Episode 269: Egg Nog Related Time Travel
November 24th, 2017 | Robin
We’ve installed additional measures in the Gaming Hut to discuss security camera surveillance and how to stop it from wrecking your mystery plots.
Jump scares await in the Horror Hut as we look at the bogeyman and his pals, the evil spirits.
In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, we chat with marketing guru and game designer Wade Rockett.
Which leads us to Ken’s Time Machine and a question from Patreon backer Derek Upham, who wants to know about our chrono-protagonist’s role in causing the Egg Nog Riot.
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.
In Highway Holocaust you are Cal Phoenix, the Freeway Warrior, champion and protector of Dallas Colony One. Defend this fragile convoy from H.A.V.O.C. bikers with this exclusive hardcover (with dust jacket and book ribbons), the first choose-your-own-adventure-gamebook in Joe Dever’s post apocalyptic series. From the fine folks at FENIX, now available from Modiphius.
Delta Green Game Moderators, take heart! Reinforcements have arrived in the form of the Delta Green Handler’s Guide from Arc Dream Publishing, bursting with operational details, threats and eldritch history to keep your players locked, loaded, and terrified.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
GPS coordinates in images (among many other things) live in the image’s metadata. Metadata is trivially editable.
“This image says that it was shot at at the corner of 800S and 1500E*. See there’s the Circle-K.”
“But wait, 1500E is a six-lane road. That’s a four-lane road in front of the store in the image. Where was this actually shot?”
“… ”
“We’ll never know, Dan, all Circle-K stores look exactly the same.”
😎
Digital files are much easier to edit in many ways than silver halide on paper.
But the even more important thing to remember is that the bad guys are intelligent (because the stupid ones are relegated to being caught in the establishing sequence at the beginning of the movie) and know about the same things that the PCs do … or perhaps even more, since they’re specialists and the PCs are usually generalists. They’re at least as likely to muck with the technology as the PCs.
Rising Sun (the movie and the Crichton book) uses exactly this idea to point the “PCs” at the wrong person. The story arises from the good guys figuring out the twist. Nothing prevents you from doing the same thing in an RPG.
Which is a long way of saying that I disagree that pervasive technology wrecks investigative games. It just changes the playing field significantly.
“There’s a police call box on every corner. How can I possibly write a chase scene when the police will be everywhere in minutes!?”
* I was in Utah for Thanksgiving. Can you tell?