System Mastery – System Mastery

System Mastery 300 – Palladium Fantasy

Well that certainly was 300 times we did a thing, I tell you what! Let’s take a little victory lap by cracking open a cask we’ve been saving for a special occasion, a feisty little 1983 vintage called Palladium Fantasy that definitely isn’t just dust and vinegar by this point, right? Right?

Announcement Mastery!
Check out Gamer Mom: The Mom Who Games right now on Kickstarter!

System Mastery 299 – Bleeding Heart

We’re hard at work on our giant pile of weird old box sets, and that means it’s time for Bleeding Heart, a game that Jon assures me is loosely based on something called the Corman Poe film era of the mid-sixties, and he’s a total horror nerd so I gotta go with him on this one.

Announcement Mastery!
Obelisk is launching on Kickstarter April 7th. 
Visit obeliskttrpg.com/kickstarter to get notified when it launches!

Help listener Alex Shaw and his family recover from a devastating home fire! https://gofund.me/92b44dd2

System Mastery 298 – Wild West

I really hope you’re enjoying this string of very old games, we’re doing our best to get back into them quickly (ever since I found one of my old box sets fully eaten by bugs and had to fumigate). In this case, it’s a game about real old timey cowboys! Like Boot Hill but not TSR!

System Mastery 297 – Star Trek the Roleplaying Game

Can we review an 80s Star Trek game without our pacemakers exploding? What if FASA made it? We’re looking at the Star Trek RPG from roughly 1983, which means (if you’re counting) that it’s based on the original series, the animated series, and the first three films. Is it okay or does it have to go home and copy 10 pages out of the K section of the dictionary? Let’s find out!

Go forth and support Celestial Bodies on Kickstarter! It’s a game about harvesting the remnants of dead gods in cool upgradeable mechs out in space, which is… pretty cool really.

System Mastery 296 – Lewd Dungeon Adventures

Finally someone bought that game that advertises on Facebook, and it was us. It’s a fantasy adventure game with some sex-themed rules, but honestly I don’t want to spoil anything here because it’s a tiny wee little game that could never possibly satisfy any REAL gamer. Damn it, still with the jokes. It’s a sex RPG and we read it. That’s for sure.

Oh and hey, go support Solo But Not Alone 5, okay? Good cause. We’re supporting it. You get a lot of solo games for a small amount of money and contribute to a cause that’s literally never been needed more.

System Mastery 295 – Insurgent

A very quick little modern game designed to be played solo or with a small group but no GM, in which you rebel against something. What do you rebel against? Whattaya got?

System Mastery 294 – OGL Ancients

It’s what it says! Though it’s adding a lot of stuff to the venerable old combat engine of 3.X OGL, it’s an OGL game where you play as primarily Greeks and Egyptians from antiquity (you can get a Scythian or someone from Thessaly in if you want, it’s just not a great plan).

Announcement Mastery

Coffee, Cults, and Empires is a brand new AP launching February 2025 that is a story, within a story, within a festive autumnal squash. Wait, no, it’s within a third story! Hang out with the intern that takes down the story of several professors playing RPGs as the world around them prepares to end!

System Mastery 293 – Alas Vegas

This is a little recent for our usual stuff, but Jon was really interested after the Fastlane review to keep looking at games that utilize classic casino games as RPG randomizers, and this one’s a doozy! Combining Blackjack and Tarot stuff, no less! Right in Jon’s very wheelhouse. The game is neat too! There’s a ton in here, it’s definitely one of those big rocks that rolled down a Kickstarter success story and accumulated content as it went, so we made some calls on what to focus on that we’ll explain within. At the end of the day, this is pretty dang neat.

Announcement Mastery

Ravenswool.com! Check them out, they make awesome yarn colorways, and they’re even maybe making some based on our very jokes, it’s super cool.

System Mastery 292 – Unbidden

Back to basics, some game you probably never heard of that we didn’t like. That’s the basic essence of the show, right? It has to come up sometimes. I’m talking about the show here because honestly I can’t think of much to say about this sort of generic “There are secrets in the world that you can’t learn about without going crazy” type game that isn’t already in the episode.

System Mastery 291 – Fastlane

Oh buddy you better believe we love it when the game has a weird alternative randomizing mechanic, and this thing is all about roulette. Yes, it straight up tells you at the start that you can use a digital one or even a dice based approximation, but for max results, you should get a roulette wheel. What else? Well, it’s a generic system besides the ruleset, so we go all in on that.