Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

In our final episode of 2012, we issue a Travel Advisory on our recent trip to Dragonmeet in London. A seamless segue then ushers us to the wonder of Ken’s Bookshelf, in which Robin vicariously enjoys the impressive pile of tomes Ken liberated from the British Isles during his journey.

With yet another end of the world imminent, we are then behooved to cut the ribbon on the Mythology Hut to consider the State of the Apocalypse, 2012 edition.

In Ask Ken and Robin, we ponder the ideal RPG rules set for the play-by-forum format.

We close with another visit to the Consulting Occultist, who this time around delves into the murky facts behind a reputed 17th century French Satanism outbreak, better known as the Affair of the Poisons.

We’ll be back on Jan 11, 2013 with our next new episode. Until then, please accept the seasonal greeting of your choice and have a safe and pleasant holiday!

Join us for our first episode recorded in front of a live audience, in the council chambers at Kensington Town Hall as part of Dragonmeet 2012. We welcome special guest Simon Rogers for an uber edition of Ask Ken and Robin, which in turn encompasses a panoply of our trademark huts. In the process as we talk Pelgrane Plans, the experience of publishing, digital tools, dino-riding samurai, crowdfunded exhumations and why a question about the Spanish Inquisition and the Illuminati hardly counts as a question at all.

This week’s episode  commences with a trip to the Gaming Hut to consider Robin’s dichotomy of rewards versus incentives, which segues into a discussion of the co-designer syndrome in playtest feedback.

Ask Ken and Robin fields a question from Brett Evill on how one might bend history to add Ruritania-style postage stamp states back to the map of Europe.

We swap the key cooking tips we’d wished our time traveling present selves had told our neophyte incarnations as the Food Hut tackles minimaxing in the kitchen.

Then a recent report on the decoding of the Copiale Codex sends us to Conspiracy Corner to consider the history of secret societies through the obscured lenses of the Great Enlightened Society of Oculists.

In Ask Ken and Robin, we examine the popularity, or lack thereof, of the western as a roleplaying genre, and point to models historical and cinematic for the adventuring party in spurs and Stetsons.

We venture into a particularly cramped and cluttered iteration of the Cartography Hut to spin a passel of story threads from the real-life tale of the Mount Washington map hoard.

With zombie-like tread we shamble down the aisles of the Cinema Hut to chew over the career of director George A. Romero.

Then Time Incorporated once more dispatches Ken’s Time Machine, this time to prevent the murder of Salvador Allende and the ensuing ascension to power of Augusto Pinochet.

Inspired by Christian Marclay’s cinechronological video installation The Clock, Gaming Hut examines time and pacing in roleplaying.

The Schaudenfreude Institute initiates a new PhD course and Ken plots a bold path forward for his beloved Republican party as we enter the ballot booth-like confines of the Politics Hut to mull the 2012 Presidential Election.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Justin Mohareb, in a cleverly submitted audio question, asks Robin to expound on his theory of the one okay game store.

Finally, we power down the cloaking device concealing our brand-new Tradecraft Hut to look at the Petraeus resignation and its place in the history of sexual security scandals.

In The Business of Gaming, Robin shares the Kickstarter lessons he learned from the recent bumper crowdfund of his new roleplaying game, Hillfolk.

Ken brings the light of his presence to a devastated New Jersey in Travel Advisory, recounting his adventures at Metatopia.

Ask Ken and Robin envisions the Dominion of America, the alternate world political entity resulting from Britain’s sensible management of its North American colonies.

Then Ken in his guise as the Consulting Occultist finds the standards-loving organist behind media-seeking Satanist Anton LaVey.

We kick off with another film festival wrap-up in the Cinema Hut, this time Ken’s visit to the Chicago International Film Festival.

Ask Ken and Robin asks us to contemplate the differences between two of Robin’s game engines, DramaSystem and Skulduggery, leading us to contemplate a broader old saw: does system matter?

In the Cartography Hut we examine a map of Chicago gangland in 1926, limning an urban geography of booze and bullets.

Then we rev up Ken’s Time Machine, sending him back to prevent the burning of the library at Alexandria. Or burnings, if you prefer.

This week’s Ask Ken and Robin asks us to turn a previous thing that Ken always says on its head. When is it better not to base your setting on the real world?

Then Robin and Ken square off in the History Hut for their long-planned reenactment of the War of 1812. As in real history, the Canadian battles the American to a standstill and therefore achieves resounding victory, as graded on a curve.

At the request of beloved sponsor Dork Tower, Ken and Robin then establish yet another new hut, this time the Food Hut, in which a discussion of our favorite recipes and shopping haunts leads us to a sense of place, waves of immigration to Toronto, and the death of the Chicago meat packing industry.

Finally we drop in again on the Consulting Occultist for an introduction to Kenneth Grant, whose role as Derleth to Aleister Crowley’s Lovecraft went as far as incorporating Shub-Niggurath into his ritual practices.

We kick off with a Gaming Hut segment contemplating the question: is it ever okay to kick someone out of your game group and, if so, when?

Jason Breti supplies our Ask Ken and Robin question, leading us to examine Sandy Petersen’s original draft for Call of Cthulhu as compared to the final game we all know and love.

Then, in That Thing I Always Say, Robin, with a little help from Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, shows you how not to have wrong opinions about art.

And in a surprise Ken’s Time Machine twist, Ken tells us how he already altered the time stream, when he averted nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This week’s installment of Ask Ken and Robin prompts us to wax autobiographical and reveal our similar yet opposite secret origins.

Then we descend into the Paris catacombs, escaping from what we find there only through the maps snatched from the high cabinets of the Cartography Hut.

[From Temples, Tombs and Catacombs, part of Profantasy Software’s Source Maps series.]

The Business of Gaming prompts mulling of the history and choices of open game licensing, now that Robin has to figure out the best license for DramaSystem.

We close with the ever-popular Consulting Occult as Ken gives us the 101 on Elizabethan magician, mathematician and cartographer (sense a theme here?) John Dee.