It’s been a while since we’ve hit such a rich, dense vein of crazy that we had to slow the pace down and take two episodes to really tease out the filaments. Could Immortal: The Invisible War become the worthy successor to the glorious nonsense of Synnibar? Well to find out, we’re taking a few hours to pop on down to the Dominions, evade the Sanguinary, and ask the Conundrums. Sunedrion. Himsati.
This week is all about the rules of Immortal. Tune in to the next episode of System Mastery as we try to fit the massive insanity of the story of this game into our unwilling human minds.
System Mastery 
Holy crap, this was hard to listen to. I can’t imagine trying to read it. Is there really going to be a whole additional episode of this incomprehensible horseshit? You guys don’t get paid enough for this.
I remember actually playing this one a few years back (the gaming group I was in at the time was reeeallly into it back in high school). It wasn’t bad (due to good GM more than system) but I mostly remember just how uncomfortable I was with the “start as yourself as a character” part.
Kudos for pointing out that automatic critical failure on a skill check has never been a rule in D&D ever. It seems like half of the dumb D&D stories out there involve rolling a 1 that the DM interprets as momentary suicidal incompetence from our supposedly-amazing heroes.
Sadly, Ingenue -almost- makes sense! It’s a type of stock theater character that’s basically “Sheltered girl next door”, so basically they’re calling your character a fresh-faced young girl who has no idea what shit they’re about to be in.
Inventing “creative” new names for standard RPG devices is probably my most hated bad RPG mainstay of all. All it does is make things more difficult for no real reason. In any such game, people who have played any other RPG before have to mentally interpret all the gobbledygook into real words (“okay, ‘persona’ means character, and ‘gifts’ are attributes, and ‘challenge’ is like an opposed check…”), and soon will start using the real words anyway.
I really enjoy listening to you people with all your shenanigans and whatnots. I’ve actually listened to all eposides. Multiple times. However, I think the general style of the episodes were better in the beginning than they are now. The delivery has gotten a bit loud and forced, a bit “american” in the bad sense of the word. You are obviously clever guys, there’s no need to get overly loopy. Calm down a bit. You have nothing to prove, it’s actually a very intelligent and funny podcast on it’s own terms. Don’t force it. Alright, take care!
I confess I’m starting to agree a bit. Sometimes when there’s a funny aside it sounds like both of you are just trying to get the last word out of the joke rather than adding new things. “Chris crotch” is a good example this episode, all that follows is 3 generic sentence extensions about chris crotch.
Thanks for the critique, it seems well meaning and well thought out. We’ll take it into consideration with future recordings.
I actually owned this thing. If I recall, on the opening page there’s a picture of the 0 face off a D10 labeled “The Null – The symbol that opposes us all and represents chaos in the universe..” or something like that..
To quote Halloween Jack’s review of this game on SA:
” If Vampire: the Masquerade is the quintessential 90s game, then Immortal: the Invisible War is as if someone deliberately tried to cram all of the most eye-rolling stereotypes of 90s game design into a single game in an attempt to create a deliberate caricature. Let me put it this way: if 90s games were French cuisine, Vampire would be cassoulet, and Immortal would be some kind of terrine made of baby duckling eyeballs. “
Right, basically ortolan, posed as dancers, suspended in aspic, hunted through the murk of the meat jello by a skinned, broiled stone marten.
Glad to see more Haven… City of Violence callbacks. Now we just need a return of the DM’s Pizza Watch
A couple of years later, like 1995, there were two more editions of the game, one by the original creator, one by his publishing company. (I assume the fact that the second edition dared to change any of his brilliant material or change out his awful system for a slightly less awful system had something to do with him taking it back and making even more crazy.)
The first of those hired Claudia Christian to stand for some of their terrible CGified photo art, and had her come to Gencon dressed as a 2010s era cyberpunk chick in leather and a bondage collar. You will be happy to know that the Prides were destroyed when the whole bullshit setting got wiped out and were rebuilt as Courts for the brand new bullshit setting.
Sadly I only own the first and second editions, so I can’t speak to the (avaliable for free on the website, that looks like it was created in 1995) 3rd edition.