systemmastery – System Mastery

This movie has famously been mocked for being awful ever since it first came out and was nominated for two different bad movie awards. But, does it deserve the hate or is there something here worth watching? Let’s find out together, shall we?

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First, a brief discussion that has a surprising lack of detail available without going to a website: Does the Falcon have a bedroom?  Feels like it should, right?  But here’s Lando sleeping on the floor under the Dejarik table.  Then other stuff happens!  Mohs breaks bad!

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A man with a gun bursts through the door!  And then things get slapstick, confusing, slapstick again, a little weird, maudlin for a second, really really confusing, and finally Jon and Jef fight for like 10 minutes!  What an episode!

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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!

What starts out seeming like a standard Hulk Hogan action movie, quickly devolves into a strange, dreamlike comedy with cartoonish characters and a nonsensical plot.

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Well heck, the last episode was certainly a bottle episode, never leaving Duttes Mer’s office, but this one is almost a bottle episode too, insofar as it’s set exclusively in a series of bars.  Oh wait, that’s a pun too!  Hooray!  Lando gets started on his surprisingly vague assignment and we learn a little about the locals.

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Bottle episode time!  These two entire chapters never leave the office of one of our two villains.  This time around, we’re going to meet Duttes Mer, the regional governer of the Rafa star system, and his boss, A motherfucking lunatic SORCERER.  That’s right, it’s time to bring in Rokur Gepta, Sorcerer of Tund, from back in the days when everything didn’t have to be force powers.

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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 –

We aren’t reviewing Morbius (yet) but how about another movie that decided to try to lean into the memes and then didn’t make any money because it turns out memes aren’t actually worth anything.

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Oh my goodness it is a new book, and instead of dealing with Corran Horn for even one more goddamn second, we can finally hang with the cool man with the capes, the Tuxedo Mask of Star Wars, it’s Lando Calrissian!  This book series is very old (1983!) so get ready for a world free of the EU baggage, and a Lando free of owning a mining facility!