System Mastery

No more Sweater Weather? Guess it's time for edgy fucked up December. Who wants to be nice to people and solve teddy bear ouchies when you can cram a firecracker in a frog or whatever as a member of Satan's grimiest little volunteer militia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you haven't played as a bear with a clothes hangar for one arm that has to help solve the mystery of where Starscream's left wing went, have you really lived? Threadbare is a PBTA game in the stitchpunk genre (more on that within) all about survival, adaptation, and purpose, and it can be played with absolutely no combat so hey, it's perfect, because Sweater Weather isn't over yet! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sweater Weather just will not let up as we take a tour through the non-combative games that are just so hard to find in RPGs. Today we discuss The Play's The Thing, a Shakespeare altering game where you play as actors changing the story as the story goes along. So will the game be twice blest? Or is Hell empty and all the devils are here? Also, just up front, we don't know the first goddamn thing about Shakespeare. Be warned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We couldn’t get enough theme months! Welcome to a brand new thing here at System Mastery, Sweater Weather! Reviewing the games that make you feel as cozy and comfortable as a good bowl of stew and a blazing fireplace. Today, we’re discussing Golden Sky Stories, a game with a nearly microscopic focus on small, simple slice of life interactions, where you play as little animal children with whimsical powers.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we draw this festive Ween to a close, we continue the project of a brief examination of newer space horror (Yes, that last game was a heist thing, but c’mon, you were working for the literal Devil, right? That counts!), this time with the most recent offering in the Alien franchise, a comprehensive and enormous RPG with a lot of modern design sensibilities and a commitment to getting every bit of the fairly sprawled franchise some inclusion (except Resurrection, apparently no one likes it). Announcement Masteries! The Adventuring Party: theadventuringparty.net A weekly gaming podcast with an Irish bent (because it is Irish and made in Ireland). Discussions about RPGs, CCGs, and pop culture in general with all the calm and sober tones you’d expect from a pub brawl. Valhalla Hobby: valhallahobby.com  (Use this link! It applies our code!) 5% off all manner of excellent hobby products, shipped direct to your door! Get the coolest and newest hobby stuff from a wide variety of ranges including Crisis Protocol, M

The customary three great blessings of Ween to each and every one of you! Okay, so this game isn’t especially scary. By now you should have recognized that we may or may not give a fuck about tradition from one day to the next. In this case, we’ve decided to harness the power of ween to focus on a few newer games for the season. Any chance to dodge another OSR retroclone or D20 shovelware, am I right? Today we discuss Stealing Stories for the Devil, which is a heist game written by Monte Cook, so that’s two new things! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/system-mastery-235-ray-winningers-underground.mp3 Hurray, one of those edgy 90s games where people have superpowers but aren’t superheroes! You know, like the other ones? This one at least has an interesting angle of entry by being more about society failing veterans, but is that enough to help it shine beyond it’s fairly timeworn genre? Well, let’s find out!     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/system-mastery-234-apocalypse-world-2.mp3 Wait, from Psi World to Apocalypse World? Two worlds? One network family? Oh right, I should probably mention that because we both have been down for a bit with the old Covid-19, James stepped in to help record this one, which turned out useful because Jef was just plain too sick all the past couple weeks to even read. But he got better! And he came to join the fun anyway! Just, you know, without reading any of the book at all. Special thanks to our guest host James D’Amato, check out his fine works at some weird place we never heard one called Oneshotpodcast.com. Double special thanks to our Announcement Mastery sponsor https://www.twitch.tv/goblincavetv, a great place to watch non-WOTC streamed tabletop actual play content!     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/system-mastery-233-psi-world.mp3 Back to the old psionic grind! This game has almost exactly two whole paragraphs of story. Everything else we’ve had to glean from the margins and unusually informative rules. Wanna… I guess be a psychic refugee in the near future of 198X? That’s pretty much what’s going on here.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/system-mastery-232-leaked-6th-ed-dd.mp3 Hell yeah, we got some leaked documents up in here! Shame we gotta do it to them. But such is the rule of law here on the wild internet frontier.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/system-mastery-231-kevin-kell-rpg.mp3 A rare occasion where the “How the hell did this even happen” question seems fairly obvious (some company wanted a furry game in their line and this was close enough) but hot damn is this ever the weirdest thing we’ve seen in a long, long while. Strap in folks, this episode is extremely long, and not all that much of it is about the rules to the Action! licensed engine it runs on. Kevin & Kell is a weird, weird comic strip, and mainlining the lore of it in a long week without actually reading the strip at all is a weird, weird way to interact with it. Just a friendly warning!     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/system-mastery-230-white-box.mp3 Let’s GOSR! This here is one a them retro-type clones where the goal was extremely straightforward: The author liked Sword & Sorcery White Box and wanted another edition, so here it is. Wanna play as a Dwarf? That can be up to level 6 as a thief(optional)? Well you an probably buy about three million other games. Or this one!     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/system-mastery-229-underworld.mp3 Ever had dreams about the world deep below the world you know? A world where magic and madness swirl, where animals may just speak aloud, a world where the ancient myths of the surface are terrifyingly true? Did you recently read Neverwhere? Okay okay, I kid. This isn’t exactly like Neverwhere. It’s set in New York! A 2000 LARP (dear god thank you for that being the year) or tabletop game of adventure in a fantasy landscape deep beneath the big apple. Announcement Masteries Fortified Niche – A podcast about the wargames not made by the juggernauts of the wargame industry. Whether it’s trying and reviewing indie skirmish games like Carnevalle or Zona Alpha, or just commenting on the state of the industry (why so many cheesecake sculpts? Why so little delicious cheesecake?), Fortified Niche covers it all. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fortified-niche/id1591399738 Nerdhaus Games presents Heist: Masterminds – “Your rivals

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/system-mastery-228-star-wars-age-of-rebellion.mp3 Well, FFG was sort of driven off this project (it’s a really sad story) so the most recent line of Star Wars games is now in our wheelhouse, I guess. And who better to help us tell the story of the strangely high on narrative AND crunch FFG Star Wars engine that network owner and our good friend James “The Accomplishment” D’Amato, star of screen and pod? No one, that’s who.  Buy James’ book, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: Expanded Genres Edition at bit.ly/rpgbackstory2 or wherever fine books are sold. Oh and the Patreon bonus content is FREE this week (thanks again to James) so go check that out as well!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/system-mastery-227-wizards-gunslingers.mp3Ooh, it’s one of those cowboys and also a different thing games! You know, like cowboys and ninjas, or cowboys and dinosaurs, or cowboys and the slow crushing onset of modernity… this one is wizards though. It’s mostly percentile, it’s written very strangely, and more details can be yours if the PRICE IS RIGHT (the episode is free).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/system-mastery-226-star-munchkin.mp3 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.    

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/system-mastery-225-marvel-multiverse-rpg.mp3 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.    

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/system-mastery-224-fiasco-classic.mp3 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?    

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/system-mastery-223-tephra.mp3 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.    

https://systemmastery.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/system-mastery-222-umlaut.mp3 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.