Sometimes releases come in bunches, and this is one of those times. Hot on the heels of Hazard Pay and SRM 04-08: Brothers United is Gun Heaven 2 (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG), which is as straightforward as a title gets. It's got guns, guns, more guns, then some ammo, then more guns. Here are the details:


FRIEND OF THE DESPERATE AND THE HUNTED

The only friend you’ll ever need. The last friend you’ll ever have. Your gun is the one thing in your life that should be dependable, that should always make a nice loud bang when you squeeze the trigger, and should always bring down whoever you think should fall. Of course, if your weapon is going to be that important to you, you’ll need one that suits you perfectly. And to find the right match, it’s best if you have a lot of choices.

Welcome back to Gun Heaven, where your next best friend is waiting for you. Dozens of options await, from the troll-friendly Krime Cannon to the foldable Terracotta Arms Mordred, from the stylish Shiawase Arms K2072 to the true tool of the desperate, the Barrens Special. And on top of that is a new breakthrough in ammo that gives you a better chance to hit your intended target.

Gun Heaven 2 contains fifty new guns for Shadowrun, each with a large, full-color illustration and complete game information and statistics. They’re waiting for you—take a look and find that special friend that fits perfectly in your hands.

Gun Heaven 2 is for use with Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.

Before purchasing product, I need to know this: will it contain any guns?

Excellent question! Yes! Fifty!

Jason H.

So you're saying it has FIFTY new guns....



Does it have a crossbow?

It does not. And so I hang my head in shame.

Jason H.

Just purchased and read. Plenty of new guns and things that make good flavor for runners that travel. Not as many of the glaring problems as there were in the first gun heaven. Too many rifles/assault rifles with no stocks at all, and a few weapons that look like they are in too large a weapon class.

Weapons are divided by manufacturer which is nice. I always find myself spending to much time agonizing over what the guards at a particular installation will be using because they're shiawase or renraku or whatever and think it would be strange if they were carrying Ares weapons.

Also, there's a great shadowtalk comment on the Krime Stopper regarding artists having too much control over the design process. Classic for those of us that looked through the first gun heaven.

Overall, pretty enjoyable.

Picked it up as soon as it was available. Flipped through it and was amused by a lot of what I saw. I consider this a good book, and something to let my players enjoy. I love the new ammo - considering I'd posted a thread about it not two (three?) weeks ago - or something very, very similar to it. Awesome stuff.

Bought it, had a first and a second look-through, and there's a fair amount of nice guns in here.

Some are very similar to weapons we already have, but it's nice to have options from different manufacturers.

Some odd ones; like pistols with bayonets (one stylish from Nemesis Arms, and one home-built revolver/knife combo), an smg with a one-shot (short range) grenade launcher, a shotgun with a one-shot grenade launcher.

One in particular stands out: a revolver using high-powered ammo for a whopping 8P and AP -4! It mentions experimental high-powered explosive ammo, but gives no stats for it (just warns against using it with the gun).

There's a new ammo type from S-K: Deathdealer Mk I -- self-guided small arms ammunition. I think this one is really nice without being overpowered. It seems perfect as a 'first step' in new technology: it's expensive as hell, gives only a slight advantage, and has several draw-backs. The only gripe I have is the stated availability, which at 16F seems a bit too low for such a brand new, high-tech product (but given that it's actually a worse metagame choice than all of the hard-to-get ammo types, I can accept that).

As for the art, some guns look a bit strange, and while I'm no gun expert myself I've already seen some things that the gun-nut in our group will snort and shake his head at. Some of the designs I really, really like though (whether they are accurate or not).

The book follows the format of one gun per page, grouped according to manufacturer - very nice. The order of the guns within each chapter is a bit off though - it doesn't seem to be either alphabetic or grouped according to weapon type. It doesn't help that the tables in the back list the guns in a different order, doesn't list the gun type/ranges at all, and doesn't have a page reference.

Personally, I would have liked to see the order presented in the core book, going from Hold-outs up to Assault Canons.


So, is the book good value for money? At $11.95 for 50 guns/59 pages I think it's perfectly fine (just under 24 cents per gun, if anyone's counting). I know it will see a lot of use at my table, and I think it's a fair price. Had the order of the guns made sense, I would've been a bit happier though.

I will probably wait to see what its packaged with when it comes out in dead tree format, I picked up the runners black book when it came out much rather have the tree then just digital

Regarding art. Really liked a lot of the aesthetics. Artists did a good job of making the brands identifiable. The SK guns all looked like something that would come out of SK. The nemisis guns all had really sweet and a bit of a flashy design. And so on.

But yeah. A lot of the guns just looked off. Most looked too short and a lot of weapons that looked like they had left off the stock.

I wouldn't call it first-step, the stuff exists in prototype stage right now in the real world. I'd call it a 'legacy ammunition' that they're re-introducing, and I'm more looking forward to an upgrade for ammunition which is 60 years in the future. I'm allowing some suspension of disbelief - the VITAS plagues probably threw us back about 30 years, development wise, and the Awakening may have done a bit of harm too... so I'm willing to accept that technology was set back a little, and is moving forward a little more sluggishly than it could in some areas.

Also don't forget the crash of 29 and 62. Next crash for the matrix, 2092? Any takers?

Hmm, I guess we will never have another cannon companion type rules set that allows us to make our own guns. 50 guns....that is alot. But then again, they will never exhaust this market (unless they break something-like the ares alpha).

I hope it isn't as boring as Gun Heaven 1.

Opinions...
I, personally, enjoyed Gun Heaven 1.

At very least the art is a ton better and there is a continuity of style within a company's line of products.

I was going to make a comment about crayon drawings and GH1, but then remembered that I probably want to keep the artists happy if I don't want the same quality ending up in my own books.

Have they ever explained the whole "Heaven = Haven" nonsense?

Probably the original title, even in-game, was "Gun Haven", and Slamm-0! hacked it at Kane's request to re-read "Heaven".

Yeah, I meant first-step within Shadowrun, since nothing like that has existed in SR before(except some fan-made stuff). There's a lot of discrepancies between the tech of today and that in SR.



Well, that's too late now isn't it? =P

The crash and the rise of the Megas basically allows the corporations to set the pace of development. And if real life thinking on that topic is reliable, that pace will be slow so that they can milk the most of a product.

Hey I hear there's new ammo in this one. Will I finally replace my stick and shock in the Tiffany Defender?

The new ammo here (Deathdealer mk 1) is not better than something like APDS or Ex-Ex. You might find a new pistol to replace the old one.
I quite like the new high-power ammo pistol with 8P damage at -4 AP.

Edit: to expand on this: someone with a low dice pool might want to use the new ammo, if the group gets a bunch of it, but it's a bit too expensive and rare for a poor gunman to use that (unless you're swimming in nuyen)

To be fair, do you really think any Shadowrun group that wants some of this is going to be BUYING it?

Not right now, it's too valuable as a black market commodity, but in a year or so it should be common enough that any decent gunrunner can get some for you. Sometimes spending the nuyen is worth shifting the blame for stealing that ammo crate over to a contact.

There are a lot of nice guns on this one, really need to rethink the armaments of some of my character builds.
But some of the guns make very little sense, like the Onatori Arms Rhino Hunter, a High Powered sporting rifle with availability 8R meaning it's quite easy to get and legal to carry around.
Or that is atleast untill you load it up(if you manage to get you hand on some ammo), then it turns in to a highly illegal, as the ammo is 20F.
This same goes for the couple of other Restricted high powered weapons too, really i cant even figure out how is it even legally possible in world for a gun to be legal with a permit while the only ammo it can shoot is totally illegal.

Well, the "R" bit makes it not quite so legal.

As for the ammo, that's why you keep that in your concealed compartment in the vehicle, while you keep your legal regular ammo visible as you're "About to go to the NAN to hunt something big and tasty. Give me your CommCode, officer, and I'll see that you get a few pounds of real meat, for doing such a good job keeping the city safe! A token of appreciation, not a bribe, I assure you!"

Rating 6 Fake Hunting License, they're worth it!

You do have a point, but I think Mäx's point was that the regular ammo you use has an availability of 20F (High-power rounds, required because of the high-power chambering these guns have). So you can get a permit for the gun, but you can't get a permit to buy ammo for it, which means you can never legally use the gun (except maybe at certain firing ranges that can supply the ammo for use exclusively at the range).

That doesn't make much sense...

Then again, the modification for high-power chambering is 7R, which doesn't make much sense either with the ammo being 20F.

Well, it's like having a 40mm Grenade Launcher in the US... And the tax stamp that's on every 40mm Grenade.

Hmm new ammo benefits cumulative with burst and auto fire?

I don't see why they wouldn't be.

It says specifically that every bullet in a burst/fall-auto has to be of the new type to keep the benefits, so yes.

For the new ammunition, it would be interesting if the 'mark 2' version was an add-on to other ammunition types. IE, for +150 nuyen to the cost of the ammunition, you could have guided APDS or similar. It might not work with all ammunition types (no guided APDS), but for some types of ammunition I could see it.

Actually, possibly for flechette too. It gets within a certain rage of the target, and goes 'pop', throwing the flechette forward. Hmm. This IS 207X after all..

I don't see this as much possible - even with heavy miniaturization of sensors and "maneuvering fins", there wouldn't be much room for additional filling (toxin, explosives,...) or bullet shaping (anti armor types)

But again, basic logic is not equal to game logic

I'm thinking the Mk. 2 will be Assault Cannon Rounds...

Could be that the Mk. 2 is just the same bullet, but for all weapon types rather than the fairly limited current list.

So Lofwyr will just release what he has probably available now. Question is, what he will have in his claws then...

Belt-Fed Machine Pistols.

I can buy a rocket car.
I can build a rocket car.
If I try to drive a rocket car down the street, police will impound it and possibly arrest me.


This new ammo provides dicepool bonuses?
Probably good for going guns akimbo.

It's legal to buy Nitrous Oxide, it's legal to have a Nitrous Oxide System in your automobile. Use it, and the cops will slam you harder than a double-double!

Meh, you don't need dragon for that. Take one Český Škorpion, ammo belt, hammer, screwdriver, duck tape, few hours of imagination and work, and voilà...

Actually, Belt-Feds can't be made for Machine Pistols according to RAW.

Ares might build one as a "Light Pistol" for Trolls.

Guided APDS, Ex-Ex and Stick'n'Shock.

With corner rounding capabilities.

A bullet with your name on it... Seeks out your unique Thermographic Signature.

I was actually thinking real life, met one gun-nut who actually considered trying to modify one like that. For Science! Don't know what happened to the project though...


And addressed shrapnels

If there is enough power in the recoil to drive the feed mechanism then i suspect it should be possible.

You can get AR15 "pistols", with the lower, no stock, and a very abbreviated upper. You can also get AR15 belt fed mods. So 'technically' you could probably get one to work. As stupid as it sounds.

"To whom it may concern,

FRAGGIN' OW!!!

Signed,
Frag GrenadeCQB?

Still firing rifle rounds tho, so a bit more kick to drive the whole thing.

Still nothing besides S-n-S to fight spirits?