Episode 188: He Drinks Tables Under the Table
April 29th, 2016 | Robin
In the Gaming Hut, Patreon backer Bill Sundwall wants Ken to mash up two of his projects, The Madness Dossier and Night’s Black Agents, into one.
The Business of Gaming looks for the best ways to combat harassment within our community.
The Book Hut responds to backer Frank King’s request for a look at the work of Umberto Eco.
And finally we wonder what Ken’s Time Machine had to do with the 1825 collapse of the Fonthill Abbey tower.
Bend reality to your will, but be ready to pay the price, as Atlas Games’ Unknown Armies bubbles up from the supernatural underground for a weird and majestic new Kickstarter campaign. Now in its final hours!
Ken fans who did not partake of the Kickstarter can now sink their fangs into the general release of the Dracula Dossier from Pelgrane Press, consisting of the Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted. You say that’s still not enough Ken for you? Very well, my friend. 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.
When you assemble your bug-out kit, make sure it includes a copy of Delta Green: Need to Know, the everything-you-need quickstart kick for the classic game of covert agents against the Cthulhu mythos, from our fine friends at Arc Dream Publishing.
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Another question, triggered by this issue’s Time Machine section, regarding another of Ken’s past missions: Why did Ken claim to be from Porlock?
Oh my God! Ken – WHAT WAS STC ABOUT TO DREAM?
Thank you for talking about for the best ways to combat harassment within our community. I think that you as respected members of the hobby gaming community can really help make a difference.
I checked with my wife, and she thought your combating harassment talk artfully done. So.
I own Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, and try to reread them every few years, but I found The Island of the Day Before nigh impenetrable for pretty much the same reasons Ken gave. The only collection of his nonfiction that I’ve read so far is Serendipities, which are essays about how wrong ideas have led to new discoveries in spite of themselves. Most of them are very readable and entertaining (though the one that is essentially an excerpt from Search for the Perfect Language is longer and much slower going, so is my least favorite).
When other people ask me about Eco, I warn them that he is a challenging read at the best of times. He puts on a spectacle of erudition and forces you to closely engage with his text in order to keep up with him. I’m more than willing to do that when he’s telling a story that has an easily discernable framework and a compelling plot (like Rose or Pendulum), because all those little esoteric details that he revels in are right up my alley. But that’s because my own bookishness is permanently stuck at the “once started a library degree” level.