Posts Tagged ‘Gaming hut’
Episode 43: In a Non-Necromantic Context
June 14th, 2013 | Robin
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!
Episode 42: A Faith Demand Moment
June 7th, 2013 | Robin
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.
Episode 41: The Kind of Scary Energy That Doesn’t Exist
May 31st, 2013 | Robin
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.
Episode 41: The Kind of Scary Energy That Doesn't Exist [ 1:11:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadEp 40: Forces of the Tomkitten
May 24th, 2013 | Robin
Ken and Robin enter the Gaming Hut to catch you up on what they’re playing right now, from xenoarcheaological exploration to carnies caught between the devil and alien invaders.
In Ask Ken and Robin, Terry O’Connell asks, “What’s your take on the Beyonce as Illuminati meme?”
How to Write Good leads us into a general consideration of the mash-up age, before we provide advice on how to pastiche the prose styles of previous eras.
Finally we rev up Ken’s Time Machine to prevent Cannibalism at the Jamestown colony.
Episode 39: The Book of Not At All Sinister Church Names
May 17th, 2013 | Robin
Two mysterious doors provide ingress into the Gaming Hut. Which one do we take, as we contemplate adventure structure and the choice points that comprise it?
Ask Ken and Robin takes an alternate history turn as Crane Brinton wonders: What does the alternate timeline where the Kaiser won WWI look like?
Then we hop into a mapping car and head to the Cartography Hut, where we riff on the storytelling inspiration of Google’s recent documentation of the Fukushima ghost zone.
We close with a visit to the Consulting Occultist, who recounts the Theosophy-meets-Evangelical-meets-New Age tale of Elizabeth Clare Prophet.
Episode 39: The Book of Not At All Sinister Church Names [ 1:16:15 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadEpisode 38: Driving Bananas Around
May 10th, 2013 | Robin
We start with a visit to the Gaming Hut to discuss the play utility of illustrations.
In the Food Hut we explore the legends and lore of packaged goods, including the secret origins of Cool Whip, the Twinkie, and Gatorade.
Conrad Kinch Asks Ken and Robin how one guides a playtester to greatness. Michael Cule adds a supplemental: have we ever regretted not implementing a piece of playtester advice?
Finally, Ken’s Time Machine takes us to the intractable yet little mythologized tragedy that was the Trail of Tears.
Episode 36: A Scuba Diver Walks Into an Ice Cream Shop
April 26th, 2013 | Robin
Ken and Robin hit a bare and blackened stage to bring the improv concept of “yes anding” to the Gaming Hut.
In Ask Ken and Robin, they answer Kevin J. Maroney’s question about picking a game for roleplaying newbies.
In its return appearance, How To Write Good tackles the basics of short story structure.
And finally, listener Falko Sieverding proposes a mission for Ken’s Time Machine. Is maintaining the Vice-Presidency of Henry Wallace past 1944 the way to stop the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Episode 36: A Scuba Diver Walks Into an Ice Cream Shop [ 1:13:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadEpisode 35: The Most English Story Ever Told
April 19th, 2013 | Robin
We start in the leatherbound precincts of the Book Hut for a look at a classic piece of early travel writing, Alexander William Kinglake’s Eothen. Grab as a Gutenberg ebook, or in print.
Still in a choleric mood, we nip over to the Gaming Hut to examine the presentation of epidemic disease in fantasy gaming worlds.
Among My Many Hats provides an inside look at Ken’s new subscription series from Pelgrane Press, the euphoniously titled Ken Writes About Stuff. Snag it from the newly spiffed-up Pelgrane shop.
A recent TED talk controversy provides a jumping-off point for the Eliptony Hut, in which we consider the works of cross-disciplinary eliptonist Graham Hancock.
Episode 34: Easily Approached By My Techniques
April 12th, 2013 | Robin
Ken and Robin meet in the Gaming Hut to workshop a game mechanic—the interpersonal disadvantage.
The Tradecraft Hut uses further evidence that Blackwater served as a CIA front as an opportunity to riff on the differences between reality levels in espionage games and fiction.
Ask Ken and Robin sees our intrepid heroes venturing from behind the couch to answer HippyWizard’s query on overcoming the shyness factor at the game table.
And finally, Ken’s Time Machine prevents the arrest and death in custody of Pope Pius VI.
Episode 32: Cash in Your Magic Swords
March 29th, 2013 | Robin
Scoops of polyhedrals in hand, we enter the Gaming Hut to contemplate the power of experience points. Are they justified in a genre-emulative design?
In Ask Ken and Robin, Darren Watts asks Ken to explain how zombies can be one of the two great 20th century myths, since this means either Superman or Godzilla aren’t?
Science Hut puts American exceptionalism under the microscope, or at least sits it down in a room and offers it a sociological marshmallow. Have scientific theories of human nature met their WEIRD?
Finally we meet the Consulting Occultist in the non-standard confines of the Tradecraft Hut, where we open an Elizabethan dossier on spy and playwright Christopher Marlowe.
