Big Bang: The Mostly Illustrated RPG Guide to Firearms Special Edition
Big Bang: The Mostly Illustrated RPG Guide to Firearms Special Edition
Written by Dana Jorgensen
Published by Alternate Realities Publications
Action! System Rules created by Mark Arsenault & Patrick Sweeney
Action! System Core Rules written by Mark Arsenault, Patrick Sweeney & Ross Winn
Bias: I was given this product to review as part of the PDF review project and then bought a copy because the review copy wasn’t sound.
Big Bang: The Mostly Illustrated RPG Guide to Firearms Special Edition is a 66 page pdf including covers and legal mumbo jumbo pages. It retails for $5.00 at Rpgnow.
An Overview:
This book is an expansion of Big Bang: The Mostly Illustrated Guide to Firearms Volume 1, and according to the ad copy on Rpgnow the latter is required to make full use of this one. I do not own that product and was not given it to review so I will endeavour to provide a thorough and full review of it none the less. The book highlights weapons in common use by the participants of Operation: Iraqi Freedom and a section on chemical and biological weapons. This product includes mechanics for d20 Modern and Cyberthriller, though for the purpose of this review I will focus on exclusively the d20 modern rules.
Chapter 1: Welcome and Revision (1 page)
This section of the book welcomes customers back to the Big Bang line of books and explains that with the advent of war in Iraq and desire to expand upon the original to include weapons present in the war. There is also a passionate description of how the d20 modern rules fail to adequately address the effects of chemical and biological weapons.
Chapter 2: Iraqi Biochemical Weapons (4 pages)
This section of the book deals with the some of the biological and chemical that have been used by the Iraqi government or was suspected to be developed by Iraqi government. Covered within this section are anthrax, botulinum, cholera, ricin, sulphur mustards and tabun (o-ethyl dimethylamidophosphorylcyanide – we just don’t do enough organic chemistry in high school anymore). This section differs from the core rules in that it doesn’t follow the stale onset time, initial damage, secondary damage but instead includes symptoms and non-standard damage (but more suited to realistic accounts).
Chapter 3: Weapons (Most of the rest)
The rest of the document is generally laid out in the following fashion:
1) Factual description of the weapon in question including weapon specifics like one would find in a military or weapon field guide.
2) A list of the game mechanics for the weapons in the four systems used.
There writing in the chapter is very factually focused, like that of an instruction or informational manual, and tightly written.
Mechanically, the weapons conform to the format used in the d20 Modern book, except the explosive ammunition also include blast radius next to their damage. However, weapons that appear in the d20 Modern Core and this volume do not consistently have the same statistics. Anti-Aircraft Weapons which follow a variant rule discussed in their entry whereby each such each has a % to hit and % to kill.
Included here is information and game mechanics for:
Al-Quds Machine Rifle
Kalashnikov AK-47 (statistics do not match the d20 Modern rules)
PKM General Purpose Machine Gun
RPG-7V Knut
RPG Ammo
RPK
RPK-74
SA-7 Grail
SA-14 Gremlin
Tabuk
Milan
Enfield SA-80
FIM-92 Stinger
M-136 AT4
M-141 BDM
M-16A2 (statistics do not match the d20 Modern rules)
M-2 .50 caliber machine gun
M203 Grenade Launcher w/ammunition
M-249 SAW
M-4/M-4A1 (statistics do not match the d20 Modern rules)
SMAW
The biggest difference seems to be the range listed for the weapon that is different in the above cases.
How’s the editing?
Lightyears better. I say this because the original document Crothian was messed up. I think it was an earlier version that was given to him by mistake. When I bought a copy I found most of my editing and layout concerns to be fixed. There were 1 or 2 blank pages in the document that really didn’t seem to have any purpose to me. I also found the text too small to read comfortably on screen and decided to print my copy out.
What about Open Game Content?
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Yep, that’s what I got when I copied and pasted from the document and I have no idea why. I also seem unable to search the pdf, its really weird. If I search for the letter t, it takes me to a wide range of q’s and n’s.
Essential the mechanical information under the “D20 Modern Data” heading, which for this rulebook is nothing. The chemicals are listed as: “D20 Modern Rules” and the weapons are listed under “D20 Modern”. I don’t believe what the author’s intended to happen but that is what is written.
So where do I stand?
I didn’t like it. I’m not saying there really was anything wrong with it. The mechanics seemed sound and the product does meet its goal of providing a realistic view of the weapons of the Iraq war. I did enjoy the chemical and biological weapons because they add a lot of flavour to the game instead of the onset time, initial damage, secondary damage model. I found the writing clunky and mechanical like I was reading a text book and realistically many of the weapons don’t feel all that different from a mechanics point of view.
Editing – good
Pdf functionality – weird issues
Mechanics – sound
Inventive – no really
It feels average to me. I’m not upset I purchased it but I probably will not use any of the material in my home game except the chemicals and biological weapons. It seems to me my personal preferences prevent me from enjoying a very technical book, so I probably wouldn’t purchase others in this line though I will consider other lines.
If you are looking for a very technical book (description wise) then this series is probably more suited to you.
