Episode 61: Next To the Opposite Hex You’ll Be Like a Ferret in Heat
October 18th, 2013 | Robin
To what extent should an adventure tell a story to the GM who is about to read it? Journey with us into the Gaming Hut to find out.
Then fire up your laptops with their Cartography Hut screensavers and geographic information systems to look at the genre possibilities of digital cemetery mapping.
In Ask Ken and Robin, Tom Clare asks about using in-world narrative voices to write rules text and setting material.
We conclude by revving up Kenβs Time Machine and urging him to reverse the Gran Sasso raid, in which the Nazis rescued Mussolini from Allied custody.
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Guys, we need the benefit of your occult knowledge. Why were Medieval knights always fighting snails? What’s the truth that They don’t want us to know?
Fascinating article (comments included), thanks for posting!
For a future, ask Ken and Robin: what is the Mistick Krewe of Comus, and more generally, can you explain the history of Carnival (I’m trying to figure out how we got from a somber religious observance to the festivals we have today)?
One thing to keep in mind is that the Carnival Krewes were initially started, not by New Orleans’s Catholic Creoles, but by Protestant Anglo-Americans — members of the Boston Club and the Pickwick Club. I don’t know for certain but I strongly suspect there was a Masonic element, as N.O. has a big old Scottish Rite temple dating from that same era. The Carnival Krewes may have in part been a bit of good-natured mockery of the Catholic “mummery.” And like many attempts at parody, it got taken up by the very people it was mocking.
I love the show. Let me say again, I really enjoy the show. But I am confused why podcast filesize is so huge? Outside your podcast the biggest I download is 2:00:00 on average and half the filesize.
Perhaps I am not a big enough audiophile but I cannot tell the difference and my poor quality cell service struggles to keep up with the audio. It’s killing me because I can no longer listen on the commute home on Fridays.
Is this something that has happened in the last couple iof weeks. Previously I have been streaming the show, but the last couple of weeks I have had to download it and listen to the local copy as the stram stops to buffer every couple of seconds. I had assumed it was some local N/W issue, but this makes me wonder…
I’ll ask our audio producer.
Producer Rob Borges reports: Actually I just noticed today that I have been compressing the files at a pretty high bit rate since episode 57. I must have changed the settings in the program for something else and forgot to switch it back.
He’ll revert to previous settings.
Someone ever told Robin that he sounds like Sheldon Cooper sometimes? π
That’s what you get for trying not to say “uh.”
Robin’s statement that he had never heard of the rescue of Il Duce by Skorzeny made me think “I thought everybody knew about that! What are they teaching in schools these days?”.
And then I recognized that I live in far too insular of a world, and was pleased that Ken was, again, spreading the historical record to all our benefit.
Greatly enjoying the show! Thanks very much, and I will continue to listen !
Did anyone catch the Over The Edge adventure that Ken mentions? I can’t remember the name!
“Last Chance Brains,” in The Cut-Ups Project, IIRC. One of the best most mindblowing adventures I’ve ever read, to this day.
Thanks a lot, I’ve just discovered Over the Edge and it looks pretty interesting π
The name of the book is Weather the Cuckoo Likes. (Cut-Ups Project was an expansion for the card game.)
Great, thanks a lot. I’m really curious to read it.
Even if you never play Over the Edge, every GM should read it. It was one of those games that changed my ideas about games. It was the first game that I encountered that didn’t care about being a simulation. That led to Feng Shui, and ultimately to this podcast (for me.)
Brag-time: I once got to play OTE gamemastered by Jonathon Tweet. So I have that to reflect on during my final hours. π
Could Ken and Robin fill us in on the career and downfall of Jofi Joseph, aka @NatSecWonk and @DCHobbyist? And how could one use this scandal as RPG fodder?
Love the show guys! would you ever consider consulting the occultist about Shabbati Tzvi or the donme cult? I feel that there is an area rich for gaming in there just waiting to mined for ideas. What do I know, maybe it’s been done already? Thanks.
PD
Bibliography
TV Shows
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Terriers
Movies
Chinatown by Roman Polanski
Hackers by Iain Softley (feat. Angelina Jolie)
Star Trek by J.J. Abrams
Star Trek: Into Darkness by J.J. Abrams
Books
Robert Forczyk – Rescuing Mussolini – Gran Sasso 1943
Kenneth Hite – The Nazi Occult