTW, love the new styles and maneuvers. Now Preston can come to life.

EDIT: forget about the index. Just noticed the page numbers next to item descriptions in the back. D'oh! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif)

[Earlydawn]

I was blown away by the depth and detail of the demolitions section. To me, that represents exactly what Unwired should be.. deep, detailed, and not overtly complicated to the point of uselessness. The Martial Arts section was excellent, as well. I love that they addressed the problems with stacking different disciplines in SR3. The firearms and weapons section is good, although something about the drawing style rubs me the wrong way, particularly with the firearms; there's nothing wrong with them, they're well-drawn, they just don't do it for me.

Modification I was a little underwhelmed with, although I can't say that it failed in any particular capacity. The vehicle section is fantastic and diverse, although some kind of heavier combat vehicle, like a tank or IFV would have been nice.. I know a lot of DSers have been asking for them.

[Ancient History]

1. Has Dikote been removed from SR4, or have I just missed it (either in Arsenal or a previous book)?

Gone bye-bye.

2. The Jackpoint segment. Crater lake was a spike point through which some horrors broke loose (Worlds Without End). Were those civilians not acting under their own volition? Also, I seem to recall something about a Toxic dragon inhabiting the SOX; did the attacks have something to do with that?

3. Is the art on p. 43 just intended to be a great piece of art, or something else as well? After all, it does appear (I think) to depict a mummified troll wearing the regalia of a pharoh.

Would be telling.

4. Was Firefight inspired by Equilibrium? BTW, love the new styles and maneuvers. Now Preston can come to life.

Was one of the inspirations, ja.

[Shrike30]

I found that the mods section suffered from a lack of sorting/organization, more than anything else. Simply having the mods alphabetized (and having the table entries 1-2 pages off from the text entries) didn't really make them that easy to work with.

I like working with them, and most of the rest of the book is great, that's my only real complaint (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[crizh]

I'm no Chemistry Major but surely the difference between explosives and shit that will catch on fire is that explosives are self-oxidizing.

Which makes the rules on vacuum operations a gaff of ludicrous proportions.

Otherwise, I pretty much loved everything about Arsenal...

[Blade]

Well, it's a gun/toy book. More vehicles/drones and vehicles/drones modifications are a nice addition but - in my opinion - everything else isn't as "necessary" as, say, what you'll find in Augmentation and Street Magic. Just more gear, a lot of which I already had more or less in my game.

I won't say I'm disappointed, because it's still good (and cheap thanks to dollar conversion rate). It's just nothing groundbreaking.

Oh, and by the way, gotta love the "operation cleanup factory".

[Prime Mover]

Got PDF still waiting on hard copy to arrive, UPS still has it. But by far the most comprehensive gear book to date for SR. A few minor troubles for me personally, like no laser weapon illustrations and some minor errata stuff but still an excellent/required addition to the 4th edition collection. Now if UPS would just hurry up!

[Ophis]

Great book, so much to be happy about. Good TWF rules cool new toys and best of all Hurlg. I owe a beer to whoever gave me that piece of joy.

Yes I like the book.

[Ancient History]

I owe a beer to whoever gave me that piece of joy.

I'll take an IBC.

[Ryu]

I'll take an IBC.

And the second would be on me. Can´t really express it about the (mostly unused) Enchanting chapter of SM, but I like your style.

[nathanross]

I really love the fact that Rigger/Cannon were combined in the same book. Now it is the "non-matrix toy book". That said, my largest griefs are/were: Iaijustsu/Krav Maga (which has already been discussed enough elsewhere), and too little new clothes.

Most of the clothing section included in Arsenal I feel should have been in the SR4 BBB, and there should have been lots of new armor in Arsenal. There would some, but it just seemed like reading Cannon Companion again, you know? That said, the simplified modification rules are great!

[hermit]

So far, it's the weakest of the core books. Some rules and stories are nice and pretty, most is average, some things are missing - but the real drag is the vehicles section.

Seriously, what were the authors thinking? WERE they thinking at all? A submarine, two segways, but no decent sports car, upper-class sedan or subcompact car, ana rcology drone that has hit the mass market, another drone whose existence and wide spread use is due to people distrusting applicance drones because - oh my - bad stuff happened in the arc (apparently, that won't stop people from buying centipedes), the Osprey nowadays is as large as a sub, and there's a damn ship in there, what for? To illustrate how much the rules lack in representing ships?

And with any drone being able to relay signals, with any goddamn LAMP being able to do so, what are relay unit drones good for any more? Why put soemthing so obsolete in there, when there's already so little space, as compared with, say, R3R, for a vehicles catalogue?

And did whoever wrote this piece of shit even bother to check what was present in SR4, vehicles-wise? If so, why add a goddamn variation of the Wasp? Too much space to waste? hardly. Wasp and Yelowjacket were covered in one entry back in R3R. With good reason - they're mere variations, always have been.

The modding rules are even more lacking than SR3's - tuning's worth nothing any more, the supposed street racer car can't, even tuned, go as fast as your average run of the mill Mercedes E200, thanks to this very intelligent new system, it's possible to fit a segway with a machine gun pintle mount, but impossible to put bays for 20 insect-sized drones into a van, a segway can be as tough as a battleship, bit that won't help it, as you can still destroy a battleship with a well-placed salvo of ordinary ammunition. Hooray for balancing.

The other sections are nice, some even fun (the drugs art, for instance). The vehicles are a huge drag to a book that otherwise might have been okay, if not really great.

Ah, right,. whoever decided to use the old FanPro images, especially the one for the sweeper? Biometal79 can't be more expensive than the legal issues, and at least, he's a competent artist.

[Blue eyes]

Only read some parts of the pdf sofar, but sofar so good. My only real complaint sofar is that I would have liked a bit more vehicles in the book, covering both work/run and recreational vehicles. Otherwise its a great gear book, with tonnes of useful information thats finally here (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Great cover, hope to see more covers from Mark Zug in the future.

[It trolls!]

While I liked the book, I would too consider it the weakest sourcebook yet. The weapons section was a nice run-of-the-mill listing. I liked the weapon mods section too except for me still not completely getting why I'd need a weapon commlink.

I LOVED the Martial Arts section, AH deserves to be dipped into a whole keg of root beer for that. For the first time in Shadowrun, I find melee combat to be really useful. I love the other additional rules too, the reintroduction of recoil compensation through strength finally gives me a reason to play trolls again.

I have to agree with hermit on the vehicles section though. It seemed to me as if it was either cut down beyond recognition or tacked on at the last minute. Either way it read to me like a huge facepalm. If a freaking GM-toy-sized full-blown military submarine is included, why not even a light tank? That's still closer to what the average shadowrunner will be dealing with. A decent sedan or sports car were missing too. I can't comment on the vehicle mod rules though as I haven't played around with them that much.

[Jaid]

not seeing the need for such virulence here.

much as i would have loved to see even more vehicles, it does cover quite a bit when you combine the core book with arsenal.

[b1ffov3rfl0w]

A full-sized submarine seems like an interesting target for a run.

[Shadow]

Pick a frelling artist on Elfwood or Deviant art that can draw, pay him 100 bucks and let him do the frelling art. That art SUCKED. And POSER is not art it's idiocy. Good golly, if your going to use art at all, use GOOD ART, not crap.

[Adam]

Wait ... did all the art suck absolutely equally? Like any book, there are some pieces that are better than others, but in general I thought Arsenal was pretty strong, art-wise.

Always willing to take a look at samples from recommended artists, though.

[Grinder]

Above mentioned Biometal79 is here: http://biometal79.deviantart.com/gallery/

[Synner]

For the record Biometal79 did produce most of the new gun art of Arsenal - he was one of several artists brought to my attention and I passed his contact on to the person in charge of art development—I was very happy with his stuff and we might very well use him again in the future. What we didn't do, partly for economic reasons, is have him produce images for older weapons.

[Grinder]

That's cool. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[DocTaotsu]

I have to say that I'm getting rather attached to some of the old art for weapons. Particularly the Ares Pred variants.

[Cain]

For the record Biometal79 did produce most of the new gun art of Arsenal - he was one of several artists brought to my attention and I passed his contact on to the person in charge of art development—I was very happy with his stuff and we might very well use him again in the future. What we didn't do, partly for economic reasons, is have him produce images for older weapons.

Not a bad idea at all; that would save a lot of money, and no one can complain that the art quality had dropped.

Still, while much of art is subjective, I have to say that I didn't like a lot of the interior art. And the cover! There are so many technical errors, I find it hard to believe that Mark Zug let that one out of his studio!

[DocTaotsu]

I have to admit that the cover for Arsenal has grown on me, when the dead tree version gets here I imagine it will grow more. I think part of the reason I like it is because I have to look at the Augmentation cover with a great deal of regularity and well...

Ugh.

I'm sorry, i'm sure whoever made it put a lot of work into it but oiy vey. When my girlfriend brought it from the states she handed it to me and than said "Uhm... what's the deal with her uhm.. crotch?" and than proceeded to make a knocking motion on that general area. I do however remember the crayon colored NPC's of SR1 so I really can't complain that loudly.

I agree that there may be technical errors but it has guns, it has as reasonably attractive ork suicide girl, and it's colorful (I, for one, can do with a color palatte that includes more than shades of gray, green, and brown). The alternative cover could have looked like a Guns & Ammo cover and that would have gotten pretty old for me.

[hermit]

Allright, in the topic of artwork.

Arsenal's mixed quality here. I don't quite understand why artists like that I-want-to-look-like-giger type (p97 for instance) have to remain with SR artists, because while their images may be technically okay, they aren't Shadowrun, they don't transport the feel of the system. Fastfood's images on deviantart would be far more fitting, style-wise. Also, the above mentioned old weapons art problem (even considering CGL had no idea of the legal issues attached, the sweeper image is just fuckung ugly. and why not use the old HK Urban Combat image? The new one looks even worse!).

I am glad to hear CGL will continue working with biometal though. The guy's a genius with weapons, hands down.

Of course (was that chapter an attempt at 'how low can we go and still make fans buy the crap?), the art in the vehicles section is suckier than everywhere else. Not only do the flavour art detail vehicles that look like what you'd get when you mate the styles of HR Giger and old 80s BBC SciFi, not only does it detail vehicles that make zero sense (like the jet fighter tilt wing vectored thrust ... thingy on p137), it also uses images used for SR3 vehicles for other, totally different vehicles. Sorry, but that's a bit much. The drones usually look totally wonky and unbelievable (like the Ferret - right, that's what military drones look like, as any google search for ground remote vehicles will show, or the dragonfly, that's apparently a vecotred thrust/ornithopter hybrid). I also am seriously puzzled about the drop ships on p140 and the mech thingies on p144. This is an SR book, dear Arsenal art director, NOT cBT! There's a difference between the systems, you know that, right? RIGHT?

And, of course, all flavour art there is by that "I want to draw HR Giger stuff" person, whose Art I personally feel carries zero SR-ish feel.

The other stuff is nice to good (especially the art in the drugs chapter struck me as well done). Whoever designed the sec and milspec armour obviously never took the five minutes required to google "future combat system" or took a look at that soldier 2020 concept armour, which looks a hell of a lot better, but meh, that's maybe a bit nitpicky. I'd have loved to see more example images of ordinary clothes, but the chapter works without them too.

And now for some more general remarks:

I DO miss Dikote. It should at least have been mentioned. Retconning stinks, and retconning well-known equipment out for whatever good offplay reason stinks even more.

Personally, including one of the most bullshit corps the Kraut authors made up - Nitama - into official canon was a tremendously bad idea. SR doesn't support cheap Arasaka rip-offs, because the japanacorp marked is more than stuffed already. Nitama just oesn't make sense.

While I personally found gunfight laughable, mostly since I rate Equilibrium as one of the crappiest movies ever made, it does come handy for a variety of characters and allows for, say, a working Revy clone charatcer, which is a good thing, I guess.

Meelee rules generally are nice. Also, thanks for finally making Carromeleg it's own martial art, distinct from Capoeira. That was bloody overdue.

I have yet to decide whether to hate Emotitoys or not, but please tone the mangaesque stuff a bit down in future books, will you?