Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

We flip through some pages in the Gaming Hut as we discuss the evolution of roleplaying game graphic design, from aesthetics to utility.

Then we slip into the plush seats of the Cinema Hut to review the career of the great Hong Kong director Johnnie To. His latest masterpiece, Drug War, awaits a North American cinema release in August.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Chris Shorb asks if Robin’s Laws of Good Gamemastering is still relevant today.

Then the neglected dials of Ken’s Time Machine finally get twiddled as he heads back to the 15th century to save Joan of Arc.

From the Cartography Hut we send our separate adventurers on intercut journeys of exploration, as we riff on the fantasy game potential of the Atlas of True Names series.

How to Write Good connects the dots of stakes, consequences, and reader engagement.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Geoffery Nelson asks how iconic characters can engage in meaningful conflict without stopping the story dead as both dig their heels in.

Finally we conclude Ken’s series on the Nazi occult by veering at an impossible angle into the Eliptony Hut for a look at Nazi UFOs and the Hollow Earth.

Events in Egypt have us taking shelter in the Gaming Hut to suggest approaches to uprisings and revolutions in roleplaying narrative.

Then Robin beckons you to the Cinema Hut for a quick intro to Chinese film, as seen through three rarities recently screened at the TIFF Lightbox: the suppressed censorship satire Unfinished Comedy, showbiz melodrama on the cusp of the Cultural Revolution Two Stage Sisters and the proto-heroic bloodshed of The Story of a Discharged Prisoner.

Game design bubbles creative and economic get the Ask Ken and Robin treatment, thanks to a query from Ironicus.

Then the Consulting Occultist completes his obligations as a guide to the Nazi occult with a look at the scholarship-distorting, expedition launching academic department of the SS, the Ahnenerbe.

We start in the Gaming Hut by contemplating the massive Call of Cthulhu campaign. What drives the love for this classic cornerstone of roleplaying obsession?

In Ask Ken and Robin, Leó Páll Hrafnsson wants to know what the deal is with the famously lost Ninth Roman Legion.

Grab the remote in the Television Hut as we look at structure in TV shows, from their evolution to their application to roleplaying.

Then our epic Consulting Occultist series on the Nazi Occult explores the Thule Society, wealthy right-wing imaginers of lost continents who built an anti-Communist goon squad only to see it morph into the Nazi party.

We shuttle over to the Gaming Hut to continue our discussion of omnipresent surveillance, this time in the context of your roleplaying group’s tendency to turtle up.

The unveiling of the Word Hut sees us finding our preferences between US and UK words and punctuation. Petrol, anyone?

In Ask Ken and Robin, we respond to Daniel Fidelman’s question on how to pace the unsheathing of knives when player betrayal is on the agenda.

Then we head over to chat with the Consulting Occultist, as part four of our series on Nazi occultism leads us to metaphorically heft the Spear of Destiny.

Summer convention season kicks off with a Travel Advisory on Ken’s trip to Origins.

Robin beckons you into the Cinema Hut to share his rare chance to see the first Wong Fei-Hung film, 1949’s The Whip That Smacks the Candle.

Having established a Tradecraft Hut, we are naturally behooved to mull the implications of the newly whistleblown PRISM program of the NSA.

We wrap with part 3 of our Consulting Occultist series on the Nazi occult, this time focusing in on Irminist prophet and Himmler advisor Karl-Maria Wiligut.

That periodic thumping sound you hear is Robin’s mic falling apart as we record. Apologies for any sonic disorientation this may cause.

Meet us in the Gaming Hut for techniques to make your characters’ backstories shine during RPG play.

In Ask Ken and Robin we (meaning mostly Ken) address a question from friend of the site Jeromy French: “are there merits to reading August Derleth’s Lovecraftian fiction and why?”

Then we fire up the grills of the Food Hut to look at prepared condiments and sauces one might use without shame as part of one’s fresh cooking.

Finally, part two of our epic Consulting Occultist series on the Nazi occult sets the stage with Volkisch movements, Guido von List, and the cast of variously psychopathic characters who bring occult thought with them into Hitler’s high command.

This week’s Travel Advisory takes us to unfamiliar territory—not just the capital of Robin’s beloved Canada, but the On Words Conference held by the Writers’ Union of Canada. Come for compare/contrast between traditional and gaming publishing, stay for the Ottawa facts.

We bid a wistful Book Hut farewell to Jack Vance, the titan of SF and fantasy literature who inspired certain key concepts of roleplaying, not to mention the output of our sponsor Pelgrane Press—so much so that it is named after a Vancian creature.

In the Gaming Hut we list techniques for running successful defensive scenarios. Protecting your base needn’t lead to turtling all the way down.

Finally, a very special Among My Many Hats takes you inside the process of The Nazi Occult, Ken’s new history-bending work for the Osprey Adventures line. This serves as the prelude for a multi-part series on that very subject, which we’ll kick off next week!

First up, Ken and Robin enter the Gaming Hut to transcend their origins and discuss transhuman RPGs. How do we create inhuman characters human players can still portray?

In the Tradecraft Hut, we discuss the implications of the Obama administration’s war on leakers, and how to bring press revelations into your espionage gaming.

Robin then bows to popular demand with a Politics Hut Rob Ford update, this one covering the first thirteen days of the Toronto mayor’s crack video problems. (Warning: contents of scandal may have shifted our recording date.)

Finally Ken’s Time Machine revs up, with an account of how Ken altered our timeline to keep the 1928 Baltimore space program an amusing footnote, and not a historical catastrophe.

In the Gaming Hut, we examine the tradition of flaws and disads in RPGs. Do they put the “fun” in dysfunctional?

Then Ken and Robin adjourn to the Cinema Hut, where they try not to tell you too much about Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color while urging you to see it, and from there jump into the distinction between the explanatory and the experiential in storytelling.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Jon Leitheusser asks Robin to explain the process by which his game design aesthetic gelled.

Finally, fraud at Alaska’s ionosphere-bombarding HAARP facility sends us spiraling into an extra-chilly installment of Conspiracy Corner.