Two new 2nd Ed. weapons books for T2k

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Only found out about this about 30 minutes ago. A gamer and gun enthusiast by the name of Arto Roth has produced and released updated infantry weapons and heavy weapons guides. Only available as PDFs, there is no indication that they will be available in other formats and there's no indication that the author intends to produce any other books.

Despite being made for 2nd/2.2 of T2k, these books feature many modern weapons from the 2000s up to 2020 alongside all the earlier items we'd expect so the books are very well suited for Merc: 2000 and Dark Conspiracy. However if you want to use them for a 1990s or early 2000s timeline for Twilight: 2000 you will have to go through both books and decide which weapons are unsuited for your timeline.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse....or=Arto%20Roth

[Tegyrius]

Good find. What can you tell us about production quality, writing quality, and rules balance? It's only 18 bucks for the pair but as a matter of principle, I'd like to be sure I'm supporting good work.

- C.

[TyCaine]

Same question here.

I'm happy to support others, just would like more insight into how well they're put together and what I can expect to get from them.

With this pandemic I was on furlough for a while and so every cent mattered, I'm only just now getting back to some kind of work in a very different environment than I'm used to, and am doing my best to scrape back up to date on all my bills, $18 may not be much to some, but lately it's been far more important than ever to not waste a single dollar... To the point I've been selling off some of my beloved books... :-(

That said, have to have some kind of enjoyment, so an idea of the two books would be greatly appreciated.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I wanted answers to the same questions so I did end up buying them.
Production is good for a fan made product and generally it's consistent throughout.
Every entry has at least one illustration and a weapon card format is used for every single entry however there are times when there are more spaces on a card than needed and it just looks like "dead" space.
For an illustration of what I mean, compare the cartridge entry for these two pistols. The author has a format that works and he has applied it consistently across all weapons but in the case of the Akdal pistol, the section under Cartridge looks like it's wasted on a bunch of lines for no real reason.
(I don't particularly want to post images from his books so please forgive me for using online storage sites)

MEGA link: - https://mega.nz/file/s1dQVJ7K#dpDCUj...G5FquoLdGUFyX4

As for writing quality, generally it's good but it's obvious at times that the author is not a native English speaker although that does not detract from the product overall. There are a few factual inconsistencies such as the 7.62mm L2A1 rifle being described in such a way that it infers that the L2A1 was taken into service by the British Army to replace its Bren Guns.
Only Canada and Australia used the L2A1 (known as the C2 in Canadian service).

However, there are a few gems for firearms enthusiasts, the SMG version of the HK G11 project being one such item. There's not enough information to definitively decide what the situation was with this variant but enough information to infer it was a developmental model that helped lead to the final rifle form of the HK G11 and that it was not meant to be a production weapon.
I wasn't even aware of it's existence until I read this book (although there does not appear to be any mention of the competing Mauser G11 project)

The author includes some expansions on the rules and formula found in the original 2nd Ed. Infantry Weapons book and also includes a glossary and a summary of the country of origin of the various weapons (that also works as an index). It should be noted however that the country abbreviations cross between the Finnish language (more on this below) and English language abbreviations. So for example, Austria is abbreviated as AUT and Germany is abbreviated DEU.
There's also a small expansion on shotgun ammo types (as in buckshot for 16g, 20g and 28g).

He has also included the USCM weapons from the Aliens movie however there is no list of ammunition for the purposes of buying ammo. In the GDW book there was a section listing the various cartridges and weights per magazine size and by crate as well as prices and availability for them. That is totally absent in this book.

The Heavy Weapons book has the same production level and consistency and also some of the minor foibles of the Infantry book. However it wins a few extra points from me because there's a dash of colour on the weapon card that really helps break up that overall white and grey look in the Infantry book.

He includes various hand grenades of different capacities so that you get a range of different Concussion/Blast ranges but repeats the same issue I have with the GDW books - 40x46mm Low Velocity grenades have the same (or sometimes even greater) blast and damage potential as hand grenades. I have an issue with this because the 40mm grenades typically carry a much smaller charge than a typical hand grenade.

For example, he has the M26A2 Hand Grenade (listed as the Mk26A2) as having 180 grams of TNT with C:3 B:7. He lists no weight for the M26 but it's generally around 450 grams
He has the 40x46mm HE grenade as weighing an average of 300 grams but with C:3 B:10. However a typical 40mm low velocity HE only carries around 30 grams of charge.
He states that he used the weight of the explosive charge in the 40mm HE and extrapolated from there using the volume of the round... but... the round itself includes the propellant charge and case which have to be treated as separate to the projectile and should not be factored into any calculations about the projectiles explosive power.

There is a section at the back of the Heavy Weapons book listing the various projectiles but here the author's native language (I am assuming) shows itself as the hand grenades are listed as "Kranaatti" which according to my friend Google Translate, is Finnish for Grenade.
Again there is a glossary and a country summary that also works as an index.
He also makes an interesting choice in regard to price and availability codes in this book. He lists the various rounds of ammunition be they hand grenade or RPG round and gives the price for both a single round and also a crate price if applicable. However he states that he has not included any availability codes.

He has not been able to supply prices for a number of ammunition types and I'm still trying to figure out what his abbreviation of "WH" means for the price code of disposable rocket launchers. I was thinking maybe it means "whole" but that doesn't jibe with the fact that the card includes price for one round in the same section of the card.

Overall, they are both decent books although probably more appropriate for a T2k setting were the war occurs sometime in the later 2000s or even 2010s. However they are both more than suitable for Merc: 2000 campaigns if you decide to have the weapons from the 2000s time period as advanced gear from high tech sources (or you know, simply setting the Merc game in the 2020s) and also for Dark Conspiracy (with it's original setting of approximately 2013/2014).
They're not expensive and I have no real regrets for buying them sight unseen. There's some minor issues here and there but nothing game breaking or soul destroying so I think most T2k 2nd/2.2 players would find them useful.

[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

However, there are a few gems for firearms enthusiasts, the SMG version of the HK G11 project being one such item. There's not enough information to definitively decide what the situation was with this variant but enough information to infer it was a developmental model that helped lead to the final rifle form of the HK G11 and that it was not meant to be a production weapon.
I wasn't even aware of it's existence until I read this book (although there does not appear to be any mention of the competing Mauser G11 project)

AFAIK, it was solely an in-house design test gun that was a normal 9mm SMG put into a G11 shell to test various optics options for installation on the G11.

Solely out of curiosity, does it mention the IWK G11?

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Vespers War

AFAIK, it was solely an in-house design test gun that was a normal 9mm SMG put into a G11 shell to test various optics options for installation on the G11.

Solely out of curiosity, does it mention the IWK G11?

Ah, yes that makes sense. Thanks for the information

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I was of the understanding that IWK had teamed with Mauser for the G11 project?
Regardless of that, from the brief check I've made so far (there's a lot of firearms included in this book!), I haven't found any other prototype or experimental weapons listed. The other submissions for the G11 were never well known so I am not surprised there is no mention made of them.

I have found a few more factual errors and although not game breaking, they are frustrating.
Listing the MP40 as the MP40 "Schmeisser" and stating it was named thus after its designer perpetuates the false belief that Hugo Schmeisser designed it. Schmeisser had no involvement what-so-ever in the MP40.
The AR-10 is confusing as it presents a 2020 model civilian AR-10 but talks about the original AR-10 as being "Practically the first modern assault rifle even though it's classified as a battle rifle. A predecessor of the AR-15.
The AR-10 replaced all of the older battle rifles like the Browning M1918 BAR in the US military."
While I understand that the author's original language is not English, the statement that the AR-10 replaced older battle rifles in the US military is poorly worded. It infers that the US military took the rifle into service when they clearly did not.

I find these sorts of errors frustrating, not simply for the transmission of bad information, but because it's very easy to check the web these days and find out the correct information.
Being presented in a book like this, by a person stating they are a "gun enthusiast", for use by gamers who might not have the same level of interest in firearms, is a problem because those gamers are likely to accept the author's information as accurate without checking for themselves.

The author has chosen to have images of each weapon facing to the left. From a design perspective I can see the appeal however this has resulted in some images of AR-15 pattern rifles being horizontally flipped, i.e. showing their right-hand side as if it was the left.

There's an interesting design choice made, where he places the Modern Outfitters MC6 shortened carbine into the Pistol section because in some online sources, this firearm is listed as a Pistol due to various classifications under US gun laws. Modern Outfitters themselves appear to advertise it as a PDW.
Regardless of all that, the firearm is to my mind very clearly a carbine and would be more suitably placed in his SMG & PDW section rather than with Pistols.

While I have found a few more problems with the books, I still feel they are a reasonable purchase. They are entirely fan-made by just one person so I can overlook a few of the problems. There are others however that I feel should never have made it into the final product (the factual errors).

[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Ah, yes that makes sense. Thanks for the information

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I was of the understanding that IWK had teamed with Mauser for the G11 project?

The Mauser G11 was based on a 1974 IWK patent (I'm a little fuzzy on exactly how they were related, but I believe IWK owned Mauser as the successor company to DWM). The year before the Mauser G11 was tested, IWK had made their own rifle for the project, which had three barrels vertically aligned and staggered. It fed caseless ammunition from a 51-round drum, and fired either the barrels either sequentially or simultaneously, but with no capability for fully-automatic fire. The US patent dates to 1976 and has expired. Apparently it was very heavy (probably unsurprising for a triple-barrel rifle), and there's not a whole lot of information commonly available on it.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Ahhh, okay. Thanks again for information
So much of this knowledge is getting lost over the years, I've seen various books that claim to be the last word on firearms yet they are little more than an update of another author's work.
The author of the new book does very little extra research and just builds on the knowledge readily available in various other firearms books.
So in the case of the G11 project, it's only because the wikipedia entry was updated a few years ago to include some small information about the development of the project, that people even know of the Mauser submission.

I've found the same situation occurs with books on armoured vehicles, if the author of a new vehicle book is unaware of a particular vehicle, it never gets mentioned simply because they do not do any real research and use previously published books as their research source.

Okay, rant over