Episode 401: Chorus Cubed
June 26th, 2020 | Robin
In the Gaming Hut, Ken introduces us to the meta-textual, meme-filled wonderland that is his Fall of Delta Green player group.
The Crime Blotter visits the wild mobbed-up years when Montreal Quebec was the Vegas of the north.
In How To Write Good a question from beloved Patreon backer Daniel Gill prompts a look at present tense and other contemporary literary devices in fantasy fiction.
Finally Ken’s Time Machine attempts a difficult bank shot. Time Inc. has always wanted to prevent the Robert Kennedy assassination. But how to do it without, as detailed in this Smithsonian piece by Kevin Sandler, erasing Scooby Doo from the timeline?
Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!
Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.
The place you only think you remember explodes with weird danger in Welcome to the Island, the first adventure anthology for Over the Edge from Atlas Games. Launch brand new stories, add intriguing complications to your existing arcs, or create exciting one-shots that bring the weird to your gaming table.
You’ve heard him talk about it. Now you can get it at retail or in the Pelgrane Press store: The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. Shatter your world with this eerie, physically imposing GUMSHOE game of decadent art and multiple existences. For a limited time only, enter the voucher code YELLOW at the Pelgrane shop to get 15% off all Yellow King items when you combine the core set with Absinthe in Carcosa and/or The Missing and the Lost.
The treasures of Askfageln can be found at DriveThruRPG. Get all issues of FENIX since 2013 available in special English editions. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, along with equally stellar pieces by Graeme Davis and Pete Nash. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish. While you’re at it, grab DICE and Freeway Warrior!
Arc Dream Publishing’s Shane Ivey brings you Swords and Sorceries, fifth edition adventure in a sea-swept world inspired by ancient myth. Seek your fortunes, or find gruesome death in the tombs of forgotten gods and evils best left buried. Seize all three adventures, Sea Demon’s Gold, Song of the Sun Queens, and Tomb of Fire, today!
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While I have no doubt that you’ve gotten complaints about a first-person style, I haven’t seen that as a general complaint in fantasy. All you have to do is look at Glen Cook’s Garrett, PI and Black Company series, Steve Brust’s Jhereg series, Robert Zelazny’s Amber series, Jim Butcher’s Dresden series, …, all of which have sold very well indeed, have been well reviewed, and have been hugely influential in the genre.
Any complaint about first person being out of the norm in the genre would be either naive or a proxy for some other complaint. Not that either naivety or disingenuity (or disingenuousness; both words are used) are especially rare, of course.
Aside:
“It would just be ‘plont’, as in Jacques Plante, the hockey player.”
The only way that could have been more Canadian would have been if Robin had first apologized for correcting Ken. 😎
Oliver Dickenson’s Griselda stories for White Dwarf did much to populise Glorantha in the UK.