Posts Tagged ‘Among my many hats’
Episode 23: Within the Eliptonic Radius
January 25th, 2013 | Robin
Kicking off with another service-oriented segment of Ask Ken and Robin, we suggest ways to introduce a rich setting to players who are unfamiliar with it.
Then we inaugurate the Eliptony Hut, first by explaining what the heck eliptony is, then squeezing adventure and story ideas from the latest in white-hot weirdness, the Martian ground squirrel.
What one might call Among My Many Hats Classic Edition sends us back in time to chat about a joint project, the Shadows Over Filmland supplement for Trail of Cthulhu. Which, due to a wondrous and wholly inexplicable coincidence, happens to be on sale at the Pelgrane Press store until February 1st, 2013. [Shadows over Filmland is $10 off, not 10% off as it says in the podcast – that’s more than 25%]
Finally we rev up Ken’s Time Machine, assigning our chrono-hopping Chicagoan to find the least-worst replacement for Joseph Stalin as leader of the Soviet Union.
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Episode 10: Brand Confusion
October 12th, 2012 | Robin
In Among My Many Hats, Robin discusses Hillfolk, his new game of iron age personal interaction, and its DramaSystem engine, now up for crowdfunding. Ken teases “Moscow Station”, a DramaSystem Series Pitch offered as a campaign stretch goal.
Ask Ken and Robin poses a follow-up on the Puritans, who turn out not to be as puritanical as certain Victorians wanted us to think.
We venture into the Gaming Hut to contemplate RPG design decisions that once irritated but have now entered the standard toolkit.
Finally, we engage in some History Bending, triggered by a report that a Tibetan statue collected by a famed Nazi expedition was carved from a meteor.
And with open arms we welcome a new sponsor to the fold: DriveThru RPG!
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Episode 6: The Mystic Power of Indexing
September 14th, 2012 | Robin
This week’s stuff-talking kicks off with another Among My Many Hats. Here Robin unravels the circuitous design history of his Dying Earth Revivification Folio, as Ken orders his sandestin to provide him with perks and snails.
In Ask Ken and Robin, we ponder cases in which D&D fights are better off without a battle grid.
Then we journey to the History Hut to consider Neil Armstrong and the passing of the space age.
Finally we call upon Ken in his capacity as Consulting Occultist to introduce us to H. P. Blavatsky and the Theosophists.
Episode 3: The Audacity of Cupcakes
August 24th, 2012 | Robin
Stuff talked about in the third episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff include:
Among My Many Hats brings back the overt pluggery with a discussion of Robin’s new book of short stories, New Tales of the Yellow Sign, and its inspiration, the classic King in Yellow cycle of Robert W. Chambers. Since recording the episode, the ebook version has infected Kindle and Smashwords.
In The Business of Gaming, we tackle the topic du jour, Kickstarter, and its impact on the hobby. We look at the recent Stone Skin Press crowdfunding campaign and its blatant cupcakery. Also referenced: Margaret Atwood’s embrace of the new way for her arts-based social media platform, Fanado.
After an Ask Ken and Robin lightning round, we go in-depth on what we do when we first get an idea for a game or supplement.
Lastly but not leastly, Ken again dons the mantle of Consulting Occultist to examine the difference between a mystic and an occultist, as seen through the examples of Johnny Appleseed and Emannuel Swedenborg. Also referenced: Daniel Burnham, and Mitch Horowitz’s book Occult America.
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Episode 1: Vampires are A-holes
August 3rd, 2012 | Robin
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, the new podcast from game designers and authors Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws. Join our thrilling audio adventure as we discuss games, movies, history, narrative and sundry concerns of the geekosphere.
Here’s what we talk about this week:
In our Among Our Many Hats segment, we talk about Ken’s new roleplaying game Night’s Black Agents, in which the spy thriller goes vampire, with logistics supplied by the GUMSHOE system.
In Travel Advisory, Robin recounts his recent trip to the Continuum convention in Leicester, England, where he performs a health-check on the hobby and marvels over future Glorantha mapping plans from Moon Design, publishers of HeroQuest and now RuneQuest. Along the way we detour to London’s John Soane Museum, an enduring monument to one man’s acquisitiveness.
Our Ask Ken and Robin segment tackles a question from Robert Scott Martin on the role of the GM in contemporary game design.
To round out the episode, Ken dons the mantle of Consulting Occultist to give us the 101 on The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, with a cast of characters including William Butler Yeats, Bram Stoker, and Aleister Crowley.
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