Let's Read: MTDAA Part 4A

Continuing through my fresh eyes reading of MTDAA: Legacy the RPG. I'm moving on to the weapons and gear section... this covers pages 46-62 (before we get into vehicles).

This section is quite successful in doing what I would want it to do, which is give a variety of weapons and gear options while also building in game flavor. I think that the little flourishes about the history of weapons and the various ways that the ants approach weapon design are helpful in the larger world building that goes on around the game. I think this stuff is indispensible now that I read it anew. There is a good selection of weapons and gear. 

I don't know that the section on cybernetics is needed or that I'd want that the be part of most games. I was sort of backed into it by virtue of having a recurring villain be a cyborg, so not having rules for it would be a bit of an oversight. I don't dislike the rules, but I don't love them. I would just not include them in most of my games; I feel like they add a layer of complexity that doesn't give any real bang for the investment.

However, let me reflect on a larger thing here - this game is a bit more crunchy than I tend to like, but the nature of the game and the comic lean into that a bit. The granularity shows up in weapons, where there are enough mechanical differences between weapons that you can see and feel it. This is important; I know that when we were playing our first RPGs at 11 or 12, the differences between an M-16 and AK-47 were important to us as we played. The game does a decent enough job distinguishing these things. The gear section is not in any way exhaustive, but it still feels pretty complete. There's nothing I see as a glaring hole... the other thing is that your clout is going to be a finite resource; adding a whole bunch of filler you could spend clout on would only waste resources for the players. Simple things like a canteen or belt pouches are just a given; your standard issue gear is the fundamentals of what you might need that have non-combat applications.