As to the second, why don't people stop trying to hoodwink people into banning the book just because they dislike it and don't want anyone else to like it?
I suggested that it was a good decision not to use it for their first game. So that people could learn the rules without the massive power increase. Doesn't really matter how you look at it, good or bad, War!
is a massive power creep.
Now, you can disagree if you want, but all I have to do is ask a simple question: Is a rating 10 device more powerful than a rating 6 device?
Now, rating 10 commlinks were not available before War!, neither were 7-9. Blatant Power Creep.
As to the first comment, the NPCs in War! actually have the appropriate skills to be considered special forces, and this is the reason that 'former special forces' concepts tend to raise eyebrows in most groups--starting points unless REALLY, REALLY high are not enough to have the necessary skill.
They lack any knowledge skills at all, any social skills at all (other than instruction and intimidation), any mechanic skills at all (Ok, I'll give you first aid since that's effectively
Human Mechanic), any hardware skill for actually disabling hardware, and any diving or watercraft skills.
So yes, they have
all the skills required to be a real Special Forces operatives. The main issues are that BPs are so restrictive to a generalist character type
and that Spec Force characters (realistically) would be trained in just about everything at a general level and most combat skills at a professional to elite level.
With a Karma Build the skills would only cost around 450 karma, which means it is feasible (if you ignore that Firearms is over the starting cap), but it would leave you a little light in the attributes and gear departments. Bringing the Firearms group down to 4, you could easily go with that skill set up (429 karma) which is a combat grunt spec ops member, not a specialist) and still have stats of 3/5/3/3, 3/4/3/3 (265 karma), have 10 points of contacts (20 Karma), have 20 karma worth of Knowledge skill and 40k worth of gear.
Or, you could make an ex-spec ops character that wasn't just a combat grunt.
That's one thing, and I can understand it. My problem comes from the War! haters who just take every opportunity to down it (and bash the company for producing it) in an attempt to skew opinion of it in the direction of their own view.
I have no issue with the company producing it. I do think it's title was horribly misleading (should've been Bogota! in my opinion) and that the actual gameplay section was on the light side, but the only
real issue I have with the book is the horrible quality of it. The editing work was abysmal, and it really really shows. Much of the gear is set up to be horribly ambiguous in description, and a lot of it seemed half though out in the writing.
I apologize that my advising a new player to not jump into the power creep book first thing has deeply offended you senses. I suggest alligator skinned clothing.