SystemMastery 31 – Synnibarr 2
The final chapter in our saga of Synnibarr. Impossible continents, insane monsters, and ludicrous facts about this maddening world. This time around, we even try to tell you how you were supposed to play the game!
Let us know what you thought of Synnibarr in the comments! Have a book you’d us to cover? Let us know about that too.
System Mastery 
Thus fulfilling the pledge made back in Episode 9, and with a surprising twist ending that I could not have foreseen!
There’s a very 90s horror RPG called “The Whispering Vault” that you might get a kick out of – people on Story Games call it “Clive Barker’s Superfriends”. It’s one of those try-hard-ey horror games with an over-dramatic name for everything. It’s a kind of like Kult but a little saner because the PCs are expected to start the game with a meaningful role in the big, stupid cosmology. Check it out if you see a copy at your local nerd store.
You guys were harsher on WEG Star Wars RPG than on Synnibarr. Only one of you was willing to play SWRPG and both were willing to play Synnibarr (sort of).
I can see how it sort of makes sense, as perhaps Synnibarr brings a lot of novelty factor to the table, and playing it would be a sort of object lesson in bad game design, while SW RPG is a somewhat boring, derivative system that doesn’t live up to the promise of its license. I’ve long considered running a game of FATAL just to see what it’s like to play a clearly broken system. But still, if you played one campaign of SW RPG and one campaign of Synnibar, with the actual mechanics of each, you’d have to have more fun with SW, right?
(I also acknowledge that sometimes contrarianism is its own reward, which probably explains at least half of your willingness)
Hey guys. Really enjoy the show, well done. Please review “magic world” by steve perrin. It was the first rpg i “played”, translated (horribly) to swedish under the name “drakar och demoner” (dragons and demons), in 1981. Found a link; http://basicrps.narod.ru/mw2.pdf
We are looking into it now, thanks for the suggestion!
You know, when I sold my copy of this game to the now closed local used book store, I never thought I would regret the decisions. Now I wish I held onto it because of you guys. Jerks.
We don’t have a copy either, sadly. It was a loaner. Completely worth the read, though!
I purchased Synnibar at GenCon 2016 based on your recommendation.
As terrible as the rules are, I would love to play a game in this setting. I love the ridiculous space opera of it all. Switch out the “were” stuff with stasis fields or something like that, and make the interior of the planet properly ravaged by the damaged engine; and you’ve got somewhere pretty cool.
I can’t believe you didn’t touch on the chef’s kiss of rules, though it’s easy to miss in the mess that this book is. “Fate has absolute control during the game regarding rolls and interpretation of the rules. Fate may not, however, deviate from the rules as they are written for if he or she does and the players find out, then the adventure can be declared null, and the characters must be restored to their original condition, as they were before the game began.” If you houserule, the players can veto you and undo everything.