System Shop

About System Shop

Welcome to System Shop, the podcast where we deep dive into RPG design, one subsystem at a time. Join us as we explore the origins, empirical trends, and future design space of all aspects of tabletop game design. What’s the point of mechanising carrying capacity or NPC attitudes? Why distinguish between armour and evasion, or attributes and skills? Many stories may begin with “because D&D did it”, but that’s far from the end… We dig deeper by asking: how do differences in design decisions make players act and feel, and is this wholly intended? What is gained or lost by being able to sum up a monster with a challenge rating? How can initiative checks be used to make combat feel chaotic, tactical, or somewhere in between? Finally, we suggest our own ideas for future innovations. Can we introduce new technologies and props? Can we shed assumptions of the past? Or should we bring them to the fore and embrace them to the extreme? Restrictions breed creativity, and our best ideas are often our most ridiculous. System Shop is independent and ad-free. New episodes release whenever we have the time and energy to research and record a new topic. Violet (She/her) is a recovering academic and alleged game designer, with a particular interest in system design and ludology. Freya (She/her) is a demographer turned data engineer by day. She moonlights as collaborator, sounding board, and bad idea generator to her beloved and prolific game designer fiancée. ... Cover design by Fallible Things (fallible.net). Font on-cover is Lineal by Frank Adebiaye, with the contribution of Anton Moglia, Ariel Martín Pérez. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Publisher

Violet & Freya

Category

arts · leisure

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

11 Oct 2024

Latest episode

4 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

20 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   4 Sept 2026

   Episode 14: Relationships in Play feat. Avery Alder

   In this relatable episode, we’re joined by special guest Avery Alder - creator of Monsterhearts, Dream Askew, and The Quiet Year - to talk about relationship mechanics. How does your game change when you model relationships as variable stats, states of being, currencies, cycles, roles, or power dynamics? How do you provide mechanical handles for specific types of relationships, while allowing them to be messy and emergent? What happens when two characters have wildly different interpretations of their mutual relationship? Where do relationships even exist, in terms of the physical sheet or game component that bears them? Avery sees the kids for the trees. Violet hassles her vassals. Freya sticks to the classics. Avery seizes the means of narration. Violet doctors the narrative. Freya draws her friends close. *** Check out Avery’s Stuff! *** https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/ (https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/) *** Check out JourneyMon! *** https://ilgingell.itch.io/journeymon (https://ilgingell.itch.io/journeymon) *** Check out Freya’s Blue Skies Sabbatical, Volume 1! *** https://severalseals.itch.io/drake-barcode-morse-inspector (https://severalseals.itch.io/drake-barcode-morse-inspector) https://severalseals.itch.io/foleynauts (https://severalseals.itch.io/foleynauts) *** Timestamps *** No mailbag this time! Intro to topic [*1] - 0:15:16 Why mechanise relationships? - 0:20:37 Design questions - 0:31:00 History - 0:53:47 Three angles on the Taxonomicon - 1:01:30 Rivalries - 1:07:51 Digression about Shock and conceptual poles - 1:13:45 Authority hierarchies - 1:21:46 Peer relationships - 1:30:49 Relationships as a resource - 1:39:00 Parasocial relationships - 1:45:16 Odds and ends and anecdotes - 1:53:17 Difficult relationships (and more Monsterhearts) - 2:02:16 Design Dreams - 2:12:27 Wrapup - 2:27:45 *** Design Dreams *** Freya: the League of Super Frenemies Violet: Hand Inarticulate Hand Avery: Love’s Letters Lost Bonus: The Dream Ghost Conspiracy [*2] *** Games discussed *** Monsterhearts Dream Askew / Dream Apart The Quiet Year JourneyMon Underwhelming Acolytes of an Ageing Immortal [-] D&D 3.5e D&D 4e AD&D Good Society The Deep Forest Masks Exalted Essence Vampire: The Masquerade Delta Green Pendragon Sagas of the Icelanders Girl Frame Hot Guys Making Out Star Crossed Interstitial Riddle of Steel Burning Wheel Blades in the Dark Reign A Place To Fuck Each Other Thirsty Sword Lesbians Lady Blackbird Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine Dogs in the Vineyard Apocalypse World Masks Dungeon World Bluebeard’s Bride World of Darkness (assorted) Aberrant Genius: the Transgression Over The Moon Tournament Arc Transit Shock Lasers & Feelings Avatar Legends Flabbergasted The Between Pathfinder Everyone Is John Belonging Outside Belonging Mad Alien With A Box Golden Sky Stories Blue Rose The Serpent’s Tooth Lost Kingdom (The many gm one streamer game) Dialect Going For Broke Smallville Last Fleet Exalted (not Essence) The Thunder Perfect Mind Silver And White [-] Microscope Children of Time [-] [*3] Seven-Part Pact [-] Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast Voidheart Symphony Midnight Muscadines *** Other media discussed *** Earthborne Rangers Steven Universe (obliquely) The L Word Animal Crossing Homestuck (inevitably) Kingdom Hearts Beastieball Pride & Prejudice Jeeves & Wooster Dr Who The Order Of The Stick Mage Knight Gloomhaven Battlestar Galactica [*4] Final Fantasy XIV Buffy the Vampire Slayer [*5] Dispatch Persuasion Portal 2 Philosophers in Space A Psalm for the Wild-Built A Close And Common Orbit Shogun (the board game, not the show) The World Ends With You: NEO *** Notes & Links *** [*1] …and apparently a local dog immediately goes wild in the background of Freya’s audio, sorry! It doesn’t last forever. [*2] if you know of a game that already implements Dream Ghost Conspiracy’s mechanics, tell us about it! It saves us having to write it ourselves. [*3] Predictably, the Children of Time crowdfunder ended some time before we finished editing this episode. [*4] the board game, but also the licensed RPG I guess! [*5] all this Monsterhearts talk and it took us two hours to mention Buffy. Spoilers at ~2:12:00! [-] games with this tag are unpublished (not yet released) or un-published (un-released). It is a fact universally acknowledged that when you make a joke and say “that was rubbish, you can edit it out,” that makes it funny enough to leave in. According to the dictionary wot I done red, a pastiche does not have to also be parody. The term, delightfully, is derived from a name of a pie with a melange of many ingredients. Sorry, Francis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man) *** Contact us! *** Thank you to everyone who has emailed into our mailbag - If you too have a question, idea, or interesting game you’d like to share with us, email systemshoppodcast@gmail.com (mailto:systemshoppodcast@gmail.com) *** Additional Credits *** Our intro music is "Magic Escape Room" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) System Shop is made by humans. We do not use generative AI at any stage of our process, from research to editing.

2. 

   31 Jul 2026

   Bonus Episode: Ennies Exploration 2026

   Hello, systemic shoppers! This is (hopefully) part one of a 2-part bonus about the nominations for the 2026 Ennies: the annual public-vote awards for TTRPGs. We realised that the games tended to fall into either “I own and have played this” or “I haven’t even heard of this”. Now, we’re not going to talk at length about impressions of games we haven’t played, because judging a book by its cover is only appropriate for the games nominated for Best Cover Art. But we are going to each pick one game, give it a spin in the near future, then reconvene with part 2 to talk about our experiences. ****** Voting will have closed by the time this episode goes up (it’s only open for like a week!) but the list of categories and nominees is on their website: https://ennie-awards.com/2026-nominees/ (https://ennie-awards.com/2026-nominees/) ****** The Girl Frame review Freya references is by Caelyn Ellis of Rascal News: https://www.rascal.news/girl-frame-confidently-stomps-its-way-into-a-niche-mecha-genre/ (https://www.rascal.news/girl-frame-confidently-stomps-its-way-into-a-niche-mecha-genre/) ****** We also had a discussion about Deadline: A Clockwork Press that was definitely comedy gold, but (ironically enough) didn't make the cut because we’d decided to end the recording immediately before it. Whoops!

3. 

   27 Jul 2026

   Episode 13: Vehicles

   Vrrrroom! (Sorry, I had to). In this all-hands-on-deck episode, we’re talking about vehicular play and the scale shifts it introduces as it opens new horizons. What happens when you bring a knife to a tank fight - and how do you avoid trivialising the whole game when you’re the one in the tank? How do you set stakes when everyone might go down with the ship? And when does hyper-specialisation for crew roles actually cripple your cooperation? Violet puts the cart before the oars. Freya mounts her soapbox. Violet rigs the game. Freya floats a flotilla. *** Timestamps *** Mailbag - 0:09:02 Topic intro & design questions - 0:17:34 History - 0:49:20 Comparing Wildsea experiences - 0:55:59 Taxonomicon - 1:03:13 Freya admits her serial salvage surplus & shipmate shortage - 1:41:59 to 1:52:05 Design Dreams - 1:53:23 Freya’s insectile aspiration announcement - 2:12:01 Wrapup (and oops, more bugs) - 2:12:54 *** Design Dreams *** Violet - Record of a Spaceborn Fugitive Freya - Disney Pixar’s Cars: The Driver’s Licensed TTRPG Violet - Wormhole Long Haul Freya - Transform and Role Out *** Games discussed *** Tool Team[*1] Bestial Princess Disease: A Torture Chamber[*1] (can be seen here: https://files.catbox.moe/5mb50b.webp) Several collage contributors Drake Barcode: Morse Inspector [*1] Shadowrun (2e, specifically) Pathfinder Lancer D&D 5e Scherzando! [*2] Break!! Sword World Pico Classified Rifts Traveller Mothership OD&D D&D 3.5e Star Trek Adventures Wildsea Last Caravan Ribbon Drive Car Wars GURPS Heavy Gear Apocalypse World Scum and Villainy Blades in the Dark Edge of the Empire / Genesys Fate Homeworld [*3] Mothership: Gradient Descent Transit Horse Girl My Girlfriend Has Turned Into A Car (And We’re Escaping This City) Savage Worlds Cypher The Magnus Archives RPG [*4] Electric Bastionland Mythic Bastionland Intergalactic Bastionland Wanderhome Stars Without Number Eberron Ion Heart Last Fleet Songs for the Dusk Pasión de las Pasiones Honey Heist Good Society *** Other media discussed *** Affinity Publisher (does that count as media??) Magic: the Gathering Camel Up, Heat, Thunder Road, and Magical Athlete The works of Adrian Tchaikovsky (as usual) Shadowrun series (Harebrained Schemes) Fuga: Melodies of Steel Slay the Spire Captain Sonar Star Trek (Voyager & DS9 specifically) Sunless Sea Rogue Trader Get in the Car, Loser! Subnautica Star Wars: Galactic Racer X-Wing Radio On (1979, dir. Christopher Petit) One Piece Live Action Season 2 Pacific Drive Magic Mike XXL (and other roadtrip movies) Revolutionary Girl Utena Shut Up & Sit Down Gaslands Akira Hot Fuzz Bug Fables The Wandering Village Dunecrawl Star Trek: Armada XCOM Moby Dick Railsea Embassytown Record of a Spaceborn Few Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters Battlestar Galactica Disney Pixar’s Cars Rocket League Iron Lung Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture) Transformers Thunderbirds Nowhere (1997) Cowboy Bebop Shadows of the Apt *** Notes & Links *** [*1] if you haven’t heard of these games, that’s because they’re ours and some of them aren’t released yet. [*2] now with canon-compliant exclamation mark. [*3] which is indeed published by Modiphius. [*4] the Magnus Archives RPG is indeed based on the Cypher system. Some research thanks to my local tank museum (and also, totally normal people on the internet) suggests that modern tanks have dedicated commanders among a crew of 4, and WW1 tanks had crews of 8 or more because they were huge and horrible and required a lot of manual labour. My tolerance for military history forums hit its limit at that point so I refuse to research WW2. American Psycho (Wet) - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eY9ccvv7Nlg (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eY9ccvv7Nlg) Living spaces in space, from Cowboy Bebop - https://www.tumblr.com/bluedelliquanti/123202722454/one-of-my-favorite-things-about-rewatching-cowboy (https://www.tumblr.com/bluedelliquanti/123202722454/one-of-my-favorite-things-about-rewatching-cowboy) Random bug generator - https://perchance.org/bug-species (https://perchance.org/bug-species) My chair is unusually creaky in this one, so keen ears will probably pick it up occasionally. Sorry about that! *** Contact us! *** Thank you to everyone who has emailed into our mailbag - If you too have a question, idea, or interesting game you’d like to share with us, email systemshoppodcast@gmail.com (mailto:systemshoppodcast@gmail.com) *** Additional Credits *** Our intro music is "Magic Escape Room" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 17 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

35

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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