Spycraft: Modern Arms Guide

Rating:
Summary: Very good weapons source book for Spycraft
Review: Lots and lots of guns! Mostly pretty well detailed, and I have been using for a replacement to the weapons listings in D20 Modern by WOTC. Much more detailed and realistic portrayal of real-world weaponry.

Rating:
Summary: Guns, we need guns....
Review: Lots and lots of guns! Mostly pretty well detailed, and I have been using for a replacement to the weapons listings in D20 Modern by WOTC. Much more detailed and realistic portrayal of real-world weaponry.

Rating:
Summary: Very good weapons source book for Spycraft
Review: Spycraft's Modern Arms Guide (MAG) has been described as the equivalent of D20 Modern's "UltraModern Firearms" for Spycraft. However, MAG is a much more useful book for Spycraft - both because it is written specifically for Spycraft's mechanics, but also because of the greater variation in weapon statistics. The D20 Modern mechanics do not support a detailed weapons model and as such its weapons tend to all have similar game stastics. Spycraft's MAG however supports much more variables in the weapon descriptions, making the choice of weaponry more interesting and highlighting variations in different guns.

The book itself is split into a number of chapters, covering a wide range of weaponry and/or adding new rules. Each chapter describing weapons has a sections with textual description, followed by tables detailing game statistics. Whilst this is generally works well, it sometimes means you have to look up both the description and the table to discover all features of a given weapon. Surely some of the properties (e.g. weapon firing modes) could have been included in note form on the tables?

Make sure you get the Chapter 9 bonus material from the Alderac website. Whilst not strictly weapons related, it is something you'll want to print out and keep in the MAG book. (I'm not sure why they decided such gear would be associated with the Modern Arms Guide - but its a useful chapter to have).

Chapter 1 covers new rules. Anyone expecting new feats or prestiege classes will have to look at the Soldier/Wheelman book instead. These new rules are mostly combat actions, black market rules etc. They do work quite well, but unfortunately, not all the rules within MAG are detailed here - for example, optional rules on recoil are detailed in Chapter 5. It is therefore quite hard to locate rules during gameplay - it would have been better had all new rules (optional or not) been included under this chapter.

Chapter 2 covers Melee weapons - standard and improvised.

Chapter 3 covers Hurled weapons. Strangely, this is not only throwing knives and grenades, but also crossbows ...

Chapter 4 covers Exotic weapons. Much of these are familiar to any DnD player, but some additional treatment is also given to martial weapons (although you'll really want the excellent Blood and Fist for modern martial arts).

Chapter 5 is the bulk of the book, covering firearms - from pistols through shotguns to assault rifles. There is an excellent selection of guns - over 15 pages of table entries alone (plus a significant amount of weapon descriptions). Unfortunately, whilst there is a section of different ammunition, it seems to have been added as an after thought - with no variation in ammunition features, cost or availability based on calibre - all dum-dum rounds cost the same and do the same damage bonus (making them relatively *less* effective as you go up in calibre). Unfortunately, almost all the non-pistol and non-shotguns are listed as restricted - meaning no actual costs are available - this is a main complaint of the book (see below).

Chapter 6 introduces weapon accessories - scopes, suppressors, sights etc.

Chapter 7 covers tactical weapons - from explosives to flame throwers and mortars. Unfortunately, almost all these items are listed as restricted.

Chapter 8 covers protective equipment. It introduces some new armour rules for weakness of damage reduction against certain forms of attack.

One main complaint is the absence of cost for a number of weapons. The book treats these as specialist weapons - only available via Budget Points (a unit of currency within Spycraft). But not every game situation or campaign will demand the purchase of weapons via Budget Points. And while there are rules for blackmarket weapon purchases, it's hard to reconcile the statements regarding Budget Points having no real-world currency conversion, with rules designed to give an actual cost based on Budget Points for items which do not have an actual cost. As a result, the usefulness of the book is slightly diminshed for those who want to obtain their weapons outside of Budget Points. This could have been overlooked if it was only for "difficult to obtain" weapons like the heavy weapons in Chapter 7 - but almost all the assault rifles, submachines and sniper rifles in Chapter 5 are restricted - so there's no price for the ever popular MP5 for example.

Also, it can be hard to locate rules relating to the new game mechanics - they are not all detailed where you'd expect them to be. No one should have to know every rule in a role-playing game, but it is important to be able to find it quickly in order to speed up play - and the layout of mechanics descriptions in the book doesn't always help this.

However, these are annoying issues rather than serious errors, and overall this is a very good book for anyone running a Spycraft campaign.