Episode 127: Blah Blah Zombies Blah Blah
February 13th, 2015 | Robin
We begin with endings as the Gaming Hut enumerates ways to build your roleplaying series to the biggest of finishes.
Among My Many Hats has Ken telling us about Vendetta Run, the latest installment of Ken Writes About Stuff, in which a spectral Wyatt Earp decides you’re in need of some rough supernatural justice.
How to Write Good looks at common pitfalls in mystery plotting.
That telltale salty crunch tells you that Ken’s Time Machine has been tasked by questioner Donald Dennis to inquire into the legend behind the invention of the potato chip.
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.
This episode is also brought to you by the Plot Points podcast. After you listen to us, listen to them analyze RPG adventures as literature.
What’s better than ravening ghouls prowling a blasted land for dead flesh to feast upon? Free ravening ghouls prowling a blasted land for dead flesh to feast upon! For a limited time only, grab Ken’s Ghouls installment of Ken Writes About Stuff for the grave-dirt price of $0.00.
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Speaking of garum, there’s a mysterious upper class figure in the origin story of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce but it can’t be Ken because no one gets drunk in the tale.
I thought that the reason silphium got harvested out was because it was a decent contraceptive.
Another thing apart from the convention on the ill-fated cowboy is similar to how the Final Revelation works where the party is given some extra characters so instead of reading a few pages of some ill-fated characters, the players get to play them like a mini-one shot inside their campaign. This works great to elevate the horror of how doomed the campaign characters are when they go through the one-shot & emerge to see just how doomed/motivated they are.
Speaking of Star Trek, there was an original series episode if I recall of the spirit of a killer bouncing from person to person. For Fear Itself, the GM can do the same where it is a mix of the movie The Hidden & Wyatt Earp, giving the players a way of finding the source of the spirit of vengeance as it bounces between mortals to track them down.
ps-love the tangent on the egg cream drink, makes no sense here either. True on the dessert of Germany, over the holidays at work someone brought in German cakes & other sweet things & like the German automobile, the desserts were made with efficiency and tradition yet without much fun (after a few tries of these German sweets, it seems they have no fun in Germany with foods like this & I will avoid these foods in the future).
I understand the recent documentary about Chinese food mentions the origin of General Tso – http://www.thesearchforgeneraltso.com/
I appreciate Ken’s desire to spread addictive snacks up and down the timeline, but has he actually thought through the implications of promoting deep-fried foods to the audiences for the Elizabethan Theatrical Renaissance? Cooking fat fires are still a significant concern for modern fire services, and at least we have fire services. Surrounding Elizabethan theatre buildings with low-tech deep far friers sounds like an excellent way to delete the art form, and quite likely a measurable percentage of the population of Elizabethan London too.
I wasn’t aware of a dispute between Britain and the US over precedence in the invention of soft scoop ice-cream, but I’ll take Ken’s word on that. What Ken may have to consider if and when probing the British side of that topic is the identity of one of the the chemists believed to have worked on that technology; one Margaret Hilda Roberts, later Thatcher. Which is a fact that usually leads into a joke with a political punchline, so I’ll leave it there.
(Conversely, research into the technology involved in Pringles may apparently lead to an encounter with the young Gene Wolfe.)
As Michael Cole alludes, Worcestershire sauce is a fermented fish sauce. A bit more obscurely, the original recipes of what became ketchup were also fermented fish sauces. The two of those certainly made it more understandable for me why the Romans liked garum.
Yum, fermented fish sauces. 😎