System Mastery

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/system-mastery-59-immortal-part-2.mp3 We discussed the rules, now let’s talk about the fluff in the second episode of Immortal: The Invisible War.  Just what is a Darkle, and what Femmes it?  And shouldn’t the Tautha really be the Tuatha?  Probably!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/system-mastery-58-immortal-the-invisible-war-part-1.mp3 It’s been a while since we’ve hit such a rich, dense vein of crazy that we had to slow the pace down and take two episodes to really tease out the filaments.  Could Immortal: The Invisible War become the worthy successor to the glorious nonsense of Synnibar?  Well to find out, we’re taking a few hours to pop on down to the Dominions, evade the Sanguinary, and ask the Conundrums.  Sunedrion.  Himsati. This week is all about the rules of Immortal.  Tune in to the next episode of System Mastery as we try to fit the massive insanity of the story of this game into our unwilling human minds.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/system-mastery-57-legacy-war-of-ages.mp3 You ever get the urge to take the Highlander movies and William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy and just artlessly mush them together like Playdough?  This book does exactly that, and then tosses in a little brazenly lifted Ursula K. LeGuin material just for seasoning.  It’s Legacy, the Highlander game without the license rights.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/system-mastery-56-panty-explosion.mp3 Man, just look at that title.  How terrifying is this going to be?  Well, we don’t want to spoil anything, so here’s Panty Explosion, a game that is verifiably about Japanese schoolgirls, and some of them are psychic sometimes!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/the-world-of-tales-from-the-crypt-system-mastery-55.mp3 After recording two episodes about this book, I’m just out of death-related puns.  Sorry about that.  But hey, there’s a bunch in the episode if that’s what you were hoping for!  It’s the Masterbook licensed-classic, The World of Tales from the Crypt!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/aberrant-d20-system-mastery-54.mp3 Let’s discuss the early aughts and their explosion of rapid-release D20 adaptations of older games!  Here’s a White Wolf one that turns everything about superheroes in every way into a series of ever-more-complicated feats.  Also Jef is super sick the whole time, sorry about that.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/fireborn-episode-53.mp3 Have you ever felt like you weren’t just this shell you are now?  That perhaps within you lurks something ancient, something fierce and fiery?  Well, it’s true!  Also, you should stop eating at Chipotle.  This week we cover Fireborn, the famous FFG outing in which various self-absorbed London dorks discover that they are dragons on the inside and then start doing some sort of loosely defined thing in a mad dash to become dragons on the outside too!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/fantasy-wargaming-the-highest-level-of-all-system-mastery-52.mp3 Two weeks ago, the phrase “British Nerd” was relatively pleasant to me.  I’d picture David Tennant, or Richard Ayoade, or even Hermione Granger, and everything was fine.  “Oh,” I’d think, “Perhaps they’d like to discuss Neil Gaiman for a while!”  Not now though.  Now I picture a guy sitting alone at a restaurant, his waiter sending out every available physical signal of “I’m busy” as this lone man asks for the third time if she’s sure they don’t have mead, much as they did 700 years ago when this very building was the most prolific mead-hall in all of Pevensey.  This book is called Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All.  It’s got a game in there if you hate games and fun.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/micro-rpgs-episode-51.mp3 This episode was so very refreshing.  Five tiny, lovely RPGs made recently by designers that had fun in mind.  It’s really not our wheelhouse to cover good stuff, but we wanted to throw out some love, even if it’s just every now and then.  In this episode we cover All Outta Bubblegum, Everyone is John, Lasers & Feelings, Doctor Magnethands, and Gangland.  These games are all cheap to free and can be found on the internet, so go forth and play them.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/system-mastery-50.mp3 Fifty episodes in and it’s time to be confused by the grand pasture where every weird sacred cow in this industry was calved.  We go looking for answers to the great mysteries of gaming?  Will we find them?  Or will be be stymied by clumsy vocabulary and bizarre decision making?

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/system-mastery-49.mp3 Today we introduce you to a light and relatively witty GI Joe parody from around 1992.  A.C.E. Agents manages a very unusual balancing act of both satirizing and explaining the workings of a JOE-style secret agency, while still remaining at least a somewhat playable game.  Sadly no rules in there for what happens when you take your little fight man and wind him up via the rubber band in his torso to create a little punchcopter.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/system-mastery-48.mp3 Here’s a game of sorts.  It’s handwritten, it’s irritating, and it’s about goofball prisoners sort of murdering each other on a garbage planet.  Also it’s handwritten.  It’s Human Occupied Landfill, and we hope you enjoy almost as much as we did (because we hate you).

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/system-mastery-472.mp3 Who likes their fantasy with a shot of heartbreaker and a dirt-farming sidecar?  Maybe with a splash of podcast host bitters?  This week we cover Fifth Cycle, a thoroughly confusing game about wizard archaeologists where you hope like crazy to play as a wizard archaeologist and not a farmer. Let us know what you thought of Fifth Cycle in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/system-mastery-46.mp3 Hey, remember the 90s?  Do you look back fondly on Rob Liefeld, X-Force, Reboot-style 3D art, and references to monofilament technology?  Then hoo boy do we have the game for you!  Raven Star is more or less a textbook space heartbreaker, with dwarves, elves … bear men… you get the idea.  Settle in to get all cybed up! Let us know what you thought of Raven Star in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/system-mastery-451.mp3 In this installment we discuss the best soul coffin in the shape of a giant bug that solves fundamental metaphysics mysteries in an impossible mansion simulator we’ve ever read.  We cover Noumenon, and the Sarcophoguys that wander the halls of the Silhouette Rouge, which I’m pretty sure is french for “Community College Psychology Class.”

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/system-mastery-44.mp3 System Mastery 44 – Supplement Special We’ve received a number of requests since the inception of System Mastery to cover supplementary RPG material and not just core books.  While we love supplements, it’s never really clicked for us exactly which ones to cover and how to do it.  Well, now we’ve got it figured out.  We went back and found a couple supplements to some of the best of our worst.  Haven: City of Violence, and Prime Directive, and we tackle both volumes in a single episode! Let us know what you thought of these books in the comments!  Have a supplement book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. Editor’s note:  Indeed, a copy of Skyrealms of Jorune: Gire of Sillipus is already on it’s way to our door.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/system-mastery-43.mp3 System Mastery 43- Top Secret There’s a story around the internet about how this game is so realistic that it summoned the FBI around to investigate the TSR offices to see if they had some sort of secret intel or intent to kill the president or some such.  Having read it now, we can only assume it’s because the FBI literally couldn’t figure out what was in the book at all, and decided to just cover their bases for the purposes of due diligence.  It’s a spy RPG that is 100% charts on this week’s System Mastery. Let us know what you thought of Top Secret in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. Editor’s note:  It’s true, I deleted the first recording in my mad dash to play a videogame.  Never again!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/system-mastery-42.mp3 System Mastery 42- Space 1889 Craving high adventure in an age of zeppelins, Victoriana, and space fantasy?  Keep looking then, because what we have here is boring.  This week Jef and Jon take a tour of the Earth if the sun also never set on the British Empire on Venus and Mars.  Is the art horrifying?  Of course.  Is the whole thing vaguely racist?  Naturally! Editor’s note:  Proof of horrifying art included.  Check out that cartilaginous Robert Smith in a ripped bodice.  That’s basically the only female face in this thing.  Seriously, every lady in the book is drawn like she forgot to close her eyes when the Arc of the Covenant popped open.  

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/system-mastery-41.mp3 System Mastery 41 – Heaven & Earth The apocalypse!  Oh, it’s a comin’, just you wait, you sinner you.  In the meantime why don’t you hang around in small town America, solving vaguely creepy mysteries and interacting with character-heavy locals.  You know, like maybe one of them has a log all the time?  That kind of thing.  This week we discuss Heaven & Earth, an RPG about atmosphere, angels, and the coming end of days.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/system-mastery-40.mp3 System Mastery 40 – Duckman He’s just one more duck detective, that works with a pig, lives with the twin sister of his dead wife, three sons on two bodies, and a mother-in-law with so much gas, she’s a fire hazard.  This week System Mastery is overjoyed to present The Official Duckman RPG, a mixed bag of failure, liquor, nymphos, 90s topical humor, failure again, the American dream, and hijinks.  We hope this doesn’t sound grandiose, but tonight we begin our pre-ordained ascent towards the global adulation we so richly deserve. Let us know what you thought of Duckman in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too. Editor’s note:  April Fools!  There was no Duckman RPG as of this podcast, and there still shouldn’t be.  However, despite all common sense and advice from our friends, family, and legal counsel, there is a Duckman RPG now.  Here, it’s free, take it:  Duckman RPG