System Mastery

System Mastery reads and discusses old roleplaying games, the weirder the better.  Whether you’re curious about the bizarrely regimented early days of 70s games or the Burgess Shale of 80s and  90s outré design, System Mastery has you covered. Join Jef and Jon and their punishing reading schedule and learn a little bit about where your favorite games got their roots…just kidding, the show is 90% by weight jokes about cartoon hot dogs and ska music.

Jon Taylor

Raised on the rough streets of 1980s Los Angeles, Jef realized early that RPGs could occasionally be found among the moldered porn scraps in the woods surrounding golf courses, and a love affair was born.  Several hundred role-playing games later, Jef has settled into the role of video game reviewer, raconteur, and terrified new father. His first RPG character, bizarrely also in Rifts, was a Titan Cyberknight, and he’s been min-maxing ever since.  He now jokes around with Jon on System Mastery (and a dozen other shows not mentioned here).

Jef Aldrich

Jon came into the world sometime in the 80s, a pale and cuddly fellow as eager to devour marshmallows as he was books about ghosts.  It is said he discovered RPGs during the 90s, and his first character ever was a homebuilt Rifts Burster variation that used lightning instead of fire.  The fellow in question probably also liked marshmallows. Jon has been a stand-up comic, a student, and for a shining brief summer in 2008, a dolphin. Today he makes System Mastery with his co-host Jef.