Best D20 product for running a WWII game?

[D_Sinclair]

ARP has a few products right up your alley, as far as military weapons and vehicles go.

Big Bang Vol 6: German Small Arms of WW2 focuses on opposiet ends of the Nazi weapons spectrum; sidearms and experimental heavy weapons. Did you know there were actually 15 different variants of the panzerfaust developed?

Big Bang Ricochet 100: Japan's Type 94 Tankette is the start of a series detailing World war II military equipment in a style of the old profile dossier type militaria publications of the 1960's. This particular one covers a tiny tank the Japanese designed for deployment of chemical weapons. The next two in the series focus on the Amtrack and the Kangaroo APC.

 

[scourger]

I still haven't had a chance to check out V for Victory, but I've heard plenty of good stuff. I wish they would sell it as a pdf for $5 or something.

Me too. And Omega World. And Iron Lords of Jupiter. I would love to have them in small booklet form to use more easily in play than the whole magazine issue.

 

[qstor]

ARP has a few products right up your alley, as far as military weapons and vehicles go.

Are these for d20 modern?

Anyone have sources for more WWII small arms that appear in d20 Past? I have Charles Ryans book by Green Ronin but those are all pretty new firearms.

Mike

 

[Aaron2]

Are these for d20 modern?

The Big Bang stuff is d20 Modern. My only complaint is that the coverage is pretty random and he uses some odd numbers for Range Increment (forex 265 ft).

Anyone have sources for more WWII small arms that appear in d20 Past?

I don't know of any product with coverage of a wide variety of small arms from the era (except Call of Cthulhu d20 which uses the same weapon stats in V for Victory). Most deal with mainly German and US weapons. I've had to make up stats for a large number of weapons.


Aaron

 

[D_Sinclair]

The Big Bang stuff is d20 Modern. My only complaint is that the coverage is pretty random and he uses some odd numbers for Range Increment (forex 265 ft).

Only two products in the entire line have been random. Everything else has has a clear subject matter. The particular topic does vary from book to book.

The numbers are not odd. They are based upon published real world statistics. published range / 10, x 3.3 if it was published in meters, round the result to the nearest 5' and you've got a range increment. The author has published in at least one book the "magical multiplier" he calculated to make the range increments compatible with the listed D20 Modern numbers. IIRC, it was 0.43. Multiply a Big Bang Range Increment by that and you get a result more inline with the "we're writing the rules to force you to use miniatures, so the numbers have to be kept small enough to stay on the sand table, but we won't bother telling you how we arrived at those results" Range Increments published in WotC products.

I don't know of any product with coverage of a wide variety of small arms from the era (except Call of Cthulhu d20 which uses the same weapon stats in V for Victory). Most deal with mainly German and US weapons. I've had to make up stats for a large number of weapons.

Over the next 6 months or so, the Big Bang line will be concluding coverage of WW2 small arms. 1 book each on Japanese, Soviet, British and Italian small arms, 2 on US, and 2 more on German. Plus there will be 1 or 2 books on secondary weapon sources during the war.

 

[Aaron2]

Only two products in the entire line have been random. Everything else has has a clear subject matter. The particular topic does vary from book to book.

The German Small Arms (#6 IIRC) contained 11 different pistols, 1 rifle and 15 or so versions of the Panzerfaust. That's a pretty random selection if you ask me. It is also annoying since the description at RPGNow made it sound like it covered 60 different common weapons.

The numbers are not odd. They are based upon published real world statistics.

They may be based on real world effective ranges but they aren't easy to use. It's easy to figure out multiples of 250 or 300 but not so for 265. 265 ft is 53 tabletop inches. That's pretty long for a typical game table considering the difference is only in the last 3 inches. Unless your using Chase scale (50 ft per inch) in which case 265 isn't a clean multiple. Hence my description of it as "odd".

Over the next 6 months or so, the Big Bang line will be concluding coverage of WW2 small arms. 1 book each on Japanese, Soviet, British and Italian small arms, 2 on US, and 2 more on German. Plus there will be 1 or 2 books on secondary weapon sources during the war.

That's 9 PDFs at $4.49 each just for small arms.


Aaron

 

[D_Sinclair]

The German Small Arms (#6 IIRC) contained 11 different pistols, 1 rifle and 15 or so versions of the Panzerfaust. That's a pretty random selection if you ask me. It is also annoying since the description at RPGNow made it sound like it covered 60 different common weapons.

Most resources consider variants to be separate weapons. So yes, statistics are supplied for 60 different weapons. However, those weapons are drawn from less than 60 different families of weapons.

That's 9 PDFs at $4.49 each just for small arms.

Prices will vary, since I doubt the books will all be the same length. In addition, products focusing on the two world wars are significantly more expensive to prepare thanks to the scattering of relevant materials to collectors, particularly when a product provides far more than a short paragraph of description and some game statistics.

 

[Captain Needles]

I'll throw my two cents in for Weird Wras. Our GM included almost no supernatural encounters (with the exception of a few zombies, and that was just plain fun) and we still had a blast playing a straight WWII War Game.