Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Special guest Rob Heinsoo joins Ken and Robin for a very special episode recorded live at Dragonmeet, from the municipal splendor of Kensington Town Hall in beautiful downtown London.

Ken nerdtropes the alchemical secrets of the JFK airport. Rob performs a parlor trick of his own by telling us a story about danger. And Robin spills some beans on continuity changes in the upcoming Feng Shui 2.

In response to audience questions the panel reveals its favorite gaming moments and sources of design envy.

This will be our last episode before we take a brief break for the holidays. We’ll be back with a brand new show on January 10th.

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.

Ken and Robin open the Gaming Hut to air evolving differences in gamer expectations, with Feng Shui player feedback offering a time portal between the mid-90s and now.

Among My Many Hats looks into Ken’s gig as a dramaturg for WildClaw Theatre’s stage production of Shadow Over Innsmouth.

With the holidays nearing, the Food Hut learns what Christmas food means to us.

Finally Ken’s Time Machine gears up to undo the 1979 Iranian revolution.

News that US states are now legalizing Internet gambling within their borders send us to an unusually garishly lit and jingle-jangling Gaming Hut, where we consider hobby gaming twists on playing for cash online.

Then Ask Ken and Robin visits the Consulting Occultist on behalf of Steven W. King, who wants to know what to put on his beginning occult bookshelf.

In the Cartography Hut we look for the fun in the relative inaccuracy of period maps.

Finally, in an all-too-inevitable Politics Hut, Robin shares the local perspective on  the now-international Rob Ford story, from the release of damning search warrant evidence to his loss of all but titular authority. You learned about it here first, probably!

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

Take a moment to study the menu in the Gaming Hut, as we contrast the operations of prix fixe and a la carte character improvement RPG designs.

Watch us cut the ribbon on our brand new Abandoned Idea Clearinghouse, in which we look at creative ideas we decided not to pursue and why we set them aside.

In Ask Ken and Robin, we don our therapeutic coats to help listener Martin Rundkvist through a crisis of verisimilitude brought on by his humanities degree.

Finally we enter the Eliptony Hut to probe deeply into the 1973 Pascagoula UFO abduction.

Slabtown Games moves into the anchor sponsor slot as it continues to tease the upcoming Kickstarter for 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.

We place a horseshoe over the mantle of the Gaming Hut to consider luck’s role as a branch point in roleplaying.

Then, at the behest of lead sponsor Stephen Jankiewicz, we enter the cobwebbed confines of the Horror Hut to ask if terror and sense of wonder can coexist.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Leo Pall Hrafnsson inquires: “How do you run a game that feels like Heat or Catch Me If You Can, where the PCs directly oppose one another?”

Finally, a grumbling time traveler revs up Ken’s Time Machine to intervene in the invention of Thanksgiving to build a more sensible, dare we say Canadian, separation between it and Christmas.

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.

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.