System Mastery

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/system-mastery-70-rifts-part-1.mp3 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.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/system-mastery-69-gurps-discworld.mp3 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.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/system-mastery-68-bunnies-burrows.mp3 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.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/system-mastery-67-seventh-sea.mp3 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.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/system-mastery-66-7th-sea.mp3 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

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/system-mastery-65-the-great-war-of-magellan.mp3 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!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/system-mastery-64-dragonball-z.mp3 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!

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/system-mastery-63-synnibarr-3rd.mp3 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?

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/dinosaur-planet-broncosaurus-rex-system-mastery-62.mp3 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.

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/system-mastery-61-ralph-bakshis-wizards.mp3 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).

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/system-mastery-60-gamma-world.mp3 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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