We put down our catalogues of iron rations and guaranteed unpossessed cats to venture into the Gaming Hut and discuss the allure of shopping and gear in roleplaying games.

Inside the perimeter of the Tradecraft Hut we round up such national security concerns as Angela Merkel’s cellphone and the secret Twitter life of dismissed White House staffer Jofi Joseph.

Corwyn Pendragon Asks Ken and Robin to name their touchstone works on story and structure.

Finally Ken uses his high-level Consulting Occultist borrowing privileges to scrutinize the legendary Voynich Manuscript.

A new honor roll of sponsors joins us to help keep the podcast going.

Serving as anchor sponsor this week is author Stephen Jankiewicz. Among his many works, KARTAS listeners may be most drawn to his weird tales in the Lovecraft tradition, as found in his collections Medusa, the Drowned and Other Tales and The Muse of the Monstrous. Check out his stuff on Amazon.

Slabtown Games joins us to tout Storyscape, a tablet-based tabletop roleplaying game Robin is currently designing for them.

Kotadama Heavy Industries invites you to explore Ryuutama: The Natural Fantasy RPG, translated by Matt Sanchez & Andy Kitkowski. Satisfy your yearning for travel and exploration by jumping aboard their successful Kickstarter campaign.

Ken has returned from the Chicago Film Festival to regale the Cinema Hut with demonic pacts, ghost possession, a Kurdish western, and an unusually sympathetic take on the new Dario Argento flick.

As prompted by George Pletz, Ask Ken and Robin considers the picaresque and floats various techniques for strictly episodic RPGing.

In the Genre Hut we mull the highly problematic footprint Fu Manchu has planted in pop culture.

Finally, we rev up Ken’s Time Machine, sending our chrono-hero to whichever sack of Rome he chooses to prevent.

Our anchor sponsor this episode is Engine Publishing and their system-neutral GM resource, Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management. Get $5 off in the Engine Publishing store using code KARTAS20, good through November 2013!

Gather in the Gaming Hut as we discuss differences of perspective between game players and game designers.

In How to Write Good we explore that most ancient of all fiction maxims. What does it mean to write what you know?

Erik Otterberg supplies us the subject for Ask Ken and Robin: what if H. P. Lovecraft had lived to a ripe old age?

Finally, popular demand, as it so often does, cries out for a sequel—in this case, the third Politics Hut retelling of the ongoing saga of Toronto mayor Rob Ford. In the segment you’ll hear Robin mention the strange suspended feeling of waiting over a period of months for the big shoe to drop. Well, it dropped yesterday, rendering this segment, recorded last week, a halcyon snapshot of a bygone day. Still, it will help to bridge the gap from when non-Torontonians stopped following the story and yesterday, when he once again made headlines worldwide.

Feel all leafy-like as Ken issues an autumnal Travel Advisory for his recent road trip to Lovecraft’s Vermont and Marblehead.

Bathe in the cathode rays of the Television Hut as we compare and contrast two nerd-relevant new shows—”Sleepy Hollow” and “Marvel’s Agents of Shield.”

In Ask Ken and Robin we take on a Jeromy French query on the use of music in roleplaying games.

Finally, with a sigh of palpable reluctance, the Consulting Occultist educates us on the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Our anchor sponsor this episode is Engine Publishing and their system-neutral GM resource, Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management. Get $5 off in the Engine Publishing store using code KARTAS20, good through November 2013!

To what extent should an adventure tell a story to the GM who is about to read it? Journey with us into the Gaming Hut to find out.

Then fire up your laptops with their Cartography Hut screensavers and geographic information systems to look at the genre possibilities of digital cemetery mapping.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Tom Clare asks about using in-world narrative voices to write rules text and setting material.

We conclude by revving up Ken’s Time Machine and urging him to reverse the Gran Sasso raid, in which the Nazis rescued Mussolini from Allied custody.

With the smoke from our burning village billowing behind us, we take momentary refuge in the Gaming Hut to discuss great migration campaign frames.

Under the war-room glare of the Geopolitics Hut we look at the averted strike on Syria and the limits of military intervention.

Ask Ken and Robin features a Tim Daly question about the relative virtues of designing a game engine from the ground up, as opposed to adapting an existing house system.

Finally the Consulting Occultist goes back to basics to study the surprisingly young history of the Tarot.

Our anchor sponsor this episode is Engine Publishing and their system-neutral GM resource, Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management. Get $5 off in the Engine Publishing store using code KARTAS20, good through November 2013!

Gather your Hegelian war band around the speakers to listen to our opening Gaming Hut segment, in which we look at ways to transform groups of murder hoboes into ensemble procedural casts.

We open a historical case file in the Tradecraft Hut, looking at the role spy novelist William Le Queux, abetted by the Daily Mail, played in whipping up espionage fever in the nineteen-oughts.

Among My Many Hats prompts Robin to share his preparatory thinking on the new edition of Feng Shui he’ll be working on, in partnership with Atlas Games and Atomic Overmind.

Finally we dust off Ken’s Time Machine and send him off to extend by at least a generation the golden age that was Periclean Athens.

Take a moment to appreciate the support of episode sponsor and Eliptonic essayist Matthew Rossi. Check out his Kindle-ready books Things That Never Were, Bottled Demon, and At last, Atlantis at Amazon!

If it’s late September, it must be time for Robin to exit bleary-eyed from the Lightbox theater and stumble into the Cinema Hut to regale us with his findings from the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. Listen to Ken wish he had more crossover with the upcoming Chicago Film Festival, or follow along at home.

Then Ken and Robin Recycle Audio, capping off their suite of excerpts from the Gen Con GUMSHOE panel.

Finally, popular demand decrees that we venture into the Eliptony Hut to tackle the recent appearance of a monument to Azathoth in Ken’s old stomping ground, Oklahoma City.

Joining us as sponsor this episode is Engine Publishing and their system-neutral GM resource, Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management. Get $5 off in the Engine Publishing store using code KARTAS20, good through November 2013!

Also aboard the sponsor train, Eliptonic essayist extraordinaire Matthew Rossi. Check out his Kindle-ready books Things That Never Were, Bottled Demon, and At last, Atlantis at Amazon!

Join us for a very special live episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, live from FanExpo Canada. Hop in our time machine and journey back to Toronto on the weekend before Labor Day to hear about ninja anti-competition efforts, our most hated gaming clichés, and much, much more. Not to mention the toxic menace of the cronut burger.

Joining us as very special sponsor is the Bundle of Holding, which just happens to be offering an incredible Ken and Robin-related deal—the Bundle of GUMSHOE! Until Saturday, Sept 28th, you can grab PDFs of Ashen Stars, Mutant City Blues, See Page XX v1, and the first four issues of Ken Writes About Stuff — plus a 1-year KWAS subscription. Pay more than the current average and grab Night’s Black Agents and The Zalozhniy Quartet, too—plus additional sweeteners yet to be announced!

Also sponsoring us this week, writer and musician David Maurice Garrett. Check out his book Tome of Horror and his album Al Azif.

Having survived his epic three weekends, three conventions journey into the heart of geekdom, Ken returns to issue a Travel Advisory on his final leg, which took him to the newly de-asterisked DragonCon.

In How to Write Good we consider discipline, routine, and various techniques to keep the productivity flowing at the keyboard.

Then Ken and Robin Recycle Audio, with the first of two excerpts from the Gen Con GUMSHOE and investigative roleplaying panel.

Finally we give the weary Consulting Occultist a topic he should be able to do while standing on his head—those diffusely mystical purveyors of alchemical imagery, the Rosicrucians.

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Special thanks to this episode’s lead sponsor, Genesis of Legend Publishing, and its Spark RPG.

Also joining us as sponsor this week, writer and musician David Maurice Garrett. Check out his book Tome of Horror and his album Al Azif.