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Episode 97: Hamsterface

July 11th, 2014 | Robin

All hail the audio majesty of editor Rob Borges, who rescued this and last week’s episodes from the scourge of electronic interference, leaving only a touch of distortion in Robin’s sibilants.

A mystery questioner Asks Ken and Robin how they handle red herrings.

Ken flips on the projector in the Cinema Hut to get us started on the new Indian crime film.

The Cartography Hut looks at the aesthetic and propagandistic impact of legendary map artist Richard Edes Harrison.

We close with the Consulting Occultist, who tells us of the London stone and the magical significance of its current ignominious location.

From the magical land of sponsors comes Atlas Games, who with a twinkle of fairy dust revive their 2nd Edition Once Upon a Time clearance sale.

 

18 Responses to “Episode 97: Hamsterface”

  1. GB Steve says:

    You can see the stone here, if you go to Street View. This was in the pre-WH Smith times, but the grill is still there.

  2. Drew Clowery says:

    I believe the Red Herring question was mine, via twitter (@dclowery). Thank you very much for answering.

  3. darren t. says:

    Agreed with Robin where small amounts of red herrings are okay in some mysteries but be sure that the players can at least have the stuff to get to the next act & find that the red herring is just that or better yet put it with an npc so as long as they believe the npc, they might consider it but once they realize the npc is untrustworthy so is the red herring. As long as they don’t fall in the often mentioned trap of going after Charlie Chaplin (in a CoC game) it’s good to just keep the red herrings minimal by putting them in the game but throwing in more evidence that points to the right path where common sense shows what’s what. Great show guys & I too after visiting London consider it my favourite city & often want to go back.

  4. Stephanie says:

    After going down a bit of a Wiki-hole, I have a question for Ken and Robin: How would you use the assassination of Henry IV of France, and the subsequent disappearance (and eventual reappearance) of his head, in a roleplaying game?

  5. Dreaming Johnny says:

    Great show (as always)!

    I have a question, although I fear what it will do for my score on various watch-lists around the world.

    What sort of setting would be suitable for a story focused on the characters being assassins (or at-least a story focusing on assassinations much like a heist-story or such)?
    What are the important things that must exist in the world in order for stealthy murderers to be able to dramatically affect the world and be a central part of it.

  6. Sheila Ralston says:

    For Bollywood crime movies, I’d also recommend Khakee, also starring Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgn, a well-made thriller that points to crime syndicate/police corruption/terrorist entanglements while borrowing heavily from L.A. Confidential. Also, Ab Tak Chappan, also a Ram Gobal Varma film, is one of my top ten crime movies in general, not just of Hindi cinema. It’s not really a Bollywood movie, but not really of the parallel art cinema either, just a very gritty crime drama (no songs, no slapstick) about a real (possibly by-gone?) practice in Indian policing in which police straight-up execute criminals in so-called “encounter shootings” rather than entrust them to a justice system which is presumed to be too corrupt to convict criminals with deep pockets. Nana Patekar gives a phenomenal performance, even for him, in the lead role.

  7. Jacob says:

    I’m so glad you spelled Dhoom for our searching ease, but could you possibly spell out the other movies you discussed?

    • Robin says:

      Sholay
      Nayakan
      Dhoom
      Dhoom 2
      Black Friday
      Shootout at Lokhandwala
      Shootout at Wadala
      Once Upon a Time in Mumbai
      Sarkar
      Sarkar Raj

      • Arthur Monteath-Carr says:

        Thanks Robin.

        Could I be selfish/lazy and ask if future Cinema Huts could have the movie titles in the show notes? It makes coming back to look them up after listening to the show on the way to work easier. 🙂

  8. Cambias says:

    I’ve always had my doubts about the assertion that the Mercator projection somehow over-emphasizes the North over the global South. True, it exaggerates the size of northern lands, but how many Europeans or Americans really identify all that closely with Greenland, Baffin Island, or Novaya Zemlya? This all seems like some sort of tendentious argument dreamed up by someone trying to market Peterson projection maps back in the 1970s.

  9. Tim Daly says:

    Possible for a future AKAR:

    I’ve been recently rereading and running a little Pandemonium! RPG and noticed Robin’s contributions to the product. Pandemonium! never got much love when it was released, but I think it’s a great little game which in many ways was ahead of it’s time. It would probably fit into today’s indy game scene quite well.

    That leads to the question for Ken and Robin: what project (projects) did you work on in your career that never really took off do you think were overlooked? Any other “hidden gems” like Pandemonium?

  10. Kevin H. says:

    Good lord, I hope I’m not the first to mention this amazing browser extension that automatically plays clown music every time it detects you reading a story about Rob Ford:

    http://boingboing.net/2014/07/11/browser-extension-plays-clown.html

  11. Michael Kotschi says:

    So I ran across this site http://empireofthewheel.blogspot.com/ and found its eliptonic content to be quite intoxicating. The author intimates that the gentleman from Providence might have helped poison Houdini…yeah he went there.

    But wait there’s more!
    Hecate was not so bad.
    But wait there’s more!
    Aleister Crowley a really nice guy.
    But wait there’s more!
    Lovecraft so distraught at having to live in NY, he carries phile of cyanide.
    But wait there’s more!
    Lovecraft cribbed Cthulhu from Uncle Al

    Maybe in a Consulting Occultist I’d really like Kens take on this material.

    Oh and there is a podcast episode to listen to as well:
    http://radiomisterioso.com/audio/Walter_Bosley_6_15_14.mp3

    Thanks!

  12. RogerBW says:

    On the topic of red herrings, one way to stop enjoying House (or many other procedural shows) is to notice just how closely the characters’ effective skill is tied to the current time point in the episode. The first things they do will always be wrong. One virtue of RPGs is that adventures and play sessions don’t have to be correlated, so sometimes it’s possible for the PCs just to get it right.

    • Brett Evill says:

      I like that too. It is the basis of one of my reservations about emulation. That is, I don’t want to emulate the dumb formulaic features of extruded entertainment product.

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