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.

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.

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

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

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"

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

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. 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. 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.

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.

Of course, you could always use Revolvers and not have to worry about policing brass.

Must...keep...mouth...shut....

What the frack are you talking about, seriously could we maybe get a clarification to this.
MP 7 is a Vintage gun from this new realase and Urban Combat is from Arsenal, only think same about them is that their both SMG:s.

If your prefferring to what is said on the Predator 2 page, then you really need to work on your reading comprehension because it really doesn't say what you seem to think it does.
Only think said in it is that it needs a physical connection, witch the induction pad was too IIRC.
Unsuprisingly the book just gives a price for smarlink fiber optic cable, as full rules for old school style induction pad ware is little out of the cope of this book.

From reading the jackpoint comment im pretty darn sure that it's quite intentional.

Iirc, one could save on cost (both nuyen and essence) in earlier editions (when the modular smartlink implant was introduced) by forgoing the induction pads and going fiber optic for the connection.

It's a small game rifle, for varmint hunting.

In other words, Pixie Hunting. And Devil Rats.

Already added to my Wishlist on DriveThruRPG. Man, I have GOT to get some cash together, those PDFs are piling up.....

Oh, screw keeping my mouth shut...it never works out for me anyway.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a gun guy. I've been a Shadowrun player since the beginning, though, and I've picked up a few things. I'm also one of the proofers on this product, and it's the most work I've done as a proofer for an SR product since I came on board in that capacity. All I'll say on most of this is, "You should have seen it before I got a hold of it." You're welcome.


Maybe, maybe not, but the art for the new guns came about because a lot of weapon props were acquired, and art prepared from those props. I don't know how functional those prop weapons were, but I know that the art was taken from an actual physical thingie.

This wasn't meant as back-door errata, really, but it was insisted upon by a couple of the proofers. Strangely enough, I was not one of them, but then (as I said) I'm not really a gun guy. My characters use anything bigger than a heavy pistol and I'm kind of at sea myself.

There were mixed feelings about the calibers, but since it's never been that big an issue, we didn't worry about it too much. I didn't, anyway.

As said before, the new weapons were scanned in, as I understand it, from actual physical things. For the most part, they didn't set me off, but I'm not the target audience for that portion of the book.

That one went through some name changes along the way.

I take some umbrage at this last bit. I wasn't the editor/developer, but I did an assload of work on this book, and got a lot of improvements made to the final product (and I can produce witnesses if needed).

Is it going to be perfect? Fuck, no. But as one of the people who worked on this...for FREE, mind you, taking time away from my kids that I'll never fucking get back to make this a better product for you lot...I can tell you that work and research WAS FUCKING DONE. Sometimes I got overruled, sometimes I missed some things, but I've had about enough of being told that we're not doing enough.

For the things that got past us, I'm sorry. But for the product you've got, that's unbelievably better than what was originally put together? You're fuckin' welcome.

My words are my own in this; I'm speaking solely for myself and not for CGL here in this post. The official word, if any, on this product will come from Jason or someone acting on behalf of the company.

It's pretty good that it was added(bonus point to those proofers), as it would be stupid to expect that everyone who want's this has WAR, so if it wasn't added some people would have no idea how battle rifles work.

Well it can be argued to be a back door errata mostly because War did not specify the skill of battle rifles...

Well, as one of the people chipping away and pouring salt on those wounds, thank you.

It just made sense to me to use our latest "gun porn" book as a handy place to clarify a previous gun ruling question. Some folks see it as a reason to bitch about backdoor errata, but I'd rather have people bitch about backdoor errata than continue to not be able to use a whole class of weapons. Damned if you do share the information, damned if you don't, apparently.

Nope. Nameless is still around.

While they were not had on this particular issue, words about older smartlinks and the tech involved were exchanged. Many fixes were implemented. That I missed this particular issue doesn't much surprise me, for some reason, but it is a little disappointing on a personal level. C'est la guerre, I suppose.

Not gonna get into issues of authorial voice. Still got a bad taste in my mouth from that one.

How'd I miss that one?

I'm kinda responsible for that one, since it originally just said "Communist regime" without specifying which one.

Ogre's don't use hammers? How is it automatically racist to call something Ogre Hammer? Never mind, don't bother, we'll never agree on this issue.

I had a LONG talk about this one with several people.

The final text says it needs a physical connection...which can be accomplished by fiber-optic tether, or a skinlink, as specified in the Vintage quality. Induction pad falls into that category.

Once again, you're welcome.

As the text implied, that was deliberate.

Once again, speaking on my own behalf and not that of CGL.

Well there are some on this forum that is here specifically to blame Catalyst for anything, and they seemed to multiply once Catalyst hit a economic snag and had to get new content for parts of some books because of existing authors pulling their contributions. Basically, i has taken on the ugly rhetoric of US politics.

Pretty much every other gaming company releases errata for free, snce essentially they're fixing a flawed product they sold already. The pissedness comes from the feeling that CGL expects to be paid to finally grace us with working proucts. Forgive me if that doesn't exactly thrill me. Actually, it should be possible to fix all these issues with a few post-publishing editing; both battleshop and DriveThru support such a function. But that won't happen, will it? (Side note: not directed at you, Patrick).


Tiredness? Happens to me too when I write/edit long assignments.


It happens, I guess. Ideally it should not have had to be corrected, and it would certainly be possible to have less that is so bad it needs to be rewritten.


Okay, but there simply is no need nor way to do this in SR2 (it was a vintage option in SR1). It is possible in SR3 - buy smartlink components except induction pad, then use a datajack instead and router it to the components (it's its own router), but that doesn't gain you anything but style and harsher essence loss. But yeah, it says skinlink in Incompatible. Withdrawn to a degree (and btw, I'm of the opinion that it's the authors who ought to do most research, not the proofers).


And if it was called Dragonslayer you'd say dragons do slay a lot, too?


Okay, fine. I don't really get why this hunting weapon is so much easier to justify than larger-caliber ones in a world where man-eating 3 meter high horned bears with magical powers are something you are fairly likely to come across when hunting, though.


That's even worse, I agree. But why 'communist regime'? It's not like the state has no name.


And yet, the product isn't as good as it could have been. Take that as a personal insult all you want, but it doesn't take much to find out that smartlink in SR3 did not rely on fibreglass cables, or that the Ares Predators had certain ammo capacities. It's not like these are references to obscure books from way back. There, research clearly was not done. Was it an even worse product before? Maybe. Probably, even. Is it the best product it could have been? Probably not. Is it your personal fault? I don't know, and to be quite honest I don't really care. It wasn't done, it's work not done properly, and since I paid money for a flawed product I will point out where I think it has a serious quality problem.


So you expect me ( 'us') to praise you for what? That this product is just only as flawed as it is? Do you expect us to just assume this can't be done better (hint: it certainly can; even the last few CGL releases were) and give you cheery, but undeserved, praise to not offend you? Then you expect too much. Sorry you didn't get paid for this work you did. But in essence, writing the book in a presentable manner isn't what you are supposed to do anyway. It'S only 1 ct/word but usually you do get paid for that.

There's a difference between saying "the editing could have been better" and "the editing didn't happen, obviously no one cares." In the face of someone who was heavily involved in the proofing for this book -- I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Patrick sent two dozen emails with corrections -- and who's checking onto the thread, at least in part, to just apologize for errors he missed...I can understand why Patrick's a little ticked. The guy's apologizing for the fuck-ups that made it through (and making it clear that he is, at least in part, to blame), and he's just getting criticized more because he drew attention to himself. If you can't empathize with that enough to, at the very least, understand where he's coming from, I don't know what to tell you.

I mean, obviously you've got a right to be unhappy with a product, but those who worked pretty hard on the product also have a right to not be insulted square to their face about their contributions to it...or, at the least, have the same right to be "unhappy" about it back at'cha.

Agreed 100%.

Patrick's been pretty much fantastic when he shows up on these boards to share his insight. I -still- use the stats from the 'infected heights and weights' that got cut a while ago.

For what its worth, thanks for chipping in your 2 yen.

I didn't see his second post writing mine and edited accordingly (more or less).

And I don't blame him for any of this. He's a proof reader, those who are supposed to check for spelling, style, and catch errors the editor in charge and writers missed. Last line of defense, so to speak, not first line. Writing the book is not his job. That's where I see a problem, not in proofing.

That he did have to do as much as he did is a symptom of the problem I am angry about - that the writers and the person overseeing the process (editor? developer?) of writing this and integrating it into the line seem to have done a job that's not as good as it could be, to be polite.

I am amazed that people don't learn from the past...
Don't work for free, it's just unprofessional! Especially if you employer has a history like CGL.

And since there is talk of putting these pdfs together for a book, everybody who wrote something should consider asking for more money, because it seems CGL is screwing you over again. Considering you get paid less for pdf-releases than books. Just saying...

cya
Tycho

As a former writer, proofer, and playtester for SR, I have to side with Critias and Patrick on this one. There are books that are very poorly done and in those cases I don't hold back on my criticisms, but small errors get through and that just happens. Small errors don't ruin a book and shouldn't cast a black mark on the writers, developers, or proofers. I'm not saying reviewers shouldn't mention the little things, but there should be some perspective on it. And it should be noted that little mistakes get through all the time in much bigger publications with writers and editors that are paid a lot more money and the industry generally accepts that fact (and releases later editions).

Great ghost on a pogo stick I wonder what happen if some of the people who spend all their time complaining about the game got together and wrote the perfect RPG.

I'm just going to ignore Hermit going forward, I havn't seen him write anything positive in months, if ever. There's just no value there any more.

On to actual productive parts of discussion. I haven't bought the book yet, i plan on it, but don't yet have the time. On the whole though I support any SSC style posting and more gun prons. Further I would rather a whole book of subpar guns then a book of subpar guns and one supergun, the system just doesn't get granular to go into the trade offs and personal preferences. Hell SR guns don't even model recoil differently outside of slapping recoil negation on a few things. Do you really want to track calibers?

I know that. It's just, I don't see these issues as small. I know errors happen and some always get through in every published work. I noticed a couple things off in Blut und Spiele, for instance, and that didn't detract from me pretty much gushing over it. Same with SRM 04-00. It's not the case here.


Awwww. I'm hurt. Want cheese with your whine? (also, for the record: SRM 04-00 AAR, Spy Games).

Can I just say, thank god for 'backdoor' errata? Please, give us more such errata. Any medium is acceptable for fixed rules.

Ogre Hammer means ogre's hammer, to me. Possibly 'big hammer'. Who'd hammer an ogre? These are such ridiculous nitpicks.

I was going to say: I saw that more as "this is a hammer that ogres use. AKA: It will mess your day up." just going off the name. I did not purchase the book and as a result have no idea what its stats or anything are.

Oh, I know. I was one of those authors who held up Running Wild back in the day.

While not perfect, that book had more good than bad. The downward spiral really hit rock bottom with War.

They do pay me. They pay me for writing. Actually, now I think about it, it's not altogether free. I do get product for my proofing gigs.

And I'm only ever going to say this once: You don't know me. You've never met me. You don't know my ethics or anything else about me beyond what you can glean here. You have exactly ZERO right to question my professionalism in any endeavor.

You ever want to question my integrity or professionalism, you better damn well have a leg to stand on. As it is, you don't, and I'll thank you to shut up about things you don't have a clue about.