System Mastery

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/systemmastery34.mp3 SystemMastery 34 – Fantasy Imperium This game was surprisingly difficult to find art for.  The cover is easy enough, since it’s got a famous story behind it, but apparently no one wanted to put any of the many boring knights or cheesecake witches inside the book on the internet.  We stuck some fairies on the homepage that get the point across pretty well.  Come along as we review Fantasy Imperium, an Interactive Storytelling Game.  How is that different from an RPG?  More charts, more pictures of swords, and more sweet, sweet sexism.  Enjoy! Were you somehow a fan of Fantasy Imperium?  Were you briefly hoping this was a review of Twilight Imperium or Palladium Fantasy?  Tell us!  Hell, tell us anything in the comments below.  If you really love us, show your support over on our Patreon page and help us keep the mics hot!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/systemmastery33.mp3 SystemMastery 33 – Maid This week, we’re joined in studio (my living room) by a guest host!  Our friend Claire joins us because we just didn’t feel comfortable tackling this sexist minefield without her.  It’s Maid!  The RPG where you wear a frilly sex uniform and tee-hee your way through a day of almost-charming almost-sex that is almost always almost-rape. Let us know what you thought of Maid in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too.  If you really love us, show your support over on our Patreon page and help us keep the mics hot.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/systemmastery32.mp3 SystemMastery 32 – Darkurthe: Legends The least requested game of all time comes to System Mastery!  We discuss Darkurthe, a world of isolated city-states, deep racial convinctions, and clans, guilds, cults, and freeholds.  Play as humans, elves, dwarves, gross elves, mean dwarves, and anguls.  Check out a great spell system that is 100% spell creation!  I’m hyping this way more than it’s worth!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/systemmastery31.mp3 SystemMastery 31 – Synnibarr 2 The final chapter in our saga of Synnibarr.  Impossible continents, insane monsters, and ludicrous facts about this maddening world.  This time around, we even try to tell you how you were supposed to play the game! Let us know what you thought of Synnibarr in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/systemmastery30.mp3 SystemMastery 30 – The World of Synnibarr 1 The most requested title of all comes to System Mastery!  Biogladites (whatever that is), chameleon drakes, and I guess archers engage in insane adventure and deadly battle on a hollowed out Mars thousands of years from now and light years from here.  Sound engaging?  Well hang on because the rules system is so incredibly crufty and complicated that we barely even talked about it!  That’s right, this is our first two-part episode, so tune in and enjoy our attempt to wrap our brains around the ineffable works of mad genius Raven c.s. McCracken, and then join our battered shellshocked husks next week or so to do it again! Let us know what you thought of Synnibarr in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. Editor’s note:  A LOT of business travel and personal stuff led to the lateness of this post.  We apologize and are now back on our regular schedule!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/system-mastery-special-edition-synnibarr.mp3 System Mastery Special Edition – Synnibarr Today, we bring you a little something special.  A dramatic reading of the brilliant beginning to the tale of The World of Synnibarr.  Tune in next week for our full review. Let us know what you thought of Synnibarr in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. Editor’s correction:  Business travel is keeping us from doing a full review on time.  Enjoy this tidbit in the interim.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/systemmastery29.mp3 SystemMastery 29 – Dark Heresy Skulls for the Skull Throne!  We take a discerning look at Dark Heresy, one of many games set in the grim darkness of the dark grimness of the Warhammer 40k universe.  Will you be greasy scum, oily robot man, or festering, gibbering psychic?  The correct answer is probably psychic, but we’ll try to suss all that out in the review. Let us know what you thought of Dark Heresy in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/systemmastery28.mp3 SystemMastery 28 – Spookshow This game is about ghost spies.  Get it?  It’s a double meaning on the word.  I’m not sure if you get it.  You see, spook is occasionally used as a derogatory term for someone who works in the intelligence industry, and is also sometimes used as a synonym for an intangible entity from beyond the grave.  In this game, you play as both, and then you try to have fun.  It’s complicated and boring, and so you will eventually say “Spooks…  How?” and that’s where the name comes from.  Now I think you get it. Let us know what you thought of Spookshow in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. If you clicked to here specifically because you thought there was a rad Gentleman Ghost game you’ve never heard of, sorry.  You’ve been duped.  There are no good google images at the right resolution for “Ghost Spy” so I just went with the coolest ghost in comics.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/systemmastery27.mp3 SystemMastery 27 – Nexus Live Action Roleplaying Time to gather up 50 or so of your greatest friends and then slowly and painfully lose them over the course of a complex, sweaty, argumentative weekend!  We discuss our very first LARP with Nexus, a game of galactic intrigue, simple rules, bad puns and lots and lots of backrubs.  Can the Konathians enslave the Earth before the Inner Empire citizens discover their plot?  Will the space plague spread before people get bored and head to Wendy’s?  Listen in and we’ll find all this out! Let us know what you thought of Nexus in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. Editor’s correction:  The Myriads ARE his grandson, ya dick.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/systemmastery26.mp3 System Mastery 26 – Car Wars Strap in, it’s going to be a dense, chart-heavy ride.  Steve Jackson’s Car Wars is heavy on near-future apocalyptic flavor, and equally heavy on complex movement and combat rules.  It’s a battle of cars, bikes, trucks, trikes, trars, trike-trucks, truck-trikes, and for some reason, helicopters on this 80s-charged episode. Let us know what you thought of Car Wars in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. Editor’s correction:  Upon research, we have determined that Steve Jackson does not look like a Bruce Vilanche type, but rather like the sort of guy that designs beige pebble-plastic 80s computers that can run Oregon Trail.  We remain convinced that he is a cool dude, however.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/systemmastery25.mp3 SystemMastery 25 – D&D Set 1 Basic Rules We celebrate a year’s worth of RPG reviews with a return to a true classic.  The original Red Box D&D, complete with the white crayon for your dice and the $30 registration form for the 1981 RPGA.  Take to the dungeon as a fighter, a magic-user, or perhaps a halfling in one of the earliest iterations of the Dungeons & Dragons name. Let us know what you thought of D&D Basic in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/systemmastery24.mp3 SystemMastery 24 – C°ntinuum: Roleplaying in the Yet It’s a time travel game!  More accurately, it’s a game about keeping meticulous detailed notes because the DM might check to see if you did at any second!  Join millions of other time travelers working and playing together, but try not to accidentally erase yourself from existence!  It’s shockingly easy to do, after all.  We review C°ntinuum – Roleplaying in the Yet, all the while wishing it was Roleplaying in the Yeti. Let us know what you thought of C°ntinuum in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. Editor’s correction:  For some reason, we spent the whole podcast thinking this game was called C°ntinuum – Adventures in the Yet.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/systemmastery23.mp3 SystemMastery 23 – Star Wars RPG Our second look at West End Games takes us to a galaxy far, far away, where an antagonistic GM is expected to control the party with an iron (if capricious) fist.  We’ll discuss whether or not Boba Fett lives up to his hype, what the deal is with all that expanded universe stuff, and maybe even briefly talk about the actual RPG we’re ostensibly here for. As always, if you’ve got a suggestion for an RPG, let us know!  We’ve got a little list together and are reading into some of your great suggestions already!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/systemmastery22.mp3 SystemMastery 22 – After the Bomb Wounded and battered from months of learning new systems, we take a brief respite to review something we knew already.  This week, we spend a lot of time talking about Bio-E, the difference between the rad animal men of yesteryear and today’s watered-down furries, and general Palladium shenanigans.

  https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/systemmastery21.mp3 SystemMastery 21 – Nobilis Have you ever dreamed of being the god of something?  Perhaps the god of socks, or the god of internet memes, or the god of cabbage?  This odd, dense game may be as close as you can get to realize your weird boring dreams, internet friends!  Take a tour through the mind of Rebecca Bergstrom, aka Jenna Moran, aka the Writer clad in Ranunculus, aka the Auctor Errabundus, as we look into the crazy (but interesting) Nobilis!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/systemmastery20.mp3 Episode 20 – Cthulutech It might just be because we like 75% of the brazenly lifted source material, but Cthulhutech passes our review gauntlet and comes up looking pretty fun.  We discuss the many variations on giant robot and giant monster robot you can play as, discuss the latest iteration of merits and flaws, and hash out the concept of poker dice in our latest episode.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/systemmastery19.mp3 SystemMastery 19 – Furry Pirates This week, we take hold of a book with a bifurcated design sensibility.  Will we actually discover “Swashbuckling Adventures in the Furry Age of Piracy”?  Or will we find that the furries appear to have been added to this book late during development?  Is this a case of Type 1 or Type 2 Furabetes?  What social rank must a male furry be at before he is expected to wear a wig (unless he is a Puritan)?  We struggle to answer all these questions in our 19th episode.  Special thanks to Ryan for the suggestion.  Never suggest anything again, Ryan (keep suggesting things).

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/systemmastery18.mp3 SystemMastery 18 – Big Eyes, Small Mouth We sit down for a rousing discussion about the many varieties of anime, and the game that tries to let you play them all.  Big Eyes, Small Mouth is a charming attempt to capture the entirety of a diverse range of shows into a single ruleset.  There are a few glaring errors, but that’s what new editions are for, we guess. In the meantime, let’s make fun of an old book and a bunch of TV shows!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/systemmastery171.mp3 SystemMastery 17 – Don’t Look Back:  Terror is Never Far Behind Don’t Look Back is a mid-90s Horror RPG, featuring hilarious send-ups of your favorite 80s horror film tropes!  Oh no wait, that’s just the cover.  The actual text appears to be a middle school math book with some surprisingly opinionated digressions about what constitutes a “techno-nerd.”  With a name like this, we didn’t really expect a realism heartbreaker of a game.  Dig in with us as we discuss the first RPG we’ve seen to use absolute values (note, the math kind, not the moral kind) on this week’s System Mastery Podcast!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/systemmastery16.mp3 In today’s installment of System Mastery we seek to determine if one dad could beat up another dad, assuming the dads were Susano-O and Papa Legba. We’re reviewing Scion, a White Wolf game of thoroughly modern godlings in a modern world, battling titans to stop hell on Earth or some damn thing. Special guest host Claire joins us in our discussion of a stereotype battle to determine if this book’s Japanese gods of anime could be more offensive than its bloody bloody blood bloods of Mesoamerica.