Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Gaming Hut starts on a somber note as we remember the roleplaying innovations of Aaron Allston (1960-2014.) We go on to discuss one of the key themes of his work, genre emulation at the tabletop.

The Eliptony Hut takes on a distinctly octagonal shape as we look at the eight-sided architectural influence of phrenologist and social reformer Orson Squire Fowler.

In the Business of Gaming, we share social media tips and tricks.

Finally, Eoin Keith Boyle makes a St. Patrick’s Day request: can Ken’s Time Machine be put to use preventing the English conquest of Ireland?

Once again Fenix Magazine occupies the coveted anchor sponsor slot. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re now bringing the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with their now-active Indiegogo campaign.

Don your chivalric armor to also thank sponsor Atlas Games, now unveiling Knightly Tales, the exciting new expansion for their classic Once Upon a Time card game.

That rumble in your molars heralds the thundering approach of the Open Metalcast Podcast, joining us as sponsor in a crescendo of aural extremity!

Grab your retrospective popcorn and hunker down in the Cinema Hut as Ken and Robin review their movie top tens for 2013.

Responding to popular demand, the Consulting Occultist assesses competing new claims of having cracked the cryptobotanical mysteries of the Voynich Manuscript.

In Ask Ken and Robin we hit the dimmer switch to address Richard Fryer’s question on lighting effects at the gaming table.

Then a ghostly romance unfolds as Ken’s Bookshelf unexpectedly reunites with the revenant spirit of an old favorite tome purveyor, returning from the west with lighter wallet and heavier luggage. What happened in the parking lot might surprise you!

Once again Fenix Magazine occupies the coveted anchor sponsor slot. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re now bringing the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with their now-active Indiegogo campaign.

Don your chivalric armor to also thank sponsor Atlas Games, now unveiling Knightly Tales, the exciting new expansion for their classic Once Upon a Time card game.

Staging a no-knock raid to flash its badge and confiscate your mi-go fetuses, it’s Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies, now on Kickstarter. Robin has a story in the main book, and Ken in the bonus selection, so it’s only fitting that we should welcome Arc Dream Publishing to our sponsor stable.

Find new reason to plunge into the dungeon as the Gaming Hut tackles ways of giving narrative meaning to F20 combat encounters.

Look at Fluffy in a new light as the Tradecraft Hut examines the animal spying  claims of trainer Bob Bailey, who in addition to creating the chicken Tic-Tac-Toe machine says he was a contractor for the CIA.

In Ask Ken and Robin, John Wilson asks Ken and Robin about turning homebrew sessions into published games and scenarios.

Time Incorporated revs up Ken’s Time Machine, asking him to pick one of ten unbuilt utopias from a recent i09 listicle and make it a reality. If you can’t guess which one he picks, you don’t know Ken.

Once again Fenix Magazine occupies the coveted anchor sponsor slot. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re now bringing the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with their now-active Indiegogo campaign.

Don your chivalric armor to also thank sponsor Atlas Games, now unveiling Knightly Tales, the exciting new expansion for their classic Once Upon a Time card game.

Staging a no-knock raid to flash its badge and confiscate your mi-go fetuses, it’s Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies, now on Kickstarter. Robin has a story in the main book, and Ken in the bonus selection, so it’s only fitting that we should welcome Arc Dream Publishing to our sponsor stable.

They said it couldn’t strike twice, but the Ask Ken and Robin lightning round is back, tackling game designer payment, Day After Ragnarok, book hunting, and a Rob Ford mini-update.

In the wide open spaces of the Genre Hut, we look at ways to nerdtrope the Western, including Ken’s Once Upon a Time in the North from Fenix magazine. We fit in all the John Waynes!

Reserve your kitchen outlets as Ken and Robin talk gadgets and appliances in the Food Hut.

Then look up, way up, to the paranoia of chemtrails in Conspiracy Corner.

Once again Fenix Magazine occupies the coveted anchor sponsor slot. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re now bringing the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with their now-active Indiegogo campaign.

Don your chivalric armor to also thank sponsor Atlas Games, now unveiling Enchanting Tales, the exciting new expansion for their classic Once Upon a Time card game.

We start this episode in the Gaming Hut, where we bat around ways to activate your player character’s character hook.

In our new segment, Crime Blotter, we examine the four categories of hit man, as proposed by a recent Birmingham City University study of British hired killers.

Tropes face off against cliches as we once again tell you How to Write Good.

Then Ken dons his Consulting Occultist regalia to tear the lid off the djinn menace.

Once again Fenix Magazine occupies the coveted anchor sponsor slot. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re now bringing the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with their now-active Indiegogo campaign.

Clank about in chivalric armor in fealty to Atlas Games, now unveiling Enchanting Tales, the exciting new expansion for their classic Once Upon a Time card game.

A curious case study, in which a regrettable glacier incident leads listener Joe Tyne to a Call of Cthulhu stumbling block, warrants treatment from the experts in Ask Ken and Robin.

At the request of listener Benjamin Blattberg, we essay a hidden gems segment of the Cinema Hut.

In Among My Many Hats, Ken quizzes Robin on his latest creation, The Gaean Reach: The Roleplaying Game of Interstellar Vengeance. Death to Quandos Vorn!

Finally, with a nod of the chrono-helmet to Kevin Kulp’s TimeWatch RPG Kickstarter, Ken’s Time Machine unscrambles the Ossian hoax to, somewhat reluctantly, restore the literary reputation of 18th century poet and Scottish revivalist James McPherson.

Once again Fenix Magazine occupies the coveted anchor sponsor slot. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re now bringing the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with their now-active Indiegogo campaign.

Our next sponsor, Sand and Steam Productions, is now well into its Kickstarter for their Fate-powered mythic Norse RPG, War of Metal and Bone.

Also aboard the sponsor train is Atlas Games, who in a dappled fairyland warehouse discovered the need to liquidate still perfectly fabulous copies of Once Upon Time 2nd Edition, as the 3rd Edition glimmers on the horizon. Take advantage of this special deal for Ken and Robin listeners!

Keep your silver dagger ready in the Gaming Hut as we look at campaign setting creation through the example of Ken’s Werewolves of Dacia, which will appear in the upcoming Best of Fenix anthology. Hat tip to Big Think for its Middle Earth-to-Earth conversion map.

Next, Derek Upham Asks Ken and Robin to solve the mystery of medieval knights in dire combat with snails.

Then, having found in the Cartography Hut a map showing where Soviet citizens were forbidden to go in 1955, we kick around the idea of restricted territories.

Finally, in the Eliptony Hut, we look back at various conceptions of the alien before the standardization imposed by the classic UFO era.

Additional hat tip: the no-index-cards-in-Italy story comes from Renato of Pinboard for the Mind.

Once again Fenix Magazine occupies our coveted anchor sponsor slot. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re poised to bring the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with a February Indiegogo campaign.

Our next sponsor, Sand and Steam Productions, is now well into its Kickstarter for their Fate-powered mythic Norse RPG, War of Metal and Bone.

Also aboard the sponsor train is Atlas Games, who in a dappled fairyland warehouse discovered the need to liquidate still perfectly fabulous copies of Once Upon Time 2nd Edition, as the 3rd Edition glimmers on the horizon. Take advantage of this special deal for Ken and Robin listeners!

Ask Ken and Robin dispenses advice on running SF and space opera games, in response to a query from Ed Hirsch.

In a curiously hexagonal Book Hut, we examine the seminal work of Argentinean fantasist Jorge Luis Borges, and the beautifully idiosyncratic English Lit class he once taught, courtesy of the newly translated book Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature.

Among My Many Hats prompts Robin to talk Storyscape, his design for a tablet-based tabletop roleplaying game, now being Kickstarted by friend of the show Slabtown Games.

The Consulting Occultist returns to the spiritualist movement of the 19th century to contemplate the Swedenborg-cribbing visions of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Poughkeepsie Seer.

Join us in welcoming a new anchor sponsor, Fenix Magazine. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re poised to bring the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with a February Indiegogo campaign.

Our next sponsor, Sand and Steam Productions, is now well into its Kickstarter for their Fate-powered mythic Norse RPG, War of Metal and Bone.

Also aboard the sponsor train is Atlas Games, who in a dappled fairyland warehouse discovered the need to liquidate still perfectly fabulous copies of Once Upon Time 2nd Edition, as the 3rd Edition glimmers on the horizon. Take advantage of this special deal for Ken and Robin listeners!

Seize the narrative steering wheel as a player in the Gaming Hut, where we discuss techniques to productively exercise character agency.

Uncover the layers beneath the layers of the History Hut, in which we find gaming and story fodder in multispectral palimpsest recovery.

In Ken and Robin Talk To Someone Else, we speak together to two someone elses, Cat Tobin and Simon Rogers of Pelgrane Press, who discuss the logistical lessons from the now-fulfilled Hillfolk Kickstarter.

Then we rev up Ken’s Time Machine to, at the behest of new sponsor Sand and Steam Productions, save the Viking colony of Vinland from extinction.

Yes, we said Sand and Steam Productions, now launching the Kickstarter for their Fate-powered mythic Norse RPG, War of Metal and Bone.

Also clambering aboard the sponsor train is Atlas Games, who in a dappled fairyland warehouse discovered the need to liquidate still perfectly fabulous copies of Once Upon Time 2nd Edition, as the 3rd Edition glimmers on the horizon. Take advantage of this special deal for Ken and Robin listeners!

We ring in 2014 with an Ask Ken and Robin from Ross Ireland, who wants to switch to a more serious horror tone after years of loosey-goosey play.

Then we zoom back in time to the dying embers of 2013, for a segment of Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else featuring James Wallis of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Once Upon a Time fame.

We conclude our episode of all-eponymous segments with another dive into Ken’s Bookshelf, this time examining his haul from our recent trip to London.

Once again we thank our anchor sponsor, Slabtown Games, who very soon will be launching a Kickstarter for Storyscape, a tablet-based tabletop roleplaying game Robin is currently designing for them.