Customer Reviews

The Cannon Companion: A Shadowrun Sourcebook (Fasa)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While lacking in the atmospheric Shadowland format common in other SR products, the CC totally makes up for it by being crammed full of great new gear, and vairations/expansions of the rules. The first half details new weapons, accessories, ammunitions, armor and gear. The armor section includes a listing of brand name Fine and Tres Chic armored clothing helping players to flesh out their looks. A chapter on Simsense adds great details and some new rules to a previously underdeveloped concept. A section on gun design and customization provides an easy to use template for creating the weapon of your dreams. A section on Advanced Melee Combat allows a character to choose a martial arts form which provides her with advantages, disadvantages, and manuvers in melee combat (my personal favorite). Plus a whole lot more! I was dissapointed with FASA's usual technique of refrencing half the rules in the book to another sourcebook, effectively requiring you to spend your money like a junkie. I would recommend SRcompanion, Magic in the Shadows, and Man and Machine: Cyberware, but by no means are they necessary. Finally, I was disappointed by the lack of editing quality in the book itself. Numerous misspelled words that any standard spellchecker could pick up, as well as a few poorly aligned columns that gave Missle Launchers a cost of 2 and an availability of 1,200Y made me grit my teeth. Despite its flaws, CC is a must have for serious runners, or those like me who prefer to just sit and drool over the rules.

Wow! This book covers a number of topics I'd seen house rules generated for and hits the level of detail that most GM's crave. It may not be the format of commentary that's made previous books so entertaining, but the amount of goodies makes up for it.

While the new gun listings are great for just about anyone, the sections on martial arts flavors and advanced combat rules are just the sort of thing that can come up in a run gone ugly, and we all know how rarely that happens.

The sections on BTL/Simsense and Reprogramming are kind of thrown in to help fill out the material, but again-- well done. After playing _Euphoria_ recently I know that a lot of the material would have been great to incorporate.

The section on modified and piecemeal armor is also appreciated. The authors included considerations for liquid/chemical weapons, electrical, cold, and fire attacks. I can tell you I'll never look at a just a greatcoat again-- it'll be just as modified as the firearms tend to get.

Really, it's just the occasional formatting issues that keep this book from being five stars. Well worth the bucks and certainly a keeper!

This book is a valuable asset for any lover of shadowrun's various weapons, The main focus for this book is to re-introduce weapons from past books. This allows weapons to be updated and converted from sr1 or sr2 and to resolve balance issues. My only problem with it is that it does not show as many pictures or reviews as were in the previous books. But in any case it is an invaluable asset for any player or GM of shadowrun. Have fun. and run always.

Cannon Companion is the latest Shadowrun sourcebook to be released in support of Shadowrun's third edition, and SR 3E is more exciting than cliff-diving with Jennifer Lopez into cold water. Cannon Companion, like Magic In the Shadows and Man and Machine before it, does a terrific job of updating the best material from the second edition sourcebooks while at the same time providing lots of keen new killgear and rules expansions. This book of course takes as its primary subject weaponry of all kinds. It updates all the weapons found in the old Street Samurai Catalog and Fields of Fire, and adds several new ones. Slick new weapons. Sexy new weapons. New weapons to make a PC samurai weep with agony or ecstasy, depending on which end of the weapon he's got. Things like the Shiawase Blazer, an SMG-sized flamethrower. Things like the Ares Redline laser pistol. Things like incendiary arrows and sai and nunckuku - in fact, there is an entire chapter on melee weapons which made my adepts prostrate themselves in an attitude like prayer. If Mike Mulvihill knew what was good for a gamer's character, he would have stopped there. But he doesn't. Mr. Mulvihill doesn't know the first thing about raising a gamer, so he's spoiling you absolutely rotten. Because the fun doesn't stop there. Cannon Companion includes all sorts of new options for ammunition, explosives, and armor, like shotgun bolo rounds, flashbang grenades and electrical insulation. Cannon Companion also completely revises the skill of Unarmed Combat for the better. Unarmed Combat is dead! Long live Unarmed Combat! There is also a chapter entitled Applied Simsense, which has exactly this much to do with the theme of the book: (0), but is long overdue and much welcomed here. It provides new options for skillsoft chips and finally details BTL chips, bringing them in step with the addiction rules found in Man and Machine. Not every page of this book is brilliant - some of it is actually kind of clunky and silly. But any good gamemaster takes and leaves, and edits to his own tastes. Cannon Companion is a credit to its line and an essential core rules supplement. Ya play Shadowrun? Go get this book.

The single best sourcebook for SR2 ever, IMHO, was Fields of Fire. While this doesn't overshadow FoF, it's good in its own right.

First, it gives updated stats for a lot of handy forms of equipment...things like collapsible batons, scuba gear, and other such things that didn't make it into the base set.

Then, you get new rules, like martial arts (eh), BTLs (which I haven't found a use for), and, of course, the gun-building rules...which are geared towards custom jobs, rather than mass-produced weapons. I and my friend ate up this section, of course.

Next, there're rules clarifications, much of which originated in FoF. The Strength-based recoil-reduction rules have been toned down so they're less open to abuse, which I grudgingly admit is a good idea.

Finally, there's a humongous table listing weapons, armor, and other equipment. Sadly, they don't include cyber- or deckerware for completeness.

This, however, is a great and beautiful book.

Let me start off with the 2 major flaws in this book from a gamers perspective: 1)Not enough illustrations of the weapons. You need to already know what the original guns look like. Alternately, I wish FASA would tell it's artists how big an ARES Alpha Combat Gun is. I've seen it represented from the size of a small SMG up to a monster that someone of smallish stature would have a hard time shouldering. 2)Not enough "alternative" weapons. There only seem to be a couple of options for small and stealthy, and non-lethal is very limited. Also, the options for long range shooting are pretty limited

Ok, that's the bads. The goods: Lots of guns give you many options. The major categories (like assault rifles), cover many options, so you can have a gun or other weapon for any occasion. If your combat style isn't seriously about the guns you carry, this wouldn't be a high priority book. For the street sams, this is a must have. The weapon creation rules are also sweet, and they are pretty well balanced (unless typical payment for a run is calculated in MegaNuyen in your campaign). There are a bunch of new rules, I won't go into them, but suffice it to say that a GM has better guidelines for the infinite variety of situations that come up in a SR campaign.

If you ever plan to play shadowrun, this book is for you. It has everything a player or a GM needs. Brand new weapons and old clasics. Your character keep using the same weapon over and over, and you want to improve it? You can. Plus new equipment, armor and rules for martial arts, this book is a must for anyone in the shadows.

This book is great. A lot of people may think it's just a book full of more guns for Shadowrun, but that's not the half of it. Granted, the martial arts rules aren't quite accurate (Sambo and Aikido are two VERY different martial arts styles) but it's a vast improvement on any of rules published online. It has rules and statistics for new and exotic melee weapons, improvised weapons (including living or dead bodies), fashionable, practical, and useful armored clothing, rules for building your own weapons, and, yes, new guns.

Overall, a little lacking. The rules for gun design are nice. The toning down of pole weapons hurt my PC. I didn't care much for the optional martial arts section.

The rule that reduces recoil for every full 6 points of strength is useful.

I guess the best part was the new skills for using two weapons at once. On the cover of the "Man & Machine" book there's a sam using two swords and no rule for supporting a character like that anywhere prior to this book.

This is a great source book with many new additions to the game of Shadowrun. I mean after all, who wouldn't want more and more equipment to blow stuff up with or protect yourself from getting blown up? There is only one thing that disappointed me and that was that there were not more illustrations of each piece of equipment. All in all, this book is a great addition to the Shadowrun world.