Arsenal review, What are your thoughts? Options

[hobgoblin]

Just name it Highwind and give it to Horizon, they get all the flashy manga stuff anyway.

heh, while i dont get the reference, my first thought was castle falkenstein, not manga (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[hermit]

Final Fantasy 7.

[hobgoblin]

heh, silly me (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[hermit]

Though any FF would work, really, as Airships of amazing size are one of the staples of the series (like horse-sized riding chicken and engineers/scientists called Cid).

[Eugene]

Just got Arsenal the other day, and I love it! Lots of great toys, (finally!) costs for drugs, the manatech's fun, and the martial arts kick ass. Art's varied - the best pieces, IMHO, are on p. 7 (would have made a good cover, too) and 159. The line art in the Vehicles chapter is compelling thematically, but I always think the fill style makes it look more like a draft than a finished piece to me. Equipment pics are good, too. I play a rigger, so I'm sure I'll get a lot of use out of the modification rules (and I'm tempted to put a wet bar in the Steel Lynx just because I can...).

Great job Catalyst! Shadowrun just keeps getting better under your wing.

[evanger]

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

Oh man, that gun art (by Biometal79) is awesome!

I am quite particular when it comes to "technical art". Some of the weapons and vehicles in Arsenal look and feel plausible, some don't. I find the variation in artist/style throughout the gun section mildly annoying as well.


In a game like Shadowrun, the style, look and feel of the equipment is a major deal. I think the art for these items is almost as important as the rules for them.

Why are the gun pics so small?

[JeffSz]

If there are bugs in the rules, they'll get fixed in an errata. I was not saying I'd be happy to have to muddle through and redo rules for a game I bought; that said, nearly EVERY gaming group comes up with houserules to make a game fit their group better, or smooth over a buggy mechanic in a game here or there.

But not including a sports car or Dikote aren't "rules bugs", and neither is putting manga-esque stuff in the game (though I hate anything anime, so I do agree the emotitoys are silly).

"If you don't like it, change it," is a general rule in -any- RPG, no matter how amazing the quality of the polished product is. Most RPG's specifically state that if you want something to work differently, go ahead; I believe SR4 itself states so.

"I wish they would have included X peice of equipment from an old edition" can be fixed with "I'm using X peice of equipment from an old edition, and these are it's stats, which took me 5 minutes to convert."

There's lots of NEW stuff that we haven't seen before, and couldn't possibly have converted from a nonexistant old-edition-version. I'd rather see this new stuff.

GM: "Uh, guys? Emotitoys don't exist in this game. Anime sucks."
Players: "Amen."
Problem: Solved.

[MITJA3000+]

I am unsure how you mean? Riggers would be worthwhile to play? how are they not right now? we got cars, we got planes, we got boats, we got bikes, we got drones and we have a numbe rof rules to mod all of the above. more would be cool ofcoruse. but how is a rigger not worthwhile to play currently? and what style of rigger are you looking for?

I generaly play drone riggers or secrity types when I use them. but a driver is just as vible currently.

Well, as I said, I haven't got Arsenal yet, so my opinion is solely based on the reviews and comments of others, but I think that Rigger 3 (revised) was pretty decent for rigger characters. But maybe I shouldn't have made any comments about the viability of rigger chars before reading Arsenal myself first, which should hopefully be soon.

But mainly my point was that I wish riggers would have gotten their own book. Now it feels like they've been squeezed in in two couple of books and that they are just specialized hackers. Which I guess is pretty accurate in SR4, but I'm still sad to see the traditional rigger decease.

[hermit]

If there are bugs in the rules, they'll get fixed in an errata.

With those toally unbalanced modding rules for vehicles and the ludicous sensor rules, I have a hard time to see them errata'd without redoing them from scratch. No, the other stuff is rather an annoyance, but these are rules that are supposed to work, and face it, they just don't.

But mainly my point was that I wish riggers would have gotten their own book. Now it feels like they've been squeezed in in two couple of books and that they are just specialized hackers. Which I guess is pretty accurate in SR4, but I'm still sad to see the traditional rigger decease.

Amen to that.

[Nightwalker450]

Nitrous Boosters on a car, are an acceleration boost. I think they would work better as a speed boost (with a side effect maybe of minor accel boost).

Otherwise accel just helps you get to your top end speed, there's no reason to use the nitrous booster other then small bursts. As a speed boost I could see a runner having to run his nitrous for a period of time that it could actually damage the vehicle, and help him to go over that top end speed cap.

On this note, could someone supply a good explanation of the walk/run acceleration and speed, and how they all relate?
As I've seen it as long as you are holding a speed there are no run modifiers, but if you are accelerating more than the walking acceleration there are. Your top acceleration is what you can do without making any rolls, and helps to determine how many rounds it will take to get to your top end speed. If you go over your top end speed, then handling deteriorates rapidly, and the car could potentially take damage. The idea of nitrous boosters is to wait till the end of the race to kick them in only if necessary (so you don't damage the vehicle), to give you that speed boost to keep you ahead of the contender.

[Fortune]

But mainly my point was that I wish riggers would have gotten their own book.

I could make the same wish about Adepts. Hermetic mages. Shamans. Hackers. Street Samurai. Faces. Rockers. And so on ... Why should Riggers be any different?

[Blade]

Just make sure to have different books for glam rockers and punk rockers.

[hermit]

I could make the same wish about Adepts. Hermetic mages. Shamans. Hackers. Street Samurai. Faces. Rockers. And so on ... Why should Riggers be any different?

Because they get only bits of coverage in any book ... a whooping two (out of what, 400?) rigger dedicated pieces of cyber in Arsenal, 2 pages in the BBB (4 if you include commlink and device ratings as rigger specific), a little chapter on CCSS and some programs in unired ... which is a lot less than any other character type got. Okay, the 20-some pages of vehicles and vehicle mods CAN be counted as rigger-related, as can be the one table in the BBB with rigger equipment. Still, that's a lot less than any other character class gets.

Maybe not their own book, but decent coverage can't be too much to ask, can it?

[BlueMax]

I could make the same wish about Adepts. Hermetic mages. Shamans. Hackers. Street Samurai. Faces. Rockers. And so on ... Why should Riggers be any different?

First,
Have Rockers gotten any rules attention since Second? Rockers could use some love and it may related to Faces.
Second,
I think Riggers are dead. There is no need for a separate archetype/team positon in Fourth from my POV. If thats fact, not just my random opinion, thats a good reason why vehicles/riggers get such little coverage.

And we don't need two books, Hermetic and Shamanic, unified theory of magic, right?

[Lyonheart]

I wish the tables in the back where bookmarked by section like the Augmentation PDF and the Guns/Vehicles had write ups more like a Battletech TRO or a Jane's Guide, otherwise, first rate.

[Moon-Hawk]

Have Rockers gotten any rules attention since Second? Rockers could use some love and it may related to Faces.

Rockers got attention in SR2? I thought they hadn't had love since SR1. Oh, I guess the synthlink was still in there in SR2, wasn't it?

[hermit]

The Rocker Archetype was in Sprawl Sites. That book also detailed adventure seeds involving rockers, for all I remember.

[Rasumichin]

The Rocker Archetype was in Sprawl Sites. That book also detailed adventure seeds involving rockers, for all I remember.

In fact, it was in the SR1 BBB.
Sprawl Site's also a SR1 sourcebook.
The last rocker related stuff to come out for SR was Shadowbeat.
Which was SR1, too...

[Fix-it]

I could make the same wish about Adepts. Hermetic mages. Shamans. Hackers. Street Samurai. Faces. Rockers. And so on ... Why should Riggers be any different?

Because we rule the battlefield

[Fabe]

ld-edition-version. I'd rather see this new stuff.

GM: "Uh, guys? Emotitoys don't exist in this game. Anime sucks."
Players: "Amen."
Problem: Solved.

Ok as far as I can tell from other threads a Emotitoys is a drone that helps with social interaction, so what the hell does that have to do with anime?

[hermit]

Sprawl Site's also a SR1 sourcebook.

Nope, or at least Asphaltdschungel was a 2nd edition book. Then again, that might have been another German speciality.

[Fuchs]

Asphaltdschungel was first Edition I thought.

[Fortune]

Sprawl Sites was definitely SR1 in English.

[Fortune]

Because they get only bits of coverage in any book ... a whooping two (out of what, 400?) rigger dedicated pieces of cyber in Arsenal, 2 pages in the BBB (4 if you include commlink and device ratings as rigger specific), a little chapter on CCSS and some programs in unired ... which is a lot less than any other character type got. Okay, the 20-some pages of vehicles and vehicle mods CAN be counted as rigger-related, as can be the one table in the BBB with rigger equipment. Still, that's a lot less than any other character class gets.

Maybe not their own book, but decent coverage can't be too much to ask, can it?

Riggers are Hackers! They may specialize in vehicles, and hence have some additional skills, but they are still basically Hackers, and Hackers get shit-loads of coverage. Even more so when Unwired comes out, which is, not-so-coincidently, supposed to have a large portion dedicated to rigging-related stuff.

[DMK]

I like this book. There's an awful lot to it. While the Sensor rules are a little off, the rest of the stuff is pretty awesome. The Martial Arts quality is something I would've bought for my hand to hand Adept if I'd had a few more BP. (The ST capped the Neg Qualities at 20).