I own practically the entire line of West End Games’ Torg, a genre mash-up RPG from 1990 that system-wise has exploding dice, a drama deck and a really playable, cinematic style, but concept and production value wise it is all over the place in terms of both quality and coherence. I unabashedly love Torg, but also find it hilarious as well as extremely exhausting, so I don’t post about it nearly as much as I should, probably. So, let’s catch up!

This is Kanawa Personal Weapons (1991). No surprise, this is a catalog of firearms and, for the most part, it’s just that. It doesn’t give that same look into the world the way I feel Chromebook or Street Samurai Catalog do. But I do think it neatly encapsulates the Torg experience. For starters, that orange! That trade dress! Those weird screws on the logo that somehow has a late-’70s/ early-’80s sci fi vibe! There’s a lot of promise there, I think, of both mystery and quality. But that cover painting. Which, let’s be clear, Peter Heer’s skill isn’t an issue. The fact the Bon Jovi there is holding one of the least impressive pistols imaginable on the cover of the small arms catalog is a bit of head-scratcher. And what’s with the red drapery? I’ll tell you! It’s not drapery at all, but rather, the painting is a collage combining Mr. Jovi with a city skyline (possibly New York?) and the looming image of a man who looks like a finance guy or politician who seems upset at having been crucified (honestly, though, you get into certain kinds of work you can’t be upset about the predictable consequences of that work). It’s reproduced in full inside, for some reason. It’s a lot! And we’ve only opened the cover!

Inside, things do calm down a bit. Every weapon has a pleasing schematic drawing (by Cathleen Hunter, I think) and is accompanied by notes on function, purpose and history. This is a Nigel Findley text, so all of this is fun to read and surprisingly creative, as you’d expect, but most of the weapons are…normal weapons from our world. Periodically, there are delightful illustrations of oddball characters pointing guns at other oddball characters and/or entities. They are almost all doofy and I wish there were like a hundred more of them (by Stephen Crane or Aaron McClellan, I think).

There are some weird guns! Weird here ranging from the 007 Paintball Gun to the Sparrow Fang implanted finger gun. There’s an umbrella/dart gun and a microwave gun disguised as a flashlight, but the very best is the Yamaguchi “Killer Shades” which is just…perfect. Even the text is unsure whether to take them seriously.