Episode 28: Possibly an Anagnorisis
March 1st, 2013 | Robin
That Vitamin D sheen you see on Ken’s glossy coat shows that he recently escaped Chicago’s frigid embrace for the sunshine of California’s Bay Area, necessitating another Travel Advisory as we review his trip to Dundracon.
An unusual clatter of gunfire punctuates activities at the Food Hut, as we parse press reports of connections between Europe’s horsemeat scandal and the shadow financial empire of Russia’s most notorious arms dealer.
Andrew Brehaut prompts this week’s Ask Ken and Robin with a question on structure in game and scenario design.
Then we flash back to San Francisco for an elegiac installment of Ken’s Bookshelf, in which our intrepid traveler hauls home the fruits of his last epic plundering of that legendary occult bookshop, which is soon to migrate to the etheric spheres in an online-only capacity. Follow along at home with his list of books mentioned.
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On the novelisation of shipping, Simon Ing’s Dead Water is a very good read in a sort of Tim Powers space. He was present in the cyber- and steam- punk beginnings and has moved over to more, although not completely, literary fiction.
On the genetic material side, the recent Channel 4 series Utopia shows us a global (if somewhat incompetent) and very brutal conspiracy.
Great to hear about Occitan in the blog. My high school was named after one of the troubadours, Arnaut Daniel. He was more lyrical and considerable less fruity than others (NSFW) or the other contemporaneous oral tradition of fabliaux.
The discussion of fish, wine, and art forgery reminded me of an interesting book I read recently: Provenance, by Laney Salisbury. It’s about the bogus art dealer (and bogus everything else) John Drewe.
I may have missed something in the “intro to Ken and Robin” course, but what does Ken mean when he uses the word “elliptonic”?
I kept expecting you to get to Detroit in your discussion of failing cities. Was the Dundracon topic deliberately historical?
@sdharing: Episode 23 (at about 20min) introduces the Elliptony Hut and defines the term.
Several of the muses have had an outing in the various huts so far (Clio – history, Melpomene – tragedy, Thalia – comedy, Urania – astronomy). What of the others (Calliope – epic poetry, Erato – love poetry, Euterpe song and elegiac poetry, Polyhymnia – hymns, Terpsichore – Dance)?
Maybe if they record another “live” podcast at Dragonmeet this year, we can get to witness the Ken & Robin Dance Hut?
Concerning limitations improving creative works of all kinds, this comic may be relevant.
Regarding structure in gaming and the perils of hoping one”s players will create family trees allowing one to pick appropriate relatives to die and leave haunted houses as inheritance, fellow gamer Avram Grumer once cited the following dialogue used in a superhero game, where, as we all know, any relatives are fair game for Plot:
GM: So, your brother calls you and says he’s in big trouble.
Player: I have a brother?
GM: Yep.
Player: Who knew? (to the other players): Hey, guys, I have a brother, and he’s in big trouble! I need your help!
Robin, during the discussion in this episode with Ken about structure and restrictions leading to design, I started thinking about your history as a designer. Since you’ve been designing games for many years and have designed a number of game systems, where and when do you think your design aesthetic gelled into what it is today? Which games most strongly lead you to this point or had the biggest impact on your designs?
Thanks and I hope you get a chance to answer this on a future podcast.