Episode 124: Live from Chupacabracon in Austin, TX
January 23rd, 2015 | Robin
Join Ken and Robin for this live episode recorded at Chupacabracon in beautiful Austin, TX. The best audience ever, per capita, punch above their weight to keep us supplied with incisive questions. We discover that the Nerdtrope game is exceptions-based as Ken draws a historic quintuple Trope. Or is that Nerd? I forget. Vicissitudes of the road had their way with our audio quality this time out, but hey, quintuple. We couldn’t not release that.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Choose your own sponsor, so long as it is Destiny Quest Infinite, an interactive fantasy game book like no other. Armed with nothing but your sword and a backpack, you enter a land of monsters, powerful forces, and shadowy secrets. Or check out the licensed computer version from Adventure Cow.
Episode 123: Freemium Democratic Regime
January 16th, 2015 | Robin
Verily and anon, adopt the cloak of darkness as Ken ducks into the Elizabethan tavern that is the Gaming Hut to discuss his School of Night GUMSHOE setting.
Violence and mayhem disrupt the tranquil comfort of the Food Hut as we examine America’s Whiskey Wars and riff some dystopian futuristic equivalents.
Should that scene end with a jump or a slide? How to Write Good mulls the art of transitions.
The Conspiracy Corner situates itself in a hotel room—the so-called Illuminati hotel room at Houston’s Hotel Zaza. We spitball the sinister plotlines that might spin from this weird location.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Episode 122: Accelerated Gameable Force
January 9th, 2015 | Robin
The Magicians’ Guild turns out to be rife with factions and competing interests as the Gaming Hut looks at ways to add realistic messiness to your game’s imaginary institutions.
In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, Robin asks up-and-coming illustrator Rachel A. Kahn how an artist breaks into the roleplaying game market these days, and what her must-have tools and resources are.
The Cartography Hut unfurls this map of global criminal trading activity, and we wring gaming ideas from it.
Finally Ken’s Time Machine shakes off some mothballs, but not a sense of historical inevitability, as Lisa J. Steele asks Ken to keep Japan allied with the West in the run-up to WWII.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Episode 121: Handy Scrying Mirror Carrying Case
January 2nd, 2015 | Robin
Our voices are as froggy as London used to be foggy in our first episode back after our UK sojourn. Inspired by the Museum of London’s current Sherlock Holmes exhibit, we usher a certain consulting detective into the Gaming Hut.
As listeners know, every trip to the UK occasions a raid by Ken on London’s book purveyors. So we peer deep into the unsorted pile of Ken’s Bookshelf for an epic vicarious cataloguing of his latest plunder.
Finally we wrap up our Dreamhounds of London inspired Culture Hut series with a look at the life, art and madness of Antonin Artaud and his Theater of Cruelty.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Episode 120: Live from Dragonmeet 2014
December 19th, 2014 | Robin
Just like sugar plums and figgy pudding, the annual live podcast from London’s Dragonmeet is here to warn us that December holds us in its thrall. Ken nerdtropes Genghis Khan and alien artefacts. Robin ups the ante on the tradition of live episode f-bombs. We contemplate Sigil’s thorniest immigration issues. And we tell you what the most expendable character type is.
Which brings our podcast to a close for another year. Have a happy and safe holiday of your choice. We’ll be back on January 2nd with another episode packed with mystery, gaming, surrealism, and of course the results of Ken’s annual London book buying spree.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Then follow the esoteric clues to the Kickstarter for Weird Detective: the Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Grab the PDF corebook for a mere five bucks, piling on additional goodies as your fear-constricted heart desires.
Episode 119: Sex Argentina
December 12th, 2014 | Robin
In Ask Ken and Robin, we answer an Ian Porell question about how much writing should go into a GUMSHOE NPC, and move on from there to supply other tips on creating supporting players for investigative games.
From there we take a short hop to the Gaming Hut to look at post-mortems and other ways of eliciting player feedback.
Our Dreamhounds of Paris-inspired visits to the Consulting Occultist continue with a consideration of mystical seeker George Gurdjieff.
Finally we pick up the lobster phone in the Culture Hut to talk about Dreamhounds’ most popular player character, Salvador Dali.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Then follow the esoteric clues to the Kickstarter for Weird Detective: the Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Grab the PDF corebook for a mere five bucks, piling on additional goodies as your fear-constricted heart desires.
Episode 118: There’s Nothing In It For Owls
December 5th, 2014 | Robin
In Ask Ken and Robin, Jeff Jones seeks advice on running an anti-Nazi campaign set in 30s America. We oblige in both pulp and occult genre modes.
Become conscious of an enticing aroma in the Gaming Hut as we look at creature senses.
The Consulting Occultist continues his Parisian sojourn with an examination of uxurious bookseller Nicolas Flamel, to whom later rumor and Harry Potter imputed alchemical mastery.
That segment draws inspiration from our Dreamhounds of Paris book, which also takes us into the Culture Hut to meet Marcel Duchamp, chess-playing wit and inventor of the avant garde as we know it.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Ken’s Dracula Dossier Kickstarter crawled back into its crypt this Wednesday. But you can defy the line between death and undeath by heading to this secret mountain redoubt, where all the deals from the campaign remain available for a limited time.
Episode 117: Covered in Cats and Croissant Crumbs
November 28th, 2014 | Robin
In Ask Ken and Robin, Stephanie asks Ken and Robin to find gaming ideas in the disappearance, and much later resurfacing, of Henry IV’s long-dead head.
The Gaming Hut has us looking at moments where player choice conflicts with character believability.
Back to matters Gallic, the Consulting Occultist details the life, thought, and possible Dreamlands influence of fin de siècle writer, ritualist and schmoozer Gerard Encausse.
Finally, our Dreamlands of Paris inspired sojourn in the Culture Hut continues with a look at that most contradictory of figures, the doctrinaire aesthetic revolutionary Andre Breton.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Show Ken you love him, and/or hate bloodsuckers, by kicking a few pounds in the direction of his Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Learn what MI6 doesn’t want you to know about the king of the vampires.
Heroically fashion a new civilization from the ashes of the old in Legacy: Life Among the Ruins, from UFO Press. Start your multi-generational quest to rebuild the world with a journey to Kickstarter. Now in its last week!
Episode 116: Okay, I’ll Go Get Your Leg
November 21st, 2014 | Robin
The Tradecraft Hut takes an unusual lead slot as Ken answers an FMGuru request for the tale of WWII Soviet spy Richard Sorge.
Horatio stands to our right and Laertes to our right as the Gaming Hut contemplates the use of supporting characters as foils.
Blasting his trumpet for Dreamhounds of Paris, the Consulting Occultist begins a mini-arc delving into the French occult, starting with scientist, spiritualist and polymath Charles Richet.
Even more brazenly touting Dreamlands, our just-opened Culture Hut kicks off an in-depth series with Surrealism 101.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Show Ken you love him, and/or hate bloodsuckers, by kicking a few pounds in the direction of his Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Learn what MI6 doesn’t want you to know about the king of the vampires.
Heroically fashion a new civilization from the ashes of the old in Legacy: Life Among the Ruins, from UFO Press. Start your multi-generational quest to rebuild the world with a journey to Kickstarter.
Episode 115: Anopheles Mosquito, Stagnant Pond
November 14th, 2014 | Robin
The hats in Among My Many Hats are bowlers, and green apples obscure our faces, because we’re talking about Dreamhounds of Paris, now available for preorder, and its companion volume, The Book of Ants.
In the Food Hut we answer a Ryan Macklin request to talk about herbs. Which delicious plant will we name as monarch over all the others?
We are pursued by a bear into the Gaming Hut for a discussion of Shakespearean gaming, as part of our nod to birthday celebrant Dina Katz.
Finally the Consulting Occultist makes an appearance in the Tradecraft Hut to discuss revelations that British psy-ops thought it would calm the Northern Irish conflict if they staged evidence of black masses.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Show Ken you love him, and/or hate bloodsuckers, by kicking a few pounds in the direction of his Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Learn what MI6 doesn’t want you to know about the king of the vampires.
Also sponsoring us this week is the Paranoia Kickstarter from Mongoose Publishing. Obey the Computer, citizen, and crowdfund a fast-playing new iteration of the classic RPG of a darkly humorous future.
