Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Yohann Delalande kicks us off with an Ask Ken and Robin question about portraying current real-world horrors in RPGs without lapsing into insensitivity.

We fulfill this podcast’s Canadian content requirements in the Tradecraft Hut with a look at iconic hooded defector Igor Gouzenko.

Patron hero of surveyors Nain Singh Rawat inspires a duck into the Cartography Hut to consider exploration-based campaign frames.

Blond Venusians await in the Eliptony Hut for a profile of prolific contactee, mystic, archaeologist and fascist George Hunt Williamson.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

Roll yourself a critical hit by ordering from a freshly discovered special trove of The Bones, the book on dice from our pals at Gameplaywright. Notables including Wil Wheaton, John Kovalic and our own Kenneth Hite wax both cubic and polyhedral, now at a crazy low price.

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We start with an Ask Ken and Robin question from Ethan Cordray, who wants to know how a GM and player might collaborate in creating scenarios.

Inspired by this Malcolm Gladwell piece, the Crime Blotter examines the changing relationship between organized crime and upward mobility.

Fun with Science plays with your perceptions for a look at hallucinations and synaesthesia. Recommended reading: Oliver Sacks’ Hallucinations.

Speaking of reading, we conclude with another paw through Ken’s Bookshelf, this one cataloguing the haul from his recent jaunt to San Francisco.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

This episode is also brought to you by the Plot Points podcast. After you listen to us, listen to them analyze RPG adventures as literature.

Modern Myths wants you to know about its booth, a veritable oasis of roleplaying both indie and trad, at PAX East, right across from Indie Games on Demand.

Weighty personages surrounded by bullet-proof genre expectations surround us in the Gaming Hut as we examine script immunity in historical gaming.

The Mythology Hut finds us riffing a kid-friendly adventure idea arising from the superstitious connection between faeries and uncrushed eggshells.

Pol Jackson poses an Ask Ken and Robin poser about the difficulty of staging Tomb of Horrors style gotcha traps for today’s F20 players.

Finally, as the Oscars approach, we grab some popcorn in the Cinema Hut as we reveal our top ten lists for 2014.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

This episode is also brought to you by the Plot Points podcast. After you listen to us, listen to them analyze RPG adventures as literature.

Modern Myths wants you to know about its booth, a veritable oasis of roleplaying both indie and trad, at PAX East, right across from Indie Games on Demand.

We begin with endings as the Gaming Hut enumerates ways to build your roleplaying series to the biggest of finishes.

Among My Many Hats has Ken telling us about Vendetta Run, the latest installment of Ken Writes About Stuff, in which a spectral Wyatt Earp decides you’re in need of some rough supernatural justice.

How to Write Good looks at common pitfalls in mystery plotting.

That telltale salty crunch tells you that Ken’s Time Machine has been tasked by questioner Donald Dennis to inquire into the legend behind the invention of the potato chip.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

This episode is also brought to you by the Plot Points podcast. After you listen to us, listen to them analyze RPG adventures as literature.

What’s better than ravening ghouls prowling a blasted land for dead flesh to feast upon? Free ravening ghouls prowling a blasted land for dead flesh to feast upon! For a limited time only, grab Ken’s Ghouls installment of Ken Writes About Stuff for the grave-dirt price of $0.00.

A pithy remark from LEGO Batman inspires our latest excursion into the Gaming Hut, as we ponder the question of narratively acceptable character demises.

In the Tradecraft Hut we look at bone music, 50s era contraband pop music recordings etched against the will of Soviet authorities onto old medical X-rays.

The Recommendation Engine spits out manly suggestions from Ken and unthemed suggestions from Robin.

Finally, in response to a Nick Eden request, the Consulting Occultist introduces us to that seeming contradiction in terms, the Soviet Occult.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

This episode is also brought to you by the Plot Points podcast. After you listen to us, listen to them analyze RPG adventures as literature.

What’s better than ravening ghouls prowling a blasted land for dead flesh to feast upon? Free ravening ghouls prowling a blasted land for dead flesh to feast upon! For a limited time only, grab Ken’s Ghouls installment of Ken Writes About Stuff for the grave-dirt price of $0.00.

Ken and Robin remember a 90% scale replica of the façade of the Alamo in this episode themed around their recent sojourn in Austin, TX.

In the Gaming Hut we recapitulate a Chupacabracon panel with talk of villains and how to portray them.

The Food Hut has us munching on barbecue, Tex Mex and the wonder that is In and Out Burger.

The Eliptony Hut has a classic bit of carny cryptozoology in it—the Minnesota Iceman, now resident in Austin’s Museum of the Weird.

And finally Ken’s Time Machine has him ensuring continuing independence for the Republic of Texas.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

Choose your own sponsor, so long as it is Destiny Quest Infinite, an interactive fantasy game book like no other. Armed with nothing but your sword and a backpack, you enter a land of monsters, powerful forces, and shadowy secrets. Or check out the licensed computer version from Adventure Cow.

What’s better than ravening ghouls prowling a blasted land for dead flesh to feast upon? Free ravening ghouls prowling a blasted land for dead flesh to feast upon! For a limited time only, grab Ken’s Ghouls installment of Ken Writes About Stuff for the grave-dirt price of $0.00.

Join Ken and Robin for this live episode recorded at Chupacabracon in beautiful Austin, TX. The best audience ever, per capita, punch above their weight to keep us supplied with incisive questions. We discover that the Nerdtrope game is exceptions-based as Ken draws a historic quintuple Trope. Or is that Nerd? I forget. Vicissitudes of the road had their way with our audio quality this time out, but hey, quintuple. We couldn’t not release that.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

Choose your own sponsor, so long as it is Destiny Quest Infinite, an interactive fantasy game book like no other. Armed with nothing but your sword and a backpack, you enter a land of monsters, powerful forces, and shadowy secrets. Or check out the licensed computer version from Adventure Cow.

Verily and anon, adopt the cloak of darkness as Ken ducks into the Elizabethan tavern that is the Gaming Hut to discuss his School of Night GUMSHOE setting.

Violence and mayhem disrupt the tranquil comfort of the Food Hut as we examine America’s Whiskey Wars and riff some dystopian futuristic equivalents.

Should that scene end with a jump or a slide? How to Write Good mulls the art of transitions.

The Conspiracy Corner situates itself in a hotel room—the so-called Illuminati hotel room at Houston’s Hotel Zaza. We spitball the sinister plotlines that might spin from this weird location.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

The Magicians’ Guild turns out to be rife with factions and competing interests as the Gaming Hut looks at ways to add realistic messiness to your game’s imaginary institutions.

In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, Robin asks up-and-coming illustrator Rachel A. Kahn how an artist breaks into the roleplaying game market these days, and what her must-have tools and resources are.

The Cartography Hut unfurls this map of global criminal trading activity, and we wring gaming ideas from it.

Finally Ken’s Time Machine shakes off some mothballs, but not a sense of historical inevitability, as Lisa J. Steele asks Ken to keep Japan allied with the West in the run-up to WWII.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.

Our voices are as froggy as London used to be foggy in our first episode back after our UK sojourn. Inspired by the Museum of London’s current Sherlock Holmes exhibit, we usher a certain consulting detective into the Gaming Hut.

As listeners know, every trip to the UK occasions a raid by Ken on London’s book purveyors. So we peer deep into the unsorted pile of Ken’s Bookshelf for an epic vicarious cataloguing of his latest plunder.

Finally we wrap up our Dreamhounds of London inspired Culture Hut series with a look at the life, art and madness of Antonin Artaud and his Theater of Cruelty.

Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.