Uh oh, someone better stop us before we get to level 10.  It’s Star Munchkin, the RPG!  Did you know there were RPGs of these games?  You should have guessed.  Munchkin has the same marketing team as KISS.  It’s obviously a comedy game, secretly (seriously, it’s amazing how hard they work to hide it) an OGL game, and generally all about space.

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Reviewing a playtest?  That doesn’t seem right!  Well, it certainly isn’t in our usual bag of tricks, but hey, this is a rare situation where someone writing a modern game ASKED for our opinion (sort of, they asked for opinions in general) and we can be constructive and nice!  Will we?  Maybe!  Also this is our THIRD review of a Marvel game (with a fourth on the horizon) and so you’ll just have to forgive us not putting a bunch of Excelsiors and No-Prizes and stuff in the writeup.  Except shoot we just did.

Last thing.  We didn’t mention one thing during the review that we both wanted to, which is that the game has a rule stating that you never accidentally kill anyone, you can always choose to knock them out instead.  This is progressive and laudable, but has the funny side effect of turning all the game’s sermons about how “real Marvel heroes would never use guns” into an even sillier thing to bother with.

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Mea culpa time (Jef version):  This is one of those games where I knew exactly what it was and have been recommending it for years for any RP session that needs to be about spiraling into failure… but I’ve never read it til now.  So hey, were all my recommendations justified?  Let’s find out, shall we?

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Ooh, a steampunk one!  You can tell because of the brown and the gear and the goggles and all.  Oh, I guess it also says steampunk on there, in retrospect I suppose that was a dead giveaway.  Anyhow Tephra is definitely drifting in the fantasy direction on the old -punk continuum, with neat races and a whole fantastical path to airshippery, plus it’s all D12 based, which is always fun.

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Uh oh, every once in a while a time comes in which we are commanded to rock, and that time has come again.  We’re discussing a game in which every play takes the reins of an entire metal band, and seeks fortune, glory, and thrown up horns from loyal fans.  Is this Sabbath?  Or is it Winger?  Listen along and let’s find out.

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Happy Christmas in July in March!  It’s time for some holiday cheer, because we were looking for a different game but ended up with this one (it’s explained in the show).  Suit up as an agent in Santa’s elf army and go forth to do battle with a bunch of holiday monsters.  Or at least hear us talk about it!

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This is a pretty bog-standard “Recapture the D&D I remember when I was 11” moonshot game, where the lessons learned about what D&D used to be like seem to be that it was awful but we loved it.  Does it promise to be all about player empowerment and then immediately strip almost any tools they might have used away from them?  You’ll have to listen to find out, but it’d be weird if I asked that question and the answer was no, wouldn’t it.

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How often do we get to do theme weeks?  This is great!  We have the Lawnmower Man RPG, which is set immediately after the events of the movie, as the Southern Gothic horror gives way to … troop team simulation as described by the company that made Phoenix Command.  What?  Why?  How?  Anyway, here’s a whole review for your ears!

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Oh boy another supers game!  You know how we love those!  SIlver Age Sentinels is from the Big Eyes, Small Mouth folks, so you better believe it shares the insane customizability, tri-stat system, and more with that anime simulator.  But how does it do as a superhero engine?  Well, let’s all find out together.

Announcement Mastery

Solo But Not Alone 2
Grab a ton (101!) solo RPGs for yourself for only 10 bucks while supporting a vital cause at the same time.  Help people in real need by joining Jasper’s Game Day in their needed efforts preventing suicide.  It’s a win win and it can be yours to support or just get games you want at https://itch.io/b/1227/solo-but-not-alone-2.  Act fast, this fundraising event will end March 2022!

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What if everything you thought you knew was actually all evidence of a secret conspiracy?  Deja Vu?  Real psychic powers.  Men in Black?  Lizard people in black.  That’s the premise of Conpiracy X, a late 90s secret agents vs. everything game with a surprisingly complex combat engine.  Oh man.  Surprisingly complex.

Announcement Mastery

Solo But Not Alone 2
Grab a ton (101!) solo RPGs for yourself for only 10 bucks while supporting a vital cause at the same time.  Help people in real need by joining Jasper’s Game Day in their needed efforts preventing suicide.  It’s a win win and it can be yours to support or just get games you want at https://itch.io/b/1227/solo-but-not-alone-2.  Act fast, this fundraising event will end March 2022!

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Post-Show PS:  Turns out there is at least one more of these, Jef’s on-air googling failed to turn up Psychosis: Solitary Confinement.  Cool?  Cool.

Well, when the name of the mental disorder is right there in the title you know you’re in for something at least a little iffy.  Luckily this is so far removed from reality regarding how far everyone is removed from reality that it mostly comes out okay in the wash.  It’s a game where you never quite know what’s going on, and the entire story is a spoiler alert.  From the decade that brought you Steal My Sunshine, it’s Psychosis: Ship of Fools.

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Let’s dispense with the obvious question first.  This is the OGL version.  Now before that gets too depressing, note that this is one of the most modified OGL games we’ve come across, going so far as to do that one thing everyone always says you should do with D&D stats (not get rid of them, the other thing).  It’s got some good ideas!  But do we like it?  Well, let’s find out.  You know, again.

Announcement Mastery!

Roar to Heaven is an anime inspired sci-fi AP podcast where the heroes fight an invading angel army with battlesuits powered by music!  They’re currently kickstarting to pay their staff and cast, and your support will help!  Plus also definitely listen to their cool show.  Links to follow:
Show Page: https://www.peachgardengames.com/about-roar-to-heaven
Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peachgardengames/roar-to-heaven
Itch.io Link for Those With Understandable Kickstarter Concerns: https://peachgardengames.itch.io/blazing-hymn

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Heck yeah, one of those weird games so little known I couldn’t GIS the cover and had to take a picture of our copy!  Mystic Forces is a 2000 RPG about light vs. darkness featuring some very unique ideas (though Jon has some ideas as to where a lot of them are coming from), and a world that doesn’t have elves, dwarves, or even humans.  Are they contained in a probably somewhat too complicated engine?  Well yeah, obviously.

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Just because Ween is over doesn’t mean we can’t stay spooky!  Or at least one would hope.  This is more evil by way of edge than anything else.  Jef sought out a list of historically terrible supplements for us to look at in the future, and this one just kept floating to the top.  Evil races, prestige classes, and so, so many terrible spells.  Dare you enter this edgelord realm?

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/system-mastery-212-outbreak-undead-1.mp3

Okay so maybe it’s November, and maybe we forgot when October started this year, but that won’t stop us from delivering our yearly load of horror ween stuff!  Here’s Outbreak Undead.  It’s 460 pages long and is a fairly generic zombie horror survival type thing. 

Announcement Mastery

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/system-mastery-212-all-flesh-must-be-eaten.mp3

Behold our triumph, the ZombieWeen!  It’s alive!  Well, sort of alive.  This ‘Ween around we’ll be focusing on zombie RPGs, investigating games about surviving short infestations and full-blown apocalypses.  This time, it’s All Flesh Must Be Eaten, which means it’s also our first time talking about the Unisystem Engine in eight years.  Should all flesh must be eaten?  Should all zombies be in your head?  In your head?  Zombie (Ween).

Announcement Mastery

Crimson Gold Agonies!
in the world of 197X, superheroes fight against the two imperial powers; they are champions of the Third World and heralds of an alternative path for democracy and socialism — the Heroes of the Cybernetic International!

Check out this new AP and a whole completed series of additional AP podcasting that rotates games as needed to tell the best story possible with the Crimson Gold Agonies actual Play!

Links: Show | Twitter | Showrunner Twitter | Spotify
Games Used on CGA: L5R | Sentinel Comics RPG | Pasión de la Pasiones | Yokai Hunter | Flying Circus | Night Reign

Eventide!
Available today on DrivethruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/359061/Eventide

How and why the world as we know it came to be changed forever has long been forgotten.

It’s been hundreds – maybe even thousands – of years since anyone even spoke of the Cataclysm or the time that came before, and the memories of that world that once was, faded into dust.

To the people inhabiting the world of Eventide, this isn’t a post-cataclysmic world, it’s just the world that is. And the world that always was, as far back as anyone living in it can remember.

– From Frenzy Kitty Games, the studio that brought you KARMA, Something Wicked, and Children of the  Fall comes EVENTIDE, a game of apocalyptic survival horror in the wasteland.

• Fast and dynamic rules for roleplaying in the apocalypse
• Robust classless character-creation
• Optional Tribe Creation rules for group play
• Full campaign setting including many detailed settlements and NPCs
• Dozens of inspiring adventure seeds
• 17 Tribes complete with unique beliefs, structures, affiliations, and NPCs
• A bestiary containing 35 ruthless and terrifying enemies
• Hardcore Mode: rules variants for brave players in search of a brutal challenge.
• Lone Wanderer: Solitaire rules for solo adventures in the wastelands
• Apocalypse Toolkit: Tools and generators to assist GMs in running their games dynamically

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/system-mastery-210-amber-diceless.mp3

Oh geez, this one is gonna get us some letters.  Lemme just warn you in advance if you’re as hot on this property as everyone on the internet seems to be for Moorcock stuff, you might wanna just go check out a Movie Mastery or something.  Otherwise, welcome to Amber Diceless, a game that has rules it would probably just be better off without.

Announcement Mastery

Eventide!
Available today on DrivethruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/359061/Eventide

How and why the world as we know it came to be changed forever has long been forgotten.

It’s been hundreds – maybe even thousands – of years since anyone even spoke of the Cataclysm or the time that came before, and the memories of that world that once was, faded into dust.

To the people inhabiting the world of Eventide, this isn’t a post-cataclysmic world, it’s just the world that is. And the world that always was, as far back as anyone living in it can remember.

– From Frenzy Kitty Games, the studio that brought you KARMA, Something Wicked, and Children of the  Fall comes EVENTIDE, a game of apocalyptic survival horror in the wasteland.

• Fast and dynamic rules for roleplaying in the apocalypse
• Robust classless character-creation
• Optional Tribe Creation rules for group play
• Full campaign setting including many detailed settlements and NPCs
• Dozens of inspiring adventure seeds
• 17 Tribes complete with unique beliefs, structures, affiliations, and NPCs
• A bestiary containing 35 ruthless and terrifying enemies
• Hardcore Mode: rules variants for brave players in search of a brutal challenge.
• Lone Wanderer: Solitaire rules for solo adventures in the wastelands
• Apocalypse Toolkit: Tools and generators to assist GMs in running their games dynamically

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/system-mastery-209-supplement-spectacular-3.mp3

Well how about one of these?  It’s only the third one in 209 episodes, so I hope they sort of feel special by now!  It’s Supplement Spectacular, where we dig through our surprisingly ample library of followup books to games you’d never think would have them, and talk about how those games expand and change.  This week, it’s Chill: Voodoo and A.C.E. Supers, so you’re getting a little horror and a little superhero stuff.  Together at last!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/system-mastery-208-mutant-chronicles-4.mp3

This takes a while, but on the bright side we really find out some new fun and not so fun stuff about the game in the process. Good on ya for being patrons, you’re learning stuff no one else will. Unless they… read the game, I guess? Or just find someone else doing this. We can’t be the only ones.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/system-mastery-208-pokemon-jr..mp3

Desperately trying to hit a book deadline, we found ourselves in need of something fairly small, so we finally broke the tiny sheet of glass in front of the smaller RPG we have, the Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game: Pokemon Emergency.  60 pages long and smaller than a checkbook, this is a tiny little thing.  But it has a rich history, and there’s a lot to talk about, so as always, we found a way.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/system-mastery-206-ork.mp3

Comedy roleplaying game anyone?  Maybe one that’s got a bunch of jokes about how dumb orks are and how they have special blood that keeps them from ever being smart (yikes factor: some yikes).  Well grab a big rock and use it to murder a different big rock because Ork am game about mindless violence.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/system-mastery-205-delta-force.mp3

My friends, in the interest of transparency, I am only just now realized this game has a subtitle!  So don’t look for that in the episode, we didn’t notice.  It’s Delta Force: America Strikes Back!  And it is, among other things, by the same people that made Prime Directive and from around the same time frame, so… well you can take from that whatever you want.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/system-mastery-204-engel.mp3

Well hey, surprise OGL!  Nothing on the cover, and so when Jon selected this old Sword & Sorcery product to take home and started reading, he was suddenly (after 190 some pages of fluff) shocked to see that 3.x material.  So what is this?  Well it’s the far future and you play as Latin-speaking angel children who fight giant bugs.  OR DO YOU?

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/system-mastery-203-theatrix.mp3

So what we have here is a rarity, in that it is an early (1993-1995) LARP game that is also a universal generic system.  So there’s not really a story or core power scale or anything, just pure LARP rules and advice, delivered in a sort of theatrical directorial stype.  Oh, and of course it’s not great advice.

Announcement Mastery: 

• Back to the Rifter, a 174-page book going over the original 1990 Rifts rulebook to give a detailed, mocking, page-by-page review, dipping into other Palladium books where necessary to make sense of things (or where it was funny), and insights gleaned from talking to people in the industry. Also there’s an in-depth criticism of the game’s Nazi apologism.  Purchase it in in PDF or print on demand at DriveThru RPG today!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/system-mastery-202-providence.mp3

My friends, this is a weird one.  The vast majority of this book is difficult to explain rules, and then there’s a chunk of fascinating story hidden away towards the back, a neat story about a caste society of the winged and winged-not trapped in a bubble prison dimension.  Check it out!

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I think we bought this one on the cover alone (and especially the back cover, which is bullet points and a photo of the Twin Towers mid-fall).  I mean, look at that!  Look at the endorsement!  But can it deliver?

Announcement Mastery!

Today is a great day to launch a KS, and a better day for you to go support one!  Go check out Extreme Meatpunks Forever, a hot new RPG written by cool people and produced by cool people too.  Fight Nazis on a meat planet while riding your meat mecha!  Oh, and here’s a link:  Extreme Meatpunks Forever on Kickstarter

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Hey, we made it to 200 episodes!  I’m sure that’s some sort of milestone!  And while the choice of game to cover this time may feel kind of arbitary, I can assure you it’s very special to us here at the show.  You’ll find out why and learn all about TSR’s attempt to encapsulate the Marvel experience way back in the mid-80s on today’s show!  Enjoy.

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Heck yeah, comedy superhero parody game from 1997 coming in hot.  You know it’s gonna make us mad, it’s just got to!  Anyway, this game is designed to be LARP-ready, dice light, and aggressively, consistently middle of the road.  Just painfully.  In more ways than one.  You’ll see.

Announcement Mastery:

It Came From The Sea Podcast

Host Sarah uses her degree in oceanography and lifelong love of the sea and all things nautical as she drags her friends along on her journey to share this aquatic enthusiasm with the world at large. New episodes of It Came From the Sea drop every other week and bonus episodes are available at all tiers on our patreon. You can find a link to the patreon and all the latest podcast news at twitter.com/FromTheSeaPod.

GMJ: Pro DM

Check out GMJ and their recurring campiagn “Darkest Quest” set in the Quest RPG system on the online DM-player connection service StartPlayingGames.  Drop in with a new character or bring a recurring character over and over!  Also, custom sessions available on request!

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We’ve had a great track record with games set in high schools, right?  So obviously one set in a secondary school should be at least as good as Alma Mater or Panty Explosion right?  Well, it’s certainly something!  Join us as we explored the hallowed halls of a school for delinquent little monsters and their various criminal goings on.

Announcement Mastery:

Sorcerously Advanced is a game of cutting-edge magic. It’s pay-what-you-want at DriveThruRPG. If you like it you can buy a physical copy.  Also: If sci-fi games are more your thing, check out our sister game, Sufficiently Advanced. The second edition is also on DriveThruRPG.

http://tiny.cc/sorc or http://suffadv.wikidot.com/ 

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So many people have requested this that we finally thought we’d throw you all a bone.  Ironclaw is an anthro medieval RPG, so you’ll be playing a lot of foxes, bats, foxbats, Batmans, Manbats, and Sons of Kong.  Is it fun?  Let’s find out!

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Wanna hunt ghosts but not necessarily dedicate your whole life to it?  Consider just getting a daytime job hunting ghosts, goblins, nilbogs, and Son of Kong with InSpectres, a game from the early 2000s that’s actually kinda funny for once.

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Who wants to take over the multiverse?  Okay, great!  Let’s start you out as a nobody with nothing and you can grind XP in… I don’t care, let’s say mythological Ancient Greece for a thousand sessions.  It’s one of those 80s games!  Just like old times.  Literally old times.

Announcement Mastery:
Comics, Games, and Things: Comics, Games, and Things is an online hobby store that carries model kits, paints, miniatures games, and rpg books, and a large variety of 3d printable files.  Find them online at ComicsGamesAndThings.com
They’re probably doing another giveaway!?  Check https://www.comicsgamesandthings.com/giveaways/ and we’ll probably be giving away a 3d printed army for use in Miniatures Agnostic Sci-fi Games. Or the other one. You know the one. That one.  One entry per person, no purchase necessary, valid in the US for persons 18 years of age or older. Maybe buy something too? Please?

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From an old hero game to a new one, it’s time to talk about Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game.  Sentinels is an expansive setting with a vast cast of characters old and new, but we barely have time to even mention that as we go into detail over the Cortex-reminiscent and innovation ruleset.  Maybe we can talk story stuff next time.

Announcement Mastery:
Comics, Games, and Things: Comics, Games, and Things is an online hobby store that carries model kits, paints, miniatures games, and rpg books, and a large variety of 3d printable files.  Find them online at ComicsGamesAndThings.com
Special Contest event!!!!  Comics, Games, and Things is giving away a copy of the new Sentinels RPG and two copies of the starter pack to a few lucky winners, but time is extremely tight!  Visit this website and sign in to enter to win!  https://www.comicsgamesandthings.com/giveaways/.  Entries will only be accepted through the end of February so act fast!  Oh, and US entrants only, for a ton of extremely complicated reasons!

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As go the tides, so come the times we’re both dealing with something and need a nice easy Palladium game.  Skraypers is both a Rifts and a Heroes Unlimited setting, so this is like a double supplement spectacular!  Heck yeah!

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It’s Shadowrun!  But… faster?  Is that the point here?  It’s honestly sort of hard to tell the exact point of this Shadowrun 5e adjacent game, but damn if we aren’t at least going to try and figure out.

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Boot Hill is a colloquial term from the cowboy days for a cemetery.  You might think there’s some sort of metaphor their for our opinions pertaining to the game, but really I just wanted to say it before anyone on twitter felt like telling us.  Boom, shut down!  This is a 1990 cowboy game from TSR.  It is exactly that.

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Have you not gotten your fill of Kingdom Hearts yet?  Of course not, no one has.  Not until someone bursts Nomura like a pinata and eats all the ideas that come spilling forth will anyone be satiated.  But in the meantime, why not check out this game definitely not modeled after it at all (for legal purposes).  It’s also our first foray into talking about PBTA (now you know why the episode is almost two hours long)!

This week’s Announcement Masteries

• Would you like to learn all about musical artists that have and still are making strong statements in politics and the LGBT community?  Check out This Review Kills Fascists, a youtube show conveniently located at youtube.com/thisreviewkillsfascists!
   

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Now here’s some good old fashioned back to basics shit.  Got to be, right?  Name like that?  Shirtless axe dude on the cover?  Well, color us surprised because this thing is basically the top down part of Actraiser as an RPG.  Neat ideas abound, but can it get to the desired double “would play?”

This week’s Announcement Masteries

• Julian Kay (Alien Rope Burn): Blogs, columns, and roleplaying games par excellence!  Check out their excellent work and especially support that Patreon!
  • Check ARBco’s work out over at https://linktr.ee/juliankay
• UnPlaytested Podcast and Stream:  Unplaytested is the show about games that have never been played before… because they never EXISTED before! On every episode of the Unplaytested podcast, Alex and Lara will roll a random result off a big list of your ludicrous suggestions for RPGs, and spend an hour figuring out how to actually turn that into a playable game.  They stream the resulting games too!
  • Visit them at Unplaytested.com, Twitch.tv/unplaytested, or follow them on twitter at @unplaytested

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Oh my, a game about the uncertain moments at the precipice of romance or disaster?  Neat!  Star Crossed is a 2018 game by Alex Roberts that creates tension and titillation through the use of some sort of well-recognized wooden brick tower.  It’s not out of print or anything!  We’re trying something relatively new here.

This week’s Announcement Masteries

• Sail!: SAIL! is a new roleplaying game by Cas Swanson. SAIL! let’s players take on the role of dashing swashbucklers as they sail the high seas and fight an evil Empire.
  • Check SAIL! out over at https://calevmir.itch.io/sail-rpg
• SuperIdols! RPG:  Welcome to the world of SuperIdols! RPG, where superpowers exist but only among the musically-inclined — especially those with dreams of pop star fame and glory. Join GM ErynCerise and a table of queer, gender-diverse players as they play teen idols aiming to master their powers, find their identities as artists, and make a name for themselves.
  • Check out superidolsrpg.wordpress.com for more details. 

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Out of the four Marvel RPGs that have happened over the years, this is one of them.  Specifically, the 2003 diceless one made, inexplicably, by Marvel Comics themselves?  Anyhow, it’s certainly got us talking a great deal, so you know that’s always good.

This week’s Announcement Masteries

• Inspiration Point: A fun and friendly podcast about RPG design and gameplay, table attitudes, friendship, and more.  Check out their show today or their brand new Patreon!
  
• BOLT RPG:  BOLT is a fast and tense action RPG built for hacking!  Check it out now, it’s available for pre-order on Metal Weave Games for 35 USD or 10 USD!
  
  •  

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There’s nothing quite so exciting to find as a unique blend RPG.  Here we see a blend of comedy, furry stuff, light breast expansion and pregnancy fetishes, and superheroes.  I bet you didn’t know you were missing that unique swirl of content!  Well, anyway, you shouldn’t.

This week’s Announcement Masteries

• “Dinoplex: Cataclysm” is available now for $3.00 on DriveThruRPG and Itch.io. Take your players on a dinosaur vacation in space they’ll never forget!
• Einar Másson:  Instagram @emassonart, Twitter @einarmasson, E-mail  emassonart@gmail.com. Prices range from about $50.00USD for a simple avatar to $150.00 USD for a full-figure full-color portrait to about $300.00 USD for more complicated stuff.

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Ween or Treatween!  Wait, what? This game is new!  How the heck did that happen?  Well, Jef’s supply of alien books isn’t low, but neither of us wanted to read something in Phoenix Command style rules and end the season mad, so we called an audible.  Ever wonder what we think about much more modern game design?  Well, this teen-focused sci-fi adventure is a great place to come find out!

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Oh no, are your pumpkins ablaze?  Have you written out your list of mischief targets exclusively for the eyes of Ol’ Weeny?  Well, get ready, because this October, it’s all new, all different IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU WEEEEEEEEEEN adventures.  We’re doing alien games.  Pretty simple.  And we’re starting with this one.  This licensed one from the 90s.  You know what’s about to happen.

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Ooh look, a supplement!  People love it when we do the supplements, right?  We sort of needed a break for a bit while Jef navigates some medical shenanigans, so we tried to keep it light.  And failed, this episode is huge.  Oh well!  More millennium trees for the rest of you!

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Check out this wild game!  No, literally, go check it out!  This is a wild read of improv-driven story focused diceless gaming set in a surrealism-infused Norwegian dream city in the 1920s.  It’s neat!  Come on by for a rare System Mastery win.

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Small but vicious dog, right?  You remember that?  It’s that joke that’s in here?  Anyhow hi there, how ya doin’?  Wanna talk about a 1989 game that seems like it mysteriously sat unread on a shelf since 1977?  WHFRP 1st edition can do that!

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Hey whoops this was only ever free on our Patreon.  Should be here too.  Now it is.  Hooray!  The balance is complete and finally I can diminish, and go into the West.

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Yeah, we needed a break again.  Jesus, Wraeththu.  So for now, let’s dive into dependable old Palladium.  Two scoops of whoops in every book!  Robotech is one of the early Palladium license titles, which is always a source of hilarious conflict and tone problems in every try, and here we find it, surprisingly fast.  For an 80 page book.

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Okay, guess break time’s over!  This book is enormous, weird, and in a lot of ways, misguided.  The world has collapsed, humanity has fallen, and the Wraeththu have risen in their place.  And what are the Wraeththu?  Androgynous hermaphroditic semi-vampiric aruna-having yaoi people, duh.

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We needed a break to finish our second book, and when you live in a gig economy that just means doing a smaller job that week!  The Land of Ogg started around 1993 and is a game about dumb cavemen failing at everything.  Here is an obligatory joke about the current federal government.  Please enjoy.

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No really, they’re the worst.  Play another game.  Also while we’ve got that picture of Radcliffe up there, our opinion is that JK Rowling is a TERF piece of shit, so.  Everyone sucks.  Just sucks.  Sorry about it.

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With 26 races, nearly 40 classes, giant complex martial arts systems and a battle world that has run amok for aeons aesthetic, where could SenZar possibly go wrong?  It’s an excess of boring riches on today’s System Mastery.

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Grab your amps and start planning setlists, as we take a look at a game that eschews the classics of dungeon diving in favor of trying to make it big in the music world.  Does it deliver hot licks?  Or… I am bad at music, I guess cold licks?  Yes, does it deliver cold licks?  Well, come find out!

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Yes, it’s not a D&D game. Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. We still found a classic, the Chaosium flagship and the biggest name in leaning heavily on public domain stuff Call of Cthulhu.  And hey, you might just be in need right now of people dumping on the febrile racism of a cowardly germophobe (Lovecraft.  I meant Lovecraft.) so here’s that, just for you all.

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We’ve posted so many episodes at this point that the only reason this one’s description isn’t just “Fuck this game” is that I’m not sure I didn’t do that for a previous odious heap.  This game was banned from GenCon in the 80s because it’s got a bunch of teen sex in it.  That’s one of the reasons it’s bad.  Sure.  Here’s an hour of other ones.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/system-mastery-special-things-we-hate-about-dd-part-1.mp3

So hey, remember when we wrote that book?  Jef apparently didn’t because this special content powered by pre-orders has been sitting unedited on an external HD for months.  The only thing that could force him to remember was the diligent reminders from listeners couple with the completion of our second book (details coming soon!).  For now, please enjoy this fine list of things that we don’t like about D&D (or D&D Culture, we may have had some crossed wires in there).  You earned it!

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It was about time we discussed the Cortex engine, and what better way to have a discussion than driving 45 minutes to a Kansas farm so I can say one sentence about how I’m upset and then drive away again to reset before I do it two more times next episode?  Smallville is a game all about building out a whole season of genre soap television, and also keeping Clark from flying.

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It’s post-apocalypse OGL gaming here so it may seem like something we’ve done before, but is it?  I hope not, but honestly 171 is a lot of episodes to go back through and I think we’re all a little tired right now.  It’s mutants, running around an irradiated post-war Earth, and they call women “furniture” in it, so you know.

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The year is 1975.  The hair is stupid.  The clothes are stupid.  The music?  Mostly stupid.  The movie scene was okay (Rocky Horror?  Jaws?  Come on now).  And the RPG scene was… heartbreakers already!  Tunnels and Trolls sure was an attempt to fix D&D by doing things differently for once.  Let’s look back, shall we.

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Someone tweeted about this, someone else linked it to us, and now we’ve reviewed it.  The DragonRaid Adventure Learning System:  A Roleplaying Game for Courageous Christians.  It’s probably safest to just link to the review now.  Happy quarantine!

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Lightning bolt!  Lightning bolt!  Lightning b… you get the idea.  It’s a LARP game!  And for us, a weird one, since we’ve never actually encountered one before that just looks like local park dress up goodtimes with boffer weapons, and yet here we are!

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Timelord!  Would you like to play an RPG as yourself and then, you know, get rewarded for showing up to the table with weapons and German soldier uniforms and stuff?  Well here you go!  Timeship is a mad game from the early 80s where yeah, there’s not much in the way of stats, because you’re playing as yourself!  What do you do as yourself?  Well, you head to the end of time to solve the murder of Count Dracula, then… wander around Gomorrah, just, you know, gettin’ involved.

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A fun side effect of doing what we do is that listeners send us stuff.  All the time.  We have just tons of books.  Jef’s room is basically two used RPG bookstores with a hidden bed in it.  And we don’t just get core books.  Heaps of fascinating supplements arrive from time to time as well, like so many Garfield phones washing up on the beaches of England.  We occasionally (very occasionally) do pileup reviews of these things, and here’s one of those times.  Books covered:  Giant Psychic Insects from Outer Space, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook, various After the Bomb supplements.

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This has been on Jon’s to-get list for most of the time we’ve made the show, and who should suddenly show up with a copy of the thing but our network head?  He always gets us the best stuff.  Dream Park has a PEDIGREE.  Based on a Larry Niven/Steven Barnes sci-fi novel series and written by Mike Pondsmith for Talsorian, there’s a lot of promise here.  Does it stick the landing?  Well, come on it, won’t you?

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Time to tackle some more Steve Jackson stuff.  No GURPS still (somehow we still don’t have a copy) but I do have Toon so here we go!  Play as a cartoon character, do cartoon stuff, and honestly it’s not half bad!

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This thing is huge and bizarre and we have come back to finish it because you are not prepared… for more Glyphs.

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Let’s finish off the year with something wild, what do you say?  How about a game that uses a flicked token carom style mechanic for all random resolution?  This thing is huge and bizarre and we will have to come back and finish it later because you are not prepared… for Glyphs.

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Time for some sci-fi!  This game takes all the futuristic space convention you love and just DUMPS on it, haha yeah rad, fuck Star Trek!  Anyhow come along won’t you?  On a journey that starts as a surprisingly innovative CCG-inspired spaceship combat simulator and somehow ends on some deeply misinformed understandings of cross-dressing and gender play?  That doesn’t sound right!

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Have you missed the good old fashioned heartbreaker game paradigm?  Well fret no longer friend, because this one has it all!  Elves! Dwarves!  Saracens for some reason!  This reprint of a game published in 1982 might just be the best sword and sorcery product of the 90s (according to the back cover) but we’ll find out, won’t we.  (the cover image is a cow from the island that this game’s sole continent shares a name with, Islay).

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Superheroes!  World War 2!  Greg Stolze?  What’s not to like?  Well, there’s plenty to like, such as the fascinating superpower design system and the fairly fun dice mechanics.  But could be there be more stuff coming we’re not fans of?  Well, the episode is huge, so you take a guess!

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We didn’t know it when we started, but there’s a theme to this year’s Ween episodes beyond just leftover horror games floating around the library.  And that theme is “Oops we thought these were horror games, sorry!”  Dark Realms is a horror to people that like comprehensible mechanics, anyway.

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It’s a nice day for something!  Welcome back to our October content.  This year the theme is a little looser since we’ve reviewed enough White Wolf games for two lifetimes and Jef’s Palladium stock is running low.  But that’s okay!  Here’s the first edition of Mayfair Games’ Chill, a horror game… in theory.

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Well, we had to take a look at a Role Master game eventually, and this one chose us.  This 1985 RPG is deeply, deeply mathy, and features a fantastic story with … oh no wait it’s Space Rome and a corrupt mega-Catholic star church again.

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Well, after last week with Jef failing to figure out what the heck any of this is using just the rule book, can Jon save the day?  Will his comprehensive notes about the story book explain everything?  Spoiler alert, no.

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A lavish box set full of tomes of full color wonder!  A comprehensive vision of an exciting and vast universe!  But System Mastery!  Could it be… completely impossible to read?  We dive into the madness of Eoris Essence, in a weird way that we’ll just have to explain in the show.

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Live from GenCon 2019, it’s System Mastery!  We’re covering the greatest entertainment to come out of the squared circle in 2005, actual wrestling!  Wait… no, probably some video game!  Or a CCG?  Oh god it was an actual OGL licensed RPG based on wrestling in that exact year?  Oh, oh no.  No no no.  We are joined by special guests Jim McClure(Aaron Cross, future owner of battleship) and James D’Amato (TVs, twice-published, the Latino Heat) on stage to discuss this bizarre relic of the DevOGLnian period of RPG history!

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Did you know there were licensed RPGs using the 4th edition D&D engine?  Well here’s one now!  It has lots of fancy elves, a bunch of tech-based classes, and so much worldbuilding!  Enjoy!

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Sometimes we get a book and we aren’t sure the exact percentage of RPG that’s going to be in there, so we end up reviewing like, a show synopsis or a treatise on life, and this is one of those times.  Snarfquest is a comic strip that ran in Dragon Magazine in the early 80s, and here is a D20 version of it for you to hear about.

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In retrospect we probably should have saved this for episode 175.  Anyhow this is a short comedy game mixing Dungeons and Dragons with hip-hop flavor pulled from the 80s and 90s.  We review it!

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Happy episode 150!  Still can’t believe it’s gone on this long.  Here’s D&D 5e.  It’s a game.

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Every once in a while we’ve both got so much else going on that we have to rely on what we call “The Emergency Stack”, a collection of books short enough that we can read them quick and get everything else done that week too.  Well, right now we’re swamped, so we grabbed KAMB off the stack.  It’s got everything you’d want, packed into a tiny package.  Jokes, Kovalic art, stats that spell out beer, you name it!

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Well, so we can probably do a whole hour of laughy laughs on the … wait, Vietnam War?  Is that right?  Okay then.  Recon is from 1982, and it is about playing soldiers murdering each other in a jungle.  Have fun with it!

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Sorta 40k, sorta Vampire, maybe a little Dune in there?  Anyway it’s a space RPG where there’s a church that’s basically Catholicism through a greasy mirror and a bunch of surprisingly recognizable races.  Apparently there was a good 4X video game set in this world once?  Cool.

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Hey who wants an old-fashioned case of the Heartbreakers?  Because that’s what we’ve got right here.  And it’s a doozy!  In that it’s one of those small-batch ones that you never did hear of and it’s got almost no web presence.  Check out this high-res picture I found of the cover!

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Straight from one bleak future to the next, only this time it’s kids.  Why it’s almost as dystopic as the movie Kids!  Basically the future is dream robots that put all the adults to sleep and it’s up to plucky young rebels to battle it out in dream-logic robosuits.  All that and some squick too!

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So a decade or so after D&D, Gary Gygax had a brand new idea.  What if cyborgs with dustbuster crotches defended the world from giant bugs made of erectile tissue?  Also what if there were a spectacular amount of boring graphs in there?  The result… was history.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/system-mastery-143-cadillacs-and-dinosaurs.mp3

With Jef still recovering in the hospital, Jon turns to fan-favorite guest Claire to join in and help review this RPG based on a comic book. It promises two things up front and delivers on none of it. Booo.

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You want true power and to really know the truth?  You have to really really want it in Greg Stolze’s Unknown Armies, a game of obsession, power, and the power of themes.

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It’s a Tri-Stat game!  We’ve done a few of these already so you already know the basics. Weird combat system where the attacker and the defender have very little to do with each other?  Check.  A million point buy options?  Check?  Balance basically a fig leaf?  Check.  So what are we left to do but dissect the 70% of this book that isn’t RPG.  Let’s learn about harem animes!

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In a grim future where everyone is lopsided and has dreads, can a few awful chumps win a mighty rebellion against Darth Emperor of Mankind?  This mid-90s science fantasy game answers your questions and more!  Questions like “What the hell is this?”  and “Ainsley?”

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1997, a dark year indeed.  Bad Batman movies and stuff.  Seriously, it was not a good scene, unless you were crazy for middling swing music.  But hey, this book came out, and it wasn’t terrible!  It’s Maelstrom Storytelling, and while it’s a little funky and the art is not art, it’s at least a neat concept!

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We’re back from our very needed rest and relaxation, and working harder than ever to fill your ears with reviews of roleplaying games.  This time we’re talking the Y2K bug RPG Systems Failure, a Palladium Game with some fun twists!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/System-Mastery-137-Kult.mp3

We’ve seen a lot of requests for this game, and now we understand why.  Come along, won’t you, on the game preachers in the 80s wished actually existed so they had something to condemn beyond nerds doing math about elves.

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The World of Species!  Finally an RPG with a glossy photo of a young Alfred Molina in it!  This Masterbook licensed setting is rife with information about the sex-sci-fi thriller that appears to have all been pulled from the trailer.

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1990 seems to be a downer year for RPGs as far as we can tell, but just you wait, someone’s gonna pop in any second and say that’s the year the greatest game of all time came out.  Anyhow, Age of Ruin is one of those “You either live long enough to die a dumbshit or die a grimfuck early” type post-apoc slogs.  With “art.”

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It’s Romans. In. Spaaaaaaace on today’s episode of System Mastery.  Thrill at the game designed to be compatible with a bunch of other games!  Marvel at page after page of legion construction flowchart!  If you’re a fan of the game, ready your emails about the stuff we forgot to mention (hint, Edge)!

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OLD WEEN to you all!  We’re covering the very weird Palladium title Nightbane this ween’s eve, so ready yourself for one piece of beautiful Brom art and 200 pages of … well, sloppy editing and fun ideas, basically.

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It’s Ween again, my friends!  Joyous Ween to you all!  But sadly this year White Ween was simply out of the question.  So we searched far and wide for a suitable replacement, and settled on a company that we already had two horror books from!  Surprising indeed!  Come along with us, won’t you, on a tour of the Palladium take on Call of Cthulhu sort of, packed with bizarre, ineffectual character classes and z-grade psychic powers.  It’s Old Ween on System Mastery!

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Join us and our new friends the Bay City Informanauts on a tour through With Great Power, a game of superheroic discussions, mostly.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/system-mastery-130-marauder-21071.mp3

A game that dares to ask the question “What if Bubblegum Crisis?”  Seriously, that’s the question.  The answer, surprisingly, is “No one gets the mech suits, everyone is a dirty cop shooting at a dirty punk, and the smug must flow.”

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We felt a little dirty doing a “new” book last episode, so here’s our course correction.  The 1975 version of Tekumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, with all acute accents left pointedly missing from all accompanying text because I am lazy (plus come on in the book you can literally tell he was adding them by hand).  This is a weird old game about aliens and humans all sort of doing an ancient South America thing.  It’s neat and ancient and fun to talk about, which is probably why the episode is so dang long.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/system-mastery-128-shadowrun-5e-live.mp3

We went to GenCon and we made this show and now we hope you enjoy this show we made at GenCon.  Next time we talk about Shadowrun we’ll try to find something older.  Special guest Gannon Reedy of NeoScum is here to talk Shadowrun and what his group does with it.  Find NeoScum on the One Shot Podcast network!

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Have you ever wanted to explore space but it’s just ever so slightly too difficult for you?  Exactly the range of too difficult where it’d suddenly be possible if you were like one-third albatross?  Well, have we ever got the hot 80s sci-fi game for you!

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Often considered in the top ten worst RPGs ever made, there’s a lot of weird choices in here.  A lot of bad, weird choices.  Thrill at the majesty of a D1000 table with maybe 500 ideas on it with us as we tackle the grim dystopia of deadEarth.

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It’s high time that someone on the internet had an opinion about this edition of this game, and you know what, it might as well be us.  Please enjoy this review of the famous 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  The game that killed imagination.  Oh and happy 125 episodes of the show!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/who-buys-this-cheap-shit-1-the-travails-of-simple-men.mp3

Ugh we ate Oreos so nasty that we had to tell someone about it, and guess what, you’re someone.  Enjoy.

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Behold a galaxy of unchecked exploration and progress, as made by very fussy little animals that don’t like to be touched.  It’s sort of like if the Wind in the Willows was about space, and also Mr. Toad wasn’t there because he was too excitable.  Also, Jef’s back!

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Longtime friend of the show and fan-favorite guest Claire comes by to discuss Mekton Zeta with Jon, who knows nothing whatsoever about your precious animes.  This episode sadly concludes Jef’s paternity leave, so we’re afraid he’ll be back next time.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/system-mastery-122-7thirteen.mp3

It’s another week of special guests with friend of the show, Quinn, stopping by to help discuss this inscrutable book with an unhealthy obsession with the numbers 7 and 13. There are 12 hours of existence and factions fight for control and your characters will definitely somehow interact with this setting, probably.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/system-mastery-121-dragon-lines.mp3

While Jef is too occupied with baby to do the time consuming prep on the show, we are kicking off the first of our guest appearance series. Joining me to talk about fantasy China is Josette from the Swallows of the South podcast.

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It’s the Supplement Spectacular again!  Or, it was going to be before a child was born into this world who ate all of Jef’s time.  Luckily (for you, not for him), he got most of the way through The Book of Erotic Fantasy, one of those things that seem like the sad logical outgrowth of the OGL being mined just a little too heavily.

Get awesome critical pride t-shirts right here.

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The Xro Dinn Chronicles is, for lack of a better description, the unholy combination of Ninjas & Superspies, Babylon 5, and the sort of mindset that led to the Winchester mansion.  Loopy rules that terminate nowhere, downright crazy stories, and so much more await you.

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Sail the skies in heavily armored airships and nimble fighter planes as a variety of sexy little animals.  It’s the early 1930s and Europe is embroiled in really weird battles all over the place.  Look, there’s a chance this game might still be in print.  But we didn’t hate it and besides, what are you gonna do, tell on us?  Our manager is just Jef with a fake mustache on over his real one.

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Today, we’re reviewing an earnest attempt to capture the very specific magic of the B-Movie.  You know, so there’s gonna be like a ray gun that changes the frame so the victim is just a classroom skeleton, or close-up footage of a happy lobster terrorizes a small town.  At least that’s the plan.  Before too long it’s rules for what happens if you’re “tricked” by a drag queen, and explanations on the difference between gender and sex.

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OSR, or Old Sam Raimi, is a concept in gaming that the most fun game stuff already happened and was mostly done by the early 80s, and that games resembling or utilizing the tools of that era are preferable to modern RPG stuff.  WEGS Old Skool is our first game that is marketed as an OSR design.  Will we like it?

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So this is Brave New World.  What’s in the core book?  Enough superhero stuff to sort of play, if you call this playing.  A wizard class with no spells, a gadget class with no gadgets, and four or five superheroes mostly relegated to “slightly stronger than a normal guy.”  Buy more books for actual content!

Okay, so on research it turns out Houdini died in 1926?  Whoops.  Please be sure to excoriate Jef in the comments for that gaffe!

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It’s impossible to predict when we’ll hit a real speedbump on the show, a real Synnibarr or Haven… and here we are!  Promised Sands ascends the steps of the pantheon and announces intent to contend for the role of System Mastery’s Least Favorite Read.  If you’re looking for us at our angriest, here we are.

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Put on your buckliest hat and prepare to engage in battle with monsters most biblical!  We examine a game that truly tests the boundaries of how much White Wolf you’re allowed to put in a book that isn’t by White Wolf (Or by OPP, or whatever the hell is going on over there these days) in Witch Hunter.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/gamma-crawl-x-the-final-chapter1.mp3

Happy winter everyone!  The gang takes on the last battle in the truck truck arena!  Sorry this took so long.  More AP will come soon, and we’ll have such things as editors and so on to actually move the process along.

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Interesting note that we missed because we didn’t do any research:  Tomorrow Knights here is a Marvel property.  Which makes this a Marvel RPG.  We had no idea.  Thrill to the workings of an author that also wrote, for Marvel, FIVE issues of a weekly fanzine about Return of the Jedi in 1984… and also, this comic!

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On today’s episode we discuss Extreme Vengeance, an RPG dedicated almost entirely to recreating the feel of gung-ho action movies (there is a sliver reserved for unrelentingly dragging Hulk Hogan).  Big guns, big biceps, and actually well-thought out rules to follow.

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A madcap dystopia that has more accompanying memes per square centimeter than anything short of Dungeon and Dragons itself.  Is Paranoia worth braving the swamp of people at the store endless parroting stuff about friend computer?  Actually yeah, kind of!

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Let’s talk about RPGs for kids.  Or more accurately, one RPG that is basically for kids.  It might be a little heavy on Ariels and light on editing, but Mermaid Adventures manages to remain a charming and accessible game for kids, without somehow shoehorning in transformation fetishes or weird political viewpoints, an apparently difficult trick, at least according to the rest of the industry.  We examine this game within.

Don’t forget, if you want to buy any of the games we review (or any games, I’m not picky) use the DriveThru RPG link in our sidebar, we get a cut of those proceeds.  Awww yeah.  Now I know you aren’t seeing the link because you have adblocker installed like everyone else on the internet, but hey, couldn’t hurt to ask.

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Dark Continent is the RPG of … well venturing into Africa and killing a bunch of people.  I mean that’s vaguely frowned upon (unless you are playing a Belgian), but it’s still pretty much expected.  Also, it stars the biggest package that they could afford for cover art.  Look at that thing.  It’s like there’s two Mt. Kilimanjaros in the art.  Oh also the rest of the art is old woodcuts and newspaper cartoons.

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Awoooooo White Ween continues!  Awoooooooo!  Today on System Mastery we introduce you to the colon-free world of Werewolf the Apocalypse.  I mean, there’s some colons. Werewolves probably have colons.  I bet they poop constantly on the lawns of corporate criminals and polluters and so on.  What I meant was that the title lacks a colon.  So it’s an instruction, and werewolf is just a verb.  Apply werewolves directly to the apocalypse.  Anyway, this book was weird, this post is weird, happy White Ween to all and to all a good night.

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Ah, truly the most joyous of holiday seasons is upon us!  Happy White Ween!  Today, we cover a game that turned out (well after we started reading it) to be a sourcebook.  Whoops!  We are bit in the butt by our lack of research yet again!  Oh well, we bravely soldier on in true Ween spirit to cover Mind’s Eye Theatre: Requiem, a LARPing guide for the thoroughly modern vampire.  Too spooky, indeed.

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Brought to you by rocket scientists hellbent on pure unadulterated realism, Living Steel is basically Heinlein by way of Games Workshop, with probably a few too many tables (which is a nice way of saying for sure definitely too many tables by a lot).  Gird your mega loins to battle Vissers and Spectrals along with System Mastery with our review of Living Steel.

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Are you looking for a game of two-fisted derring-do and rousing pulp adventure?  You’ll be sure to find it in some other book.  Gear Krieg is an RPG companion to a similarly titled tabletop wargame, based on the functional Silhouette rule system and featuring … well, World War 2 for the most part.  Also Edison and Tesla.

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Oh my goodness after a long hiatus the adventure continues.  I mean, sort of.  We recorded this a long time ago. In a measurement system I call “Broken Computers,” we recorded this episode two broken computers ago.  As always, we are joined by our GM Quinn (of Swallows of the South and various other podcasts) and friend of the show Brad, to adventure in the far-flung mutant madness that is the arenas of Gamma World.  In this extra-long episode, we encounter a massive wall, a southern gentleman, and a big room full of slimy trash.

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Yay, a game we didn’t hate!  This is a very specific sort of RPG, in which you play as a knightly dynasty during the Morte D’Arthur romantic tales.  Will you be a good Cymric Christian soldier (yes, probably) who spends their time collecting taxes, having kids, and very, very occasionally fighting a bear (again, yes).  A sort of vague magic system and NEW RULES FOR CELTIC KNIGHTS also included.

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This book is a grim, unrelenting slog.  Punctuated by the kind of art that would be impressive if this book was a collection of screenshots from the first Fallout game, filled to the brim with grimy short stories where nameless murderers murder murderers for the joy of murderin’, and with about 14 of its dismal 200 or so pages given over to the rules.  We hope you enjoy the review, as someone somewhere should have a bit of happiness, since we apparently cannot.

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Well, it’s been four years.  Honestly when we started the gimmick of doing D&D every 25 episodes we never thought we’d actually get as far as third edition.   Here we are though!  3rd Edition D&D and all it’s accompanying rules-as-physics and expansive OGL accoutrements, laid bare for your amusement over way too much time.  Thanks again for all the support, dudes!  Maudlin, choked up us will see you again next year for tabletop WOW for babbies.

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This time on the continuing adventures of Occulus Vive, Teddy Rustbin, and Yu-go the Nyarlathotank we find our heroes faced with a fiendish trap and pitted against the fiendish Bird Brothers in a fight to the…death? Listen and find out on the newest episode.

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Moon Prism Power!  Right?  Right?  That’s what she says sometimes?  Look this is weird for us.  Not our usual thing.  So we brought in a ringer!  A guy that’s watched all this and even played this game, and also I guess he’s our boss sort of, James D’Amato of the One Shot Podcast Network.  He’ll help us tease out the meaning of all of this!

By the way, don’t forget to check out James’ kickstarter, Dungeon Dome!  He’s fundraising to run a rad series of live gladiatorial RP games with a collection of colorful live teams of podcasting friends, and he needs your help!

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On today’s episode of Gamma Crawl X, our heroes encounter a slimy surprise, followed shortly thereafter by Deadstone the Gatekeeper.  Enjoy!

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The countdown to episode 100 begins!  This week, Legendary Lives.  Just another heartbreaker you’ve never heard of?  Maybe.  Does it commit several of the weird sins of old game design?  Oh absolutely?  Can you play as rad snake dudes?  YES!

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You know what we forgot to do in this one? Make fun of that Anonymous motto about how they’re legion or whatever.  I guess we just forgot.  Oh well.  This is a game that reimagines the internet hacker collaborative or whatever as a bunch of insane homeless people fighting invisible extradimensional invaders.  That’s certainly worth some points for originality.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/mad-max-x-crawl-1.mp3

As demanded by the public (and the Patreon) we have begun our first ever Actual Play series, Gamma Crawl X.  In this show, we are joined by our GM Quinn (of Swallows of the South and various other podcasts) and friend of the show Brad, to adventure in the far-flung mutant madness that is the arenas of Gamma World.  In this episode, we introduce the format and create characters.  And soon, the actual game begins.

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Man this city is so infinite, it’s like you don’t even know.  Crazy aliens rub shoulders with alternate humans in this early 90s kitchen sink style game with a great roster of now-famous authors.  Also we make fun of each other.

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It was a blast to help judge this year’s 200 Word RPG Challenge to assist David Schirduan in his yearly scheme to elicit all kinds of creativity from the online RPG community.  And while they were all fun to read, we did eventually settle on a few winners this year.  Our part in the rewards process was an episode dedicated to the winners, and here it is!  Please enjoy this rare glimpse into the world of friendly, happy, positive System Mastery.

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Warning: This episode is for mature gamers only.  So if you think the word “Boogers” is still pretty funny, maybe you should wait til we review the RPG adaptation of the Sega Genesis classic, Boogerman.  Til then, this is a cute little game that incorporates a lot of Heaven/Hell mythology with … oh let’s just say all of the LARP suggestions you’d find in a Mind’s Eye Theater Book.

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It’s not too late to go support the new Kickstarter for the next edition of this weird but fairly charming game if you want.  It will be very soon, which just means I have to remember to edit this post later.  Don’t worry, future historians, I didn’t.  This game has a lot of races.  Like… fifteen thousand?  More?  I forget.  Oh, and the specific edition we have was hard to find a photo of, so I stuck our copy with ol’ Xizor to prove its legitimacy and just used that picture.  Enjoy!

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It’s a game for only the dapperest of beardsmen on today’s System Mastery.  We’re talking Cthulhu Live, a game of rapidly going insane while extras cavort about in the background.

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If you listen real close you can actually hear the vault whispering.  It’s not worth it though, he’s just reading the Humor in Uniform section out of old Reader’s Digests.  It’s The Whispering Vault!  Were you expecting a Cenobite simulator?  Because you got one!

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The Secret of Zir’an is probably that deep under the challenging layout and heaped on layers of confusing story, accessible only to people who are really willing to roll up their sleeves and dig for it, is more confusing story.  Please enjoy.

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Well folks, you made it happen.  Grats to all!  There’s no way this is worth any more of our time or yours than the extra-long episode we’ve thrown on here for you today (and the bonus content that’ll be over on the Patreon) so enjoy this pointless dimwitted horror show while it lasts.  Keep in mind there are a few exciting announcements at the end of today’s episode, so stay with us through the miasma.  If you want.  I mean, they’re going on twitter and facebook and stuff too any minute now.

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It’s the space 80s!  Feather your hair and ready your giant wrap-around bubble glasses for some interstellar adventure where the computers are so advanced that Oregon Trail has four colors!  This game is, in a shocking surprise to us, imaginative, relatively simple, and fun!  Join us for Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn.

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The early 90s seem positively ripe with games that are more character creation tool than game, and Nephilim is no exception.  Join the ranks of weird energy spirits that have a collection of past lives, possession capability and spells, and honestly, really seem like the bad guys.

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Man, I hadn’t even seen the regular cover of this til I was putting this together.  That’s uhh… well I guess Luke Cage found some chain mail made by Stussy or Jnco?  Also someone give Katana back the rest of her outfit, she looks like a member of 90’s X-Force.  This is XCrawl.  The game of professional modern-day dungeon crawling in a Rome-themed American dystopia.  You read it right.  The premise is actually pretty great!  Plus they seem to be making this still on kickstarters and in upscale nerdstropubs, so good for them!

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Get ready to recreate the dramatic adventures of Captain John Sheridan, psychic lady Ivanova, kindly space vampire Londo Mollari, and – did the doctor guy get a name?  I forget – but you know, be sure not to do it on the actual space station the show was on, and that you don’t set it in any time period after season 2, and that you don’t let too many Narn be on your team, with The Babylon Project, a stuffy game about that space show you only vaguely remember.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/system-mastery-84-nightlife.mp3

Looking for a game where you can play a vampire, werewolf, ghost, frankenstein, demon, or …Native American nature spirit?  And you you say you want it to predate 90% of White Wolf? Perhaps it’s ridiculous 1991 mullets you crave?  Well look no further because we bring you Nightlife!

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Time for the HERO system, one of the big dogs of generic systems, in what is arguably it’s most popular incarnation, the very, very modular Champions.  Build a hero absolutely any way you want.  Literally any idea you have for a crazy hero, you get right on it and make that hero.  Just, you know, bring some graph paper, and a calculator, and a mechanical pencil, and some .7 lead, and some Jolt Cola (it’s 1989 in this paragraph).

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In today’s episode we gather to pass judgement down upon Cyberworld,  the story of a distant future where an emperor that bizarrely shares the first AND last name of the book’s author (what a coincidence!) rules both North and South America with an iron fist that probably has a snap bracelet on it and an Alice in Chains CD clutched in it (1992 jokes people).  Join us won’t you, as we dive in to a dystopian cyber-future LARP.  That’s right, this is also a LARP.  With the rock paper scissors and everything.

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Well lookie here!  Written by Jonathan Tweet (author of 3rd Edition D&D).  Designed by Tweet and Robin D. Laws (Author of Feng Shui).  There’s basically no way this won’t be crazy and interesting.  It’s Over the Edge, almost definitely the only tabletop roleplaying game that purports to be based on the writings of William Burroughs.

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We’re drawing ever closer to the terrifying end of White Ween, and we figured why not tackle an 800 pound gorilla a week before every sad internet friend you hate puts on their makeshift Harambe costumes.  It’s Vampire: The Masquerade!  The seminal White Wolf classic which is dripping with blood, gore, and pretension!

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Happy October, dear listeners!  You didn’t think we’d skip it, did you?  Halloween is so easy to play around in it’s basically the podcaster Christmas.  So it’s all White Wolf, all month long at System Mastery, and we’re getting started with Promethean, the game that hoovers up the leftover mythology after all the other White Wolf monster titles and somehow adroitly bakes it into a man.. with blonde hair and a tan, and he’s good for relieving our…. tension.

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Da na na na na na na na na na na na na na na TABLES.  TABLES.  It’s Batman, all right.  Man is it ever Batman.  As a spinoff of a larger game, this game really knew how to focus.  But can the tone overcome the mechanics?  Nope!

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Cyborg orcas, mutant cat super scientists, “squids” and more await you on the distant water planet ingeniously named “Poseidon.”  You can make all sorts of amazing characters that certainly could have all sorts of amazing adventures, though I don’t think we ever figured one out.  It’s Blue Planet!  You’re going to tolerate it!  Note that the cover art we used from the poster is way cooler than the book, we just got lucky and found that on the internet.

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Aw yeah, we got your boobsplosions, your vagcapitations, and your brutal wombsaws all up in this one.  It’s Macho Women with Guns, a parody game that uses generous margins and a lot of art to lightly spread a surprisingly complicated game over about 60 exploitative pages.

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It’s our three year anniversary here at System Mastery!  Jon and Jef entered the bonds of holy podcastimony in August of 2013 and it’s been wonderful ever since, except for those times we’ve cheated with One Shot.  As per tradition, every 25 episodes it’s D&D time, and episode 75 is no exception as we take a long hard look at the classic 2nd edition of AD&D.  You know the one, it’s got all that bad blue art of nothing in particular and that weird picture of a giant fat guy looking at a tiny lady in his palm?  That one!  Enjoy!

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Okay, we were getting a little too friendly about games and movies around here, it was high time we picked something to straight up laugh at.  This is Testament, the best idea for a D20 supplement with more than one feat for farmers ever.

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This game was about as good as everyone told us it would be.  “Don’t cover it” they said.  “It’s not even for you guys.”  Well we showed them, those guys I just made up.  Feng Shui is an action movie RPG where you’re basically supposed to constantly do the most badass thing you can all the time until you die or win.  It’s very neat.  Please enjoy.

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Vacations can’t stop us, and neither can federal holidays.  Step right up and listen to our first full-length Actual Play episode, featuring the doomy tale of the Valentine’s Day killer assaulting… well I’m not actually sure what city this ended up being after all the arguing.  We combine amazing RPG Dread (not to be reviewed by the likes of us) and ridiculous Jenga ripoff Love Jenga (LOVE COMMUNICATION) to form one terrifying night of high school romance gone horribly wrong.  Special guests include Arian, Devin, and Sydney.  Thanks team!

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What’s in this box?  Who drew a big circle on the cover?  What’s up with the grey swirly mist situation in the background?  In Everway, players make characters by telling each other stories about little picture cards with questions on the back.  A faux tarot deck is also involved.  It’s a bizarre, beautiful, isolated gem  that was too weird to evolve any further in the gaming world, and we got a copy.

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Well, here we are.  We put Rifts in the rearview.  We still love this dumb game.  In today’s episode, we finish our discussion of the core book.  RCCs, OCCs, psionics, magic, and the crazy world of Rifts Earth.  Don’t forget to check out the bonus content over on our Patreon if you haven’t already joined that train.

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We hope you’re as ready for this as we are.  After 70 episodes, it’s time to review the game that somehow started both of us down the path that ultimately led to System Mastery existing at all.  Rifts was the first game for both teenage Jef and teenage Jon, and somehow we grew into almost functional adults anyway!  We can’t even begin to cram everything crazy about this book into one episode, so watch this space in two weeks for Part 2.

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Today is good day for somebody else to die!  We almost like Discworld TOO much, so we start by trying our hardest to review GURPS Lite.  After that, it’s a visit to the back of the Great Turtle in this licensed game that was actually written in part by the source that’s being licensed!  It’s Discworld, it’s powered by GURPS, and also there’s some music with rocks in.

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This game has achieved a sort of fame because the name implies that it might be sort of friendly and cuddly.  It’s been referenced in other games as the RPG you should seek out if you’re looking for an easy time.  Like the training wheels of games.  Well let me tell you now, what they called training wheels in 1976 is what we’d call “not punching your kid for falling off the bike” now.  This game may only be 39 pages long, but 39 is also the number of minutes you can expect your rabbit to live.  It’s Bunnies & Burrows, and nature is red in tooth and saving throw.

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No really, it’s genuine this time!  An actual review of the first edition of the famous swashbuckling RPG 7th Sea.  An interesting blend of very familiar mechanics, curious ideas for character creation, and not-Europe world building created by famous RPG advice dingus John Wick.  This game has a hell of a following.  The 2nd edition was recently the most well-funded RPG kickstarter to date!  But before we dig into the new, let’s take apart the old in today’s (real, actual) review of 7th Sea.

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April Fools!  This is really more about an hour of digressions.  People keep asking what the point is, so here’s the point of that.  Actually have you ever seen the movie “The Point?”  That was weird, right?  Just that wobbly 70s line-art cartoon style you see in stuff like Pink Panther and occasional sex-ed cartoons, and a bunch of stuff designed to encourage you to think for yourself.  Sorta boring, honestly.  So yeah, the basic concept behind the April Fools joke was… y’know what I’ve noticed over the past few years is more people complaining about April Fools then people actually doing any April Fool’s thing.  I assume that’s more about the rise of meme-language.  Not that many people actually legitimately hate April Fool’s but anyone will share any image that has a minion in it.  That seems reasonable.  Hey, look at this clip.  Okay, I think that about wraps it up.

While there’s certainly reams of dirt to dish on the author of 7th Sea, there’s no getting around his raw talent for game design.  Jon Wick’s 7th Sea is a swashbuckling adventure game that more or less hits all the notes we want to see in a game.  Heck, even the entry for the seduction knack leaves “the opposite sex” out of there.  But are there cracks in the polish?  With the recent amazing success of the new 7th Sea Kickstarter, we find the original edition right in our crosshairs.  Enjoy!

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So… this one didn’t really have any art assets large enough to use for the rotating display thing.  Please enjoy a fine Magellanic Penguin.  It’s as relevant as anything else would have been.  This game is about a big war in space between the evilloids and the goodites.  It was written by a fellow who starred in the 70s Battlestar Galactica.  There’s a surprising amount of information about agriculture.  Have a good time!

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It took us a long time to get to this book because we were gathering power.  This week we present our in-depth analysis of this RPG about gathering balls.  It’s Dragonball Z, the Anime Adventure Game, also available as a wall scroll or plastic maquette!

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We stop by the realms of Raven “Combat Spanking” McCracken once more to see if there’s still the fires of mad genius behind his eyes.  Will we find more incredible insanity?  Or did he, like Icarus, sail too close to the sun?  Join us on a journey of discovery, won’t you?

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It’s become apparent over time that there are a few archetypes of bad games.  You’ve got Vision of a Madman, as seen in Synnibarr or Skyrealms of Jorune.  Fun-Hating Deathslog, as seen in any number of heartbreakers and serious business games.  Then there’s Boring Trifle, a catch-all category that covers any game that is too boring or derivative to hold the imagination.  Today’s game is a category we think of as the One Weird Thing, which is a game that would be perfectly serviceable, except the author has this one weird thing.  What’s the one weird thing about Broncosaurus Rex, a game that sounds like it’s probably about cowboys riding space dinosaurs?  Well if you guessed a ludicrous amount of Confederacy apologia, give yourself a prize and then ask yourself why that was your first guess.

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Someone must have really liked our review of the movie, because the demand for this was pretty high.  Today we present Wizards: the RPG.  The game that finally tells us the name of the movie’s famous horseballs (which we reject because they are called horseballs).

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Today we’re thrilled to bring you a game where you can play as a swarm of tiny yetis hanging around with a robot hawk and have an amazing, basically balanced game.  Gamma World 7th edition is a favorite here, and we’re starting 2016 with a breath of radioactive post-apocalyptic fresh air.  Don’t worry, in two weeks we’ll be down in the filth showing off the filthiest bits of filth to each other, like two Gollums.  For now though, enjoy this legitimately awesome game.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/system-mastery-39.mp3

System Mastery 39 – Witch Girls Adventures

Witches!  Rustics!  Technomancers!  The Ugly One!  It’s Witch Girls Adventures, and it’s your chance to step into the stylish shoes of a 13-year old witch and go on way cool adventures, maybe even at the mall.  Shopping!  This game is aimed a little young, so we try to puzzle out what makes a good game for kids while we’re at it.

Editor’s note:  Don’t forget to send in questions for the new show, Afterthought.  Let us know anything you want us to talk about at systemmastery@gmail.com!  Also, is this actually a fetish game?  Have we been fooled?  A lot of the internet seems to think so.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/episode-38-stormbringer.mp3

Episode 38 – Stormbringer

ELRIC!  Thy book is a thousand times more execrable than thou!  Though I have to admit I had this iconic piece of nerd power fantasy confused for the early part of my young life with the other one, Raistlin, this guy is apparently quite pedigreed.  The doomed albino of deficient blood and his evil runesword more or less dominate this book, much to our chagrin.  Can you save the ancient world of Melniboné and the young kingdoms?  Spoiler alert:  no.

Let us know what you thought of Stormbringer in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/episode-37-deliria.mp3

System Mastery 37 – Deliria

During the 90s, a lot of the small-market games were about trying to fix one issue that the author had with basement-ready games from the 70s.  By 2002 a renaissance was required!  No longer were games just for mega-nerds programming Scorched Earth into their graphing calculators!  Now the games were for normal people, like baristas, ravers, hackers, and burners.  Nothing encapsulates this era of special-snowflake appreciation better than the fairy tale LARP enabler, Deliria.  Do you ever get the feeling that you’re special?  That there’s magic in the world?  That your eyes would really be grey flecked through with shards of gemlike amethyst if you had your way?  This is the game for you!

Let us know what you thought of Deliria 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!

Editor’s note:  Special thanks to Grant at Saving The Game for this book submission.  Visit his show at savingthegamepodcast.com!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/system-mastery-36.mp3

System Mastery  36 – Dungeons & Dragons

We take a much needed break from endless reading of defunct gaming manuals, but that doesn’t mean we don’t seek to entertain!  This week, System Mastery brings you fresh coverage of the 2001 hit film, Dungeons & Dragons.  It has a Wayans, and a Riff-Raff, and more!  This film might be extremely terrible written, but at least it also has horrible visuals and unappealing acting!

Let us know what you thought of Dungeons & Dragons in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover, or some gaming film we should watch?  Let us know about that too.

Special thanks to our new friend Grant at Saving the Game, for sending us our next big project.  Check out his podcast when you’re all done here.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/system-mastery-35.mp3

System Mastery 35 – Vanishing Point

If you’ve read any Neil Gaiman or just been stuck in line at a convention behind steampunk people, you’re all set for Vanishing Point.  It’s a neat little RPG about visiting a planet shaped like a brain, populated by weirdos classified by insanities, and choked full of more British flavor than a steak and kidney pie.

Let us know what you thought of Vanishing Point in the comments!  Have a book you’d us to cover?  Let us know about that too.

Editor’s note:  Jon was basically dying of plague through this whole thing, you’ll just have to excuse the chair creaks and coughing.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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).

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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!

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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!

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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.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/systemmastery15.mp3

This week, we test the very limits of what defines an RPG, with a game that removes a core element to the concept.  There are seven characters in this game.  There is no character creation in this book.  There is however a lot of high adventure, archaeology, and … light sexual abuse of a student.  We review Indiana Jones, the 1984 RPG from well-remembered developer TSR.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/systemmastery14.mp3

Editors Note: Before pressing record on this podcast, I had to press Forward, Down, and Down-Forward.  We take a look at the 1993 White Wolf storytelling classic, Street Fighter.  A grim parade of cheap stereotypes, or a surprisingly charming fighting system?  Can’t it be both?

System Mastery is always looking for suggestions.  If you have a specific old RPG you think we should discuss, love it or hate it, let us know in the comments below.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/systemmastery13.mp3

The worst thing about this book is right there in the picture.  Someone really had a …fascination with drow, and their apparent immediate abandonment of spider-themed fetish gear for spider-themed raver gear.  The best thing about this book?  Nearly everything else!  Join us for a surprise example of a D20 product we didn’t hate in today’s review of D20 Modern:  Urban Arcana.

System Mastery is always looking for suggestions.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/systemmastery12.mp3

Seriously, another edgy urban game with no magic or sci-fi elements at all?  Well, almost.  D20 Modern wants to be every game for everyone, as long as it’s not D&D.  We discuss Stat Heroes, the most boring feats ever, and a crazy wealth system in today’s episode.  Tune in next time as we do our first expansion review, as well.  We’ll be tackling the crazy awesome or awesome crazy D20 Modern: Urban Arcana, the one with the gnoll pimp.

System Mastery is always looking for suggestions.  If you have a specific old RPG you think we should discuss, love it or hate it, let us know in the comments below, find us at https://www.facebook.com/systemmastery, or email us at SystemMastery@gmail.com.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/systemmastery11.mp3

Delivered straight to your grim, gritty earholes, System Mastery brings you a review of Haven:  City of Violence.  This “hyperkinetic action simulator” boasts a three-line deep Wikipedia page that tells of it’s glorious record as “the first game to be optioned for a movie before the game was complete!”  They probably should have just stopped writing at that point.  We talk racism, sexism, Sepultura, wicked sweet wrestling moves, and more in this ultra-realistic 11th episode.  Enjoy!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/systemmastery10.mp3

Seriously, just look at that.  It’s ridiculous.  That’s the cover of one of the supplements.  They wanted you to buy that book.  They didn’t want you to hide it a featureless brown paper bag and try to smokescreen the purchase with a Snickers bar and one of those Bic lighters.  Anyway, this week we read and discussed Exalted, the White Wolf anime demigod simulator.  Can you wear a maxi pad instead of any sort of pants in this game?  Probably!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/systemmastery9.mp3

Guest host Brian joins us to discuss Legend of the Five Rings, a game of swords, sorcery, swords, etiquette, and swords.  It’s one of those katana things.  We dig into the vast array of clans and the tiny array of classes that make up this surprisingly good Asian-themed RPG.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/systemmastery81.mp3

We dug pretty deep to find this game, a sci-fi/fantasy far-future romp on a distant planet where all the magic is colored orbs and there are three different sizes of humans!  Come with us as we grapple to understand the deepest reserve in history of sci-fi fantasy names, dig into a graph-derived combat system that we still don’t quite get, and for some reason spend a lot of time talking about breakfast cereal mascots.  We understand the writer of this game is a fantastic guy, so apologies to him in advance!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/systemmastery7.mp3

We’re joined for the first time by a guest host, our good friend Russ, as we discuss Everquest D20, an unholy confluence of 3rd edition open-source D20 gaming and the first modern MMO.  Is that a tank mechanic we found?  And just exactly how much can we digress to talk about Everquest before it’s just an MMO podcast?  We seek those answers here.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/systemmastery61.mp3

Is Slimer the Judas of the Ghostbusters franchise?  We delve into the long-gone Ghostbusters RPG, and apparently hit our heads on the bottom.  This RPG is tiny and weird and unfinished, but definitely worth a look.  Enjoy!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/systemmastery5.mp3

The mild, heartwarming scares continue with our first Horrortoberfest podcast of October!  Orpheus is a weird, weird outlier from the Old World of Darkness family.  Get some friends together to play as sexy secret agent ghosts or the world’s worst bicycle messengers.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/systemmastery42.mp3

This episode goes out to Dan, the only person we know of who ever played this game.  We have to assume he hated it as much as we did.  We’re discussing, Prime Directive, the Star Fleet Universe RPG.  Come along and learn about everything from Toltec Space Lizards to Glowing Maori.  Just be careful not to say Star Trek.  No amount of this game is Star Trek.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/systemmastery3.mp3

This time around, we review Tales from the Floating Vagabond, from Avalon Hill.  It’s a comedic sci-fi roleplaying game set the exact center of a cartoon universe.  Shticks, poorly named skills, boring alien races, and space NAZIs abound!  With such zany highlights as [a cat meows] and [I think one of us farts], we delve into finding out if this classic is worth the paper it’s printed on, and it is printed on surprisingly cheap paper.

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/systemmastery2.mp3

Hey there Mr. Skippy!  Not sure how you found your way to our little corner of the web, did you get lost while trying to find that hot new nightclub?  Anyway, we have one of those things, a pod-thing, that you should check out.  We get down on some awesome reviewage of this basically okay roleplaying game!

There, that was the best attempt we can make at recreating the roughly 300 pages of Buffy-style dialog we slaved over to bring you a hot fresh System Mastery.  Enjoy!

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https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/systemmastery1.mp3

Episode 1 – Heroes Unlimited

Aliens, Cyborgs, Mutants, and Stage Magicians share the pages of the 1998 classic “Heroes Unlimited.”  We dive into the odd but oddly beautiful Palladium Games engine, discuss the plight of the mutant animal in a world that rejects them, and try to figure out how to destroy the invincible door in the first ever episode of System Mastery.  Enjoy!

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