Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Patreon backer Michael Kotschi pops a moony question over the Ask Ken and Robin transom, prompting us to look at 70s NASA from a Moon Dust Men perspective.

The Politics Hut still has a hangover, but I guess we still have to address that thing that happened.

In Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else, Ken talks to blogger, podcaster, freshly minted game designer and snailologist Darcy Ross.

Is the Eliptony Hut an odd place to talk about the Sybil case? The answer might surprise you!

Support the KARTAS Patreon!

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook or Delta Green: Need to Know, the quick start rules set with extra-sturdy Handler’s Screen.   

Patreon backer Ethan Cordray rises from the Pacific waves of Ask Ken and Robin to pose a stumper: how to make Cthulhu scary again.

Ken is back from an extended sequester in the Cinema Hut to talk about his favorites from the Chicago International Film Festival.

Once more we learn How to Write Good, this time with a look at authorial commentary.

Our hero saves America again as a Ken’s Time Machine after-action report details Timothy Pickering’s attempted New England secession of 1804, posed by Patreon backer Paul. Correction Hut: Ken is mortified that he got the XYZ Affair mixed up with the Citizen Genet affair, but rest assured they both involved the French and influence-peddling, so both the larger history and the jokes still work.

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Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook or Delta Green: Need to Know, the quick start rules set with extra-sturdy Handler’s Screen.   

This week the Gaming Hut holds a special surprise: it’s not just a segment, but a free game in and of itself, as Robin teaches you how to run Death Spiral.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Reiner Dobbelman asks us about mythic-level play.

Then we again hear the protesting groans of Ken’s Bookshelf as we vicariously paw through his haul from his latest raid on Powell’s Books in Portland.

Support the KARTAS Patreon!

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook.   

Among My Many Hats blows the lid off of Ken’s upcoming Kickstarter for a revised, revamped, and reanimated Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales.

Are the results of this podcast rigged? Find out as the History Hut looks at the history of vote-rigging in America.

When Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else, sometimes that someone is Sandy Petersen, of Cthulhu Wars, Chaosium and Doom fame. This is one of those times.

Finally we open up the Horror Hut to entertain a query from Padraig Griffin, who needs to know about the precise sort of alchemy Dracula practiced. We won’t ask him why he does, because he’s a Patreon backer and so deserves the absolute benefit of the doubt.

Support the KARTAS Patreon!

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook.   

The Gaming Hut looks at top temporal locations for TimeWatch scenarios. Pelgrane Press celebrates our segment by offering you, the listener, a voucher code to order from its online store. Plunk in TIMEWATCH at the voucher prompt for 10% off any TimeWatch product. In keeping with the chronological confusion of TimeWatch, the offer is good for a limited but indeterminate time period, so act fast, before it shimmers away into nothingness.

Next up Robin issues a Travel Advisory for his trip to THE KRAKEN, a Gaming Retreat held at the Schloss Neuhausen in the rural depths of the former East Germany.

Its founder Fabian Kuechler can tell us more about the unusual history that led to THE KRAKEN, so in Ken and/Robin Talk To Someone Else, we get him to do just that.

Ken also spent his time since our last recording session on the road, occasioning a jaunt into the Cinema Hut for a review of the latest H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

Support the KARTAS Patreon!

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook.   

A fork in the road leads to either the Gaming Hut, or the Gaming Hut, as we look at those times when giving players choice and control in a scenario leads to a less interesting outcome.

The History Hut has us looking at the career of oil magnate E.L. Doheny, key figure in the Teapot Dome scandal and partial inspiration for Daniel Plainview in There Might Be Blood.

Then Ken and/or Robin Talk To Somebody Else, specifically Epidiah Ravachol of Dread and Worlds Without Master fame.

We conclude with the Consulting Occultist talking about Jakob Böhme, trying to convince Robin that there is something of interest to be gleaned from yet another Christian mystic.

Support the KARTAS Patreon!

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook.   

We kick off another episode inspired entirely by Patreon backer requests with John Corey, who asks Ken to expand on real history as the best setting for gaming and the challenges of reskinning it, thus inviting another round of That Thing I Always Say.

The enigmatic asker known only as Bryan ushers into the Horror Hut to consider Lovecraftian spam.

In the Tradecraft Hut, Simon Hedge requests a 101 on Kremlinology.

And Neil Dalton poses a probing question in the Eliptony Hut, about horror writer, UFO contactee and podcaster Whitley Strieber.

Support the KARTAS Patreon!

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook.   

Unfurl your flags as we gather in the Gaming Hut to envision an F20 game in which nationalities take the place of alignments.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Patreon backer Jason Breti asks us to talk about Microscope.

How to Write Good looks at things that happen in real life that writers have to work extra hard to put across in fiction.

Finally, Ken’s Time Machine obeys backer Shane McLean’s demands for information on our hero’s interactions with Thomas Bloodworth in the early stages of London’s Great Fire.

Support the KARTAS Patreon!

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card.

Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press.

For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish.

Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook.

Much tabletop roleplaying advice, ours included, helps GMs to keep players entertained. But what about the other way around? Thanks to Patreon backer Jesse Morgan, we head into the Gaming Hut to look at ways to keep your GM motivated.

Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else covers not one but two areas of expertise, as Hal Mangold delivers the wisdom on art direction and layout. The favorite font he says we’ll reveal in the show notes is 806 Typography.

Then in a special double-length screening session in the Cinema Hut, Robin reveals his discoveries from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. For films glossed over in the segment, see his capsule review round-up.

Support the KARTAS Patreon!

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook.   

Take a reality check before you dare to enter the Gaming Hut, as we answer Patreon backer Bryan’s request to devise a campaign based on flawed perceptions.

Time for another intro course in the Cinema Hut as Ken and Robin give your their film noir 101.

Coriander meets pate as the Food Hut investigates the banh mi, a sandwich whose flavors are as complex as its history.

Finally Ken’s Time Machine revs up at the behest of backer Rick Neal, who wants to know just what was up when Jack Parsons met L. Ron Hubbard to attempt the Babylon Working.

Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook.