Cannon Companion

Cannon Companion Review

Distilled: The “Cannon” part of this SR3 sourcebook ranges from the dull to the ill-thought out while the “Companion” part contains the best rules expansions to the game I’ve seen so far.

Rating: 5/10 (without the lame “gunz” material it would have been a 7/10)

The Cannon Companion is the newest sourcebook for FASA Corporations burgeoning Shadowrun, Third Edition line. It attempts to compile and update every weapon from previous sourcebooks in the First and Second Edition as well as provide additional gear and rules for a variety of other subjects.

The title Cannon Companion is actually somewhat misleading, since comparatively little of the book actually deals with firearms specifically. In fact, only about half of the book deals with weapons at all. This lack of focus is clearly evident in the overall usefulness of several sections (see below). Although something in CC will appeal to almost every player—everyone is bound to feel disappointed about the lack of information, depth, or research on any one particular section.

I will cover the book from front to back, starting from the cover and working to the back blurb. I will mainly be looking at:

1. Content: What does the section cover?
2. Art: How does the art look? Is it relevant to the section? Does the artist display any strange breast fetish (*cough* Steve Prescott *cough*)?
3. Usefulness: How applicable is this to a game? Are the rules sirple enough to be easily integrated? Do the rules even make sense? Do they contradict previous material from other SR3 books?
4. Technical accuracy: Shadowrun has a well-known problem with coherency and even basic research. This is well known (or should be) so I’ll try not to point out problems that are a result of the Shadowrun system itself. But I will try to point out basic flaws in research or even simple logic.
5. Other: Any other pearls of wisdom I throw into this will show up here.

The Cover

Content

The cover appears to be by the same guy who does the VOR covers (Paul Bonner). It might as well be a VOR cover. Same over-the-top comic styling. It depicts a troll (a very short troll with a huge head) followed by some ghoul-looking human who appears to have some intestinal problem. The troll is firing some obscenely large belt-fed weapon into what appears to be a sewer entrance. There are also several gears in the picture with no apparent purpose.

Art

I covered this in the “content” section. Suffice to say it’s even more cartoonish then the Shadowrun, Third Edition cover. If you don’t like the new direction with Shadowrun covers you definitely won’t like this one either. If I had to assign a label to it, I’d place the new direction in cover art as distinctly Warhammer 40,000-like.

Usefulness

A troll wearing tiger striped pants carrying an huge “gunz”. I guess it fits the title. Hmm, I notice the human in the background appears to have no teeth—that might be symbolic of something—dunno.

Technical Accuracy

The trolls head is vastly out of proportion to the rest of his body. He appears to be a midget of his metatype. His legs don’t appear capable of carrying even his upper body, much less the cannon he is holding.

Other

What is up with the move to “four-color” style covers and art? It just looks goofy and usually has less then nothing to do with anything in the Shadowrun world.

Table of Contents and Credits

Content

The table of contents are well laid out and intelligently organized.

Art

What art?

Usefulness

Very useful.

Technical Accuracy

As far as I can tell the page references are accurate.

Other

The usual cast of characters makes its appearance here. I’ve been told very little of the playtest feedback was actually incorporated into this book—so don’t blame the playtesters if you don’t like stuff from the book.

Introduction

Content

Brief overview of the sections in the book. Mike Mulvihill’s “Developer’s Say” section.

Art

None

Usefulness

Not very enlightening.

Technical Accuracy

No bogus technical reasoning this time. Brief overview of why there are not more guns in the book. That’s about it.

Other

Read it once, you’ll never look at it again.

Melee Weapons

Content

Edged weapons, clubs, pole arms, and improvised weapons.

Art

One full-page piece that has nothing to do with the section (other then one guy has a katana and the other has a mace). the other picture is a cropped version of another piece in the book. No pictures of any of the weapons.

Usefulness

Mainly reprints of previously existing material. Some of the stuff (like the macauitl) are more for “fluff” interest then actual usefulness.

Technical Accuracy

Well, we still have the infamous Centurion laser axe from SSC and now we have vibro blades. Dunno if the authors are big fans of Rifts or what.

Other

Ugh. Well, other then the laser axe and vibro-blades I did not see anything too far outside the realm of possibility. The macauitl seems a bit overpowered given its purpose in real life (it was not designed to kill necessarily).

Projectile and Throwing Weapons

Content

Covers arrowheads and bow accessories, slingshots, caltrops, and even bodies.

Art

One little tiny piece of art that looks like they scanned it right off a SRCCG card. It’s very dark. Nothing special anyways—just a guy holding a bow.

Usefulness

Well, I’ve never played a game with bow-users. Nor have I ever had the urge to break out a slingshot or go dwarf-tossing so this section had no usefulness for me other then a brief chuckle at the entry for using metahuman bodies as improvised weapons. Once that wore off I note I’ll probably never use this section again.

Technical Accuracy

Explosive warheads on an arrow… I’m sure it’s technically possible (if very unlikely) but it just smacks of someone watching too much Rambo and thinking “dem’ dere explodin’ arrows are cool!”

Other

Why no notes on tire damage from caltrops?

Firearms

Content

Pretty much every weapon from previous books and a few new ones. All updated to SR3 stats. Format is a really short blurb with actual stats at the bottom of the page (usually).

Art

There are 10 small single-gun illustrations and two larger illustrations (1 full page, 1 half-page). Only one looks like it belongs in Shadowrun. None of the gun pictures bear any resemblance to how guns look in real life. And one in particular looks like two different pictures cut and pasted together (p. 21). The full page pic on p. 17 (the gunshop) is amusing but has little to do with Shadowrun (unless gun stores in SR sell vindicators and grenades to everyone).

In short, I’m glad there is not more of this stuff.

Usefulness

Well, if you like how SR models its weapon damages you’ll love this stuff. It has a few new toys, most of which add nothing new. I noted a new fetish for polymer/resin construction and flechettes though. A high number of the weapons in here are one or both.

One very annoying passage was the description for the Ruger Thunderbolt. Now, why Lone Star would harass someone for owning one (it can be bought with a permit) absolutely boggles me. Do cops now harass those who own their model of service weapon? It’s yet another cheap blow at Lone Star to make them cookie-cutter adversaries.

Technical Accuracy

Nobody at FASA has yet figured out how their damage modeling is messed up. High power weapons penetrate armor better—its a function of how the system works. But we still have pistols that can penetrate armor easier then assault rifles.

Still absolutely no plausible reason the “same” gun is available as both caseless and cased versions. The technologies used are quite different, and will result in weapons having very little in common except maybe name.

And the final problem is weapons like LMGs. There is no reason why their damage code should be higher then that of an assault rifle. You can’t even apply the “barrel length” argument to this. Even games like Rifts get this right.

Nothing wrong with the taser rules, but there are “phasers” out now that are more high-tech and interesting.

The M24A3 water carbine… I’ll cut and paste Raygun’s comment here since he summed it up better then me:

This is definitely a contestant for the FASA We Don’t Know Jack Squat, But This Sure Does Sound Cool award.

Here come the dissection… Okay we’re firing regular ammunition under water. Not a problem, really. It can be done rather easily. Does it need some fancy and unnecessarily complex pressurized chamber which draws air from the diver’s freaking air supply? No. It does not. Not if the weapon uses cased ammunition.

In this case, the only thing you need to be sure of is that the firing pin hits the ass end of the primer cap with enough force to cause it to ignite the powder charge. The explosion is contained within the sealed case. Once the bullet starts moving forward, it pushed water out of its way. Behind the bullet is a definite area of overpressure pushing the bullet. That will keep water out of the barrel until the pressure drops, which will be long after the bullet has left the muzzle.

“But I want my caseless ammunition!” Great. Then use the unnecessarily complicated and expensive piece of garbage some FASA writer **** out. (How much does it cost, BTW? I’ll wager that it’s stupid-cheap.) [Ed. It costs 1,000 nuyen]

Basically, if you seal off the section of the receiver where the hammer strikes the firing pin (so its forward momentum isn’t interrupted by water in its path), you could use an M-16 under water without problems. It ain’t really that big a deal.

If they didn’t rework ranges for this wonderful contraption, they missed out on the big problem with firing conventional ammunition underwater. With 5.56mm NATO (Which is what I’m going to assume this weapon fires), you’ll get about 15–20 meters before the bullet starts yawing and losing energy due to the added drag of water, which will cause accuracy to drop substantially.

That’s plenty of range though, considering visibility is probably going to be far less than that.

Other

Adds very little to Shadowrun. Most of the weapons are cookie-cutters with no redeeming differences.

Heavy Weapons

Content

Has machineguns and cannons, grenades and mortars, missile and rocket launchers, and then specialized launchers.

Art

There is one, count it one original picture in this chapter (which is quite good btw). The other is a…full page black and white version of the cover! The one new picture is an action scene.

Usefulness

If you were expecting Cannon Companion to “fix” the group munchkins favorite weapon you are out of luck. Essentially these are updates of gear from Fields of Fire.

Technical Accuracy

Still have the Whacky Panther Assault Cannon™ (now with anti-vehicle ammo!). And the ever-wierd Ballista backpack rocket launcher and the new (?) Vogeljager backpack SAM launcher. Still no reason for these to exist, but hey, at least the art in FoF was nice.

Other

The M79B1 LAW is based (obviously!) on the old M72 LAW. Nice touch, too bad the M72 was actually ineffective in its actual intended role.

Two of the charts are screwed up (the one on p. 27 and the one on p. 28).

Special Weapons

Content

Flame-throwers, laser weapons, “miscellaneous.”

Art

What’s that? Not a single illustration.

Usefulness

As much as people were enthusing over the flame-thrower rules I did not think they were anything people could not have came up with on their own. Still, it’s nice to see. Also has gyrojets, which I’m not glad to see.

Technical Accuracy

I can’t see a big problem with the laser part, except they really go overboard on laser capabilities. The ignore Ballistic armor, 1/2 Impact armor is pretty bogus and overpowering—especially considering they are not treated as AV weapons.

Other

The gyrojet…ugh. nice to see someone read about them (they were dumped in the 1970s). But someone was watching too much “Runaway” when designing this.

A few minor spelling errors (laser sentence of the Laser Weapons sentence on p. 30).

Firearm Accessories

Content

Bayonets to target designators.

Art

Two pics. one that looks like another SRCCG scan, and a really goofy one on p. 34 that appears to show some sort of external arm holding the top of a Panther (another note that noone has drawn that weapon the same).

Usefulness

Pretty useful actually.

Technical Accuracy

The Safe Target System sounds badly written and with worse science handwaving then is usual. Let me get this straight, somehow this system (based on location via GPS) can know when you aim at someone…uhh. Pass that by me again, anyone else see the problem with that? It’s just plain handwaving, and saying it does it via GPS is pretty ridiculous when you think about it. A system similar to this could probably be constructed but what’s the point?

Look before you shoot, don’t point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot: #1 rule of firearms safety.

Other

The extended range laser site… Wow that aimpoint has to be pretty big to be noticeable over 500 meters away (at night).

Ammunition and Explosives

Content

Ammunition types and explosives.

Art

One full-page and two smaller pieces. All three are pretty good.

Usefulness

Your groups munchkins will be all over this chapter. Oddly enough you can’t actually “build” claymores. The directional mine option does not really jive with how claymores work.

Technical Accuracy

Where to begin? The Anti-Vehicle rounds are not well thought-out (“solid bronze core” eh?) and seemingly only exist as a band-aid to the problems with the vehicle combat rules. They appear to be based on SLAP (Saboted Light Armor Piercing) ammo but unlike SLAP this is based on nothing but an idea that was “k00l”.

Glazers. Wow, hope Glaser does not hear about this. I think its supposed to be based on Glaser Safety Rounds, but these don’t work anything like real glasers. Essentially these are “exploding bullets”.

Hi-C. Egads, what were they thinking! A densiplast round (case too I guess) with a more powerful propellant charge so that is “almost as damaging as regular rounds”. This doubles the recoil penalty. Now, how the weapon can handle that is beyond me, this in addition to the fact that plastic cases are not normally seen as an possibility. Even so, this round would shatter FAR easier then a metal projectile. I’d use the highest of either Ballistic or Impact armor and double the value.

Mercury rounds. Uhm, these apparently explode like the “glazers”. Only thing I’ve seen on the net about this is using mercury fulminate. And that reacts with lead and becomes inert. But you can get around that obviously. Still have problems believing its powerful enough to matter though. In real life, exploding rounds of this type are designed to increase round fragmentation—not blow up in a freakin’ fireball.

Tracker rounds. Make up your mind! There are far better ways to plant a tracker then by shooting at them. Not even very useful against game animals. Assuming the tracking device even survives the impact! And pray tell how long is the battery life on the little monster? Or even what its Flux Rating is?!

Bola rounds for shotguns. These are a gimmick (I’ve actually used these and Dragonsbreath ammo (which the “Temper” rounds are based on). Don’t believe the hype.

Shock Lock rounds. Frangible ammunition. This is new?

AV assault cannon round. Gee, now the Panther gets AV capability!

Gyrojet rounds. Seeking 6mm rockets that do 12M or 12M AV/APDS. Fun.

Other

Some of these ammo types did not have much thought applied to them. Others, like the mines are actually pretty cool.

Armor and Gear

Content

“Fashionable” armor, military armor, battletac, tactical communications, parachutes, diving gear.

Art

One full-age and two smaller pics. The full page pic shows a business man burnt to a crisp but his suit is still wrinkle free. One shows a cyberzombie(?) catching an explosion full-brunt and the last shows a guy who pulls the ripcord on his parachute and it breaks.

Usefulness

Very useful actually. I quite enjoyed the armor fashions, and parachutes were cool.

Technical Accuracy

Military-grade armor still is written so that no military would ever use it! They should just have ditched it like they did the Stonewall. But nope, still stuck with body armor that has better armor then some armored vehicles. AV ammo reduces its effectiveness, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Satellite links. Still stuck in the 80’s (they just used the text from Fields of Fire). Nobody there heard of Iridium? And yet another bogus reference to “hacking” satellites.

Other

Other then the so-called “military” grade armor this section is actually very nice.

Applied Simsense

Content

Skillsofts, BTLs, and PAB.

Art

Some of the best art in the book. Prescott shines here. From the first picture on page. 58 to the chick being “reprogrammed” on p. 70. I liked every piece (especially the hopped up dwarf on p. 62). There is one full-page, one large half-page and and one smaller pic (hopped-up dwarf).

Usefulness

Wow. Some of the options verge on munchkin but there is enough here to really flesh out people who are heavy users/abusers of skillsofts at the very least. BTLs are handled nicely (if a bit too on the numbers side), and PABs are the same as they were in Shadowbeat.

Technical Accuracy

Who knows?! The only note is that in base VR2 psychotropic black IC is vastly more effective then PAB—which is yet another one of Shadowruns incongruities.

Other

The PAB section is right out of Shadowbeat. Come on guys, you could at least have changed the example so it did not look quite so much like a cut and paste.

Firearm Design and Customization

Content

Building and modifying firearms.

Art

One full page picture (ork guy with a head in a bag), and other half-page of a guy modifying a SMG.

Usefulness

Hmm. Well don’t expect to be able to build any of the canon firearms using these rules—you probably won’t be able to. And that’s part of the problem. It’s like this system exists in a vacuum. It’s not a Rigger 2 for weapons by any stretch.

Technical Accuracy

Nothing overtly wrong from a consistency standpoint. Some of the base times for weapon mods seem way too long. A bipod takes 8 hours to install? Geeze, just get one that clips on! Why do extended clips take a modification time? It’s just a longer clip…Geeze. The desire to give extensive base times and target numbers for even the most banal task was a bit too much, but use some common sense (in short supply I know).

There are also the (now well known) problems with building tasers with the rules and the whacked DP costs for items such as gas vents (which are far cheaper bought after design). And then there is weapon weights and Concealability—which can range from way too high to way too low.

Other

Despite some warnings at the beginning, I don’t see this system as being too much like Spud’s Firearm Creation Guide or even Diamants Gun Production Line. I’d go so far as to say its not even competition since they focus on different aspects and the Cannon Companion version does even pretend to be realistic or even self-consistent.

I won’t be using this stuff except in a general way (and even then its a big maybe). This chapter is probably the one that most groups will decide right off if they will use it or not.

Advanced Melee Combat

Content

Martial arts rules and advanced melee rules.

Art

One full page of a John Woo style kickfest (looks like wire-fu time!), a smaller pic of a cyber-ninja (of course), and a small pic of a guy who looks like he wire-fu’d some guy off a building with an open hand strike.

Usefulness

Uhm. Well if you dislike the attitude that “martial arts is just better…well…because its COOL!” then you won’t like this section much. Martial arts are superior to normal brawling and boxing in pretty much every way. If you have groups with lots of twinks I suggest thinking really hard about whether you want to introduce this.

Technical Accuracy

It’s been pointed out that the martial arts categories listed are incorrect. I’m not a martial arts buff so I cannot comment.

Other

The system is generic and easy enough to modify to be easily used with your own house system—expect to see a lot of house rule martial arts systems that are based on these guidelines. Is it realistic or detailed? Not in the least—but it does have enough good ideas to spark a gamemasters own ideas.

Advanced Combat Rules

Content

Ambidexterity, armor degradation, athletics and dodging, camouflage, cover modifiers, fire and incendiaries, holding weapons, indirect fire, rates of fire, missile combat, parachuting, recoil and strength, and more!

Art

One full page picture and two half page illustrations. All three are very nice, although I thought the third one (two divers) looked a bit twonky for some reason. The first illustration points out that Prescott really has an fascination with womens breasts ;) Laura Croft move over. I’m assuming the chick in the first picture has some sort of spinal reinforcement.

Usefulness

Wow. If there is not at least two things in this section you cannot immediately apply to an ongoing game I will be very surprised. At the very least all gamemasters should look over the new “Searching Fire” and “Suppressive Fire” rules.

The diving section reprints and expands the material from Cyberpirates to a great deal. Some of the way they handled weapons and the like is a bit…strange. But its fairly simplistic (probably the point).

I don’t know where to begin, about the only things I personally have zero use for are the Ambidexterity rules (which are pretty useless) and the Signature Weapon rules.

Technical Accuracy

Supermachineguns are still pretty lame from a realism standpoint, but its a lot better then their previous incarnation in Fields of Fire.

Other

I like this section a lot. I’m especially enamoured with the revamped Small Unit Tactics and Missile rules. The new suppressive and searching fire rules fill in some glaring holes in the combat system, and the new parachuting and underwater rules are a nice touch.

Equipment Tables

Nice. What else can you say?

Back

Wow, another reprinted art piece, this time from the SR3 rulebook.