System Mastery

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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