Posts Tagged ‘That Thing I Always Say’
Episode 340: Jar Cats
April 19th, 2019 | Robin
In another imperious edition of That Thing I Always Say, Robin says, “Envision this in play.”
Ask Ken and Robin finds Patreon backer Kevin Roy seeking the scoop on remote control inventor John Hays Hammond Jr.
Backer Martijn Waegemakers meets us in the Mythology Hut to ponder the diminishing returns of Robin Hood adaptations.
Backer Dan O’Hanlon summons Ken’s Time Machine to peer into the reality where ecstasy replaced LSD as the iconic sixties drug.
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.
Atlas Games’ Gloom gets chillier and killier as Gloom of Thrones breaches the wall and rampages across Kickstarter until April 29th. Doom! Wilderness travel! More doom! At least in Gloom version you know you’ll get an ending!
Ken’s latest roleplaying game, The Fall of Delta Green, is now available in print or PDF or both from Pelgrane Press. Journey to the head-spinning chaos of the late 1960s, back when everyone’s favorite anti-Cthulhu special ops agency hadn’t gone rogue yet, for this pulse-pounding GUMSHOE game of war, covert action, and Mythos horror.
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 presents a gorgeous new edition of Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, a deluxe hardback in delightful faux snakeskin, with a foreword by John Scott Tynes, annotations by our own Kenneth Hite, and stunning full-pate color illustrations by Samuel Araya. Grab it while it lasts in the Arc Dream store.
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Episode 287: In League With Leopard Seals
April 6th, 2018 | Robin
Robin tries out a new maxim in That Thing I Always Say: in a game RPG session, the only way to go off track is a dead end.
In The Culture of Gaming, we look at gatekeeping, which rears its head once more with the rise of streamed play.
Finally, in Ken’s Bookshelf, our resident bibliomane caresses the teetering pile of books he liberated from Moe’s Books in the Bay Area.
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.
In Atlas Games’ wickedly different cooperative deck-building game Witches of the Revolution, you and your doughty coven fight the American Revolution the way it was really fought: with spells aplenty! Resurrect Ben Franklin, cure Paul Revere of lycanthropy and keep those red-coated witch hunters at bay.
Ken’s latest roleplaying game, The Fall of Delta Green, is now available for preorder from Atlas Games. Journey to the head-spinning chaos of the late 1960s, back when everyone’s favorite anti-Cthulhu special ops agent hadn’t gone rogue yet, for this pulse-pounding GUMSHOE game of war, covert action, and Mythos horror.
Grab the translated riches of FENIX magazine in a special bundle deal from our friends at Askfageln, over at Indie Press Revolution. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, a cornucopia of articles, complete games, plus the cartoon antics of Bernard the Barbarian. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish.
With your Handlers Guide already at your side, it’s time to assemble some operations to spiral your Delta Green operatives into paranoia and Mythos horror. Delta Green: A Night at the Opera features six terrifying adventures from the conspiratorial minds of Dennis Detwiller, Shane Ivey, and Greg Stolze. Preorder before it’s desperately too late!
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Episode 259: All the Cute Girls are Capulets
September 15th, 2017 | Robin
In That Thing I Always Say, we examine Ken’s maxim that death spirals make for good gaming.
With Labor Day in the rear view mirror, the Cinema Hut looks back at blockbuster season for a round up of the summer movies that were.
Finally the Consulting Occultist serves up a reply to Patreon backer David Shaw, who seeks the secret truth on occult Kashmir.
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.
In Unknown Armies, Atlas Games’ modern-day, occult roleplaying game, you play the heroically broken people who conspire to fix the world. That conspiracy just got easier, with the arrival of the game on store shelves near you! 
The book has been written. The book has been read. Now it rewrites you. Across time it spreads, creating dread new realities. And you’re in all of them. Robin’s epic new GUMSHOE project, The Yellow King Roleplaying Game has concluded its Kickstarter run, but is now available for pre-order at the Pelgrane Store for those who missed it. 
Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. 
John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer! 
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Episode 212: I Was Scheduled For One Anyway
October 14th, 2016 | Robin
We kick off another episode inspired entirely by Patreon backer requests with John Corey, who asks Ken to expand on real history as the best setting for gaming and the challenges of reskinning it, thus inviting another round of That Thing I Always Say.
The enigmatic asker known only as Bryan ushers into the Horror Hut to consider Lovecraftian spam.
In the Tradecraft Hut, Simon Hedge requests a 101 on Kremlinology.
And Neil Dalton poses a probing question in the Eliptony Hut, about horror writer, UFO contactee and podcaster Whitley Strieber.
Get trapped in Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Atlas Games’ addictive new card game Lost in R’lyeh. Take a selfie with your purchased copy of the game at your brick and mortar game retailer and send it to Atlas to claim your special Ken and Robin promo card. 
Do intervals between Ken’s Time Machine segments leave you listless, bored, and itchy? Then you’re in luck, because TimeWatch, the wild and woolly GUMSHOE game of chrono-hopping adventure has now blasted its way into our reality. Brought to you by master of over-the-top fast-paced fun Kevin Kulp and our reality-maintaining overlords at Pelgrane Press. 
For those seeking yet more Ken content, his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. Attention, operatives of Delta Green, the ultra-covert agency charged with battling the contemporary forces of the Cthulhu Mythos! Now everything you need to know to play Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, perhaps extending your valiantly short field life, can be found in the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook. 
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Episode 89: The Elvis of the European Occult Underground
May 16th, 2014 | Robin
The Gaming Hut reverberates with spectral dread as we find ways to make ghosts and hauntings scary in roleplaying.
Fun with Science looks for story and gaming grist in the increasingly respected, and increasingly mind-blowing, multiverse theory of cosmological physics.
In That Thing I Always Say Robin goes on about the lasting influence a game’s first adventure has on the way it is played thereafter.
The Consulting Occultist finishes his major figures of the French enlightenment trilogy with the immortal Comte de Saint Germain.
It’s yo ho ho and a pocketful of doubloons as Atlas Games surveys the seven seas from the crow’s nest that is our coveted anchor sponsor slot. Parrot on its shoulder, it orders up another special deal for Ken and Robin listeners, this time in the form of their innovative game of piratical nautical warfare, Pieces of Eight.
This week’s show is also brought to you in part by the World of Aetaltis. The Temple of Modren, the first sourcebook introducing this exciting new Pathfinder Compatible world, is now Kickstarting.
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Episode 12: +4 Damage from Boat
October 25th, 2012 | Robin
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.
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Episode 4: Purely Medicinal
August 30th, 2012 | Robin
Stuff talked about on this week’s episode include:
The debut of our segment That Thing I Always Say, in which we catch you up on Ken and Robin fundaments. We start with Ken’s contention that no invented setting is as interesting as the real world.
Ask Ken and Robin invites us to contemplate the mental plutonium of a tag-team follow-up to Robin’s The Armitage Files. While we can’t quite whip that rabbit out of our hats, we do talk about an eerily similar project, the still-percolating Dracula Dossier for Night’s Black Agents.
Because Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Ken’s collaborator on that project, just happened to be imprisoned in Ken’s library lair staying at Ken’s place as we recorded, we put him in the spotlight for our first segment of Ken or Robin Talk To Someone Else. We chat about his ENnie-nominated Ashen Stars scenario collection, Dead Rock Seven, and its Night’s Black Agents counterpart, The Zalozhniy Quartet. Find Armitage, Dead Rock, Night’s Black Agents, and Zalozhniy at the Pelgrane Press Store.
Then we withdraw to the Gaming Hut to talk about creating interesting, playable female characters for freeforms and convention tabletop sessions.
We wrap by taking another spin in Ken’s Time Machine, in which his efforts to retroactively fix the US health care system take him to a steamer on the Congo, to quaff a quinine-laden beverage with a bumptious ex-president.
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