System Mastery – System Mastery

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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 –

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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!

Ooh, 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).

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.