Posts Tagged ‘Cartography Hut’
Episode 168: Real Made-Up History
November 27th, 2015 | Robin
The New York Public Library online map collection provides a feast of gameable treasures. We gather in the Cartography Hut to pick our favorites and riff on ways to put them to use.
Ken’s first map, of Brasov, appears here.
Robin’s map, to the residences of Ebenezer Ingalsbie and T. R. Wolcott, is here.
Ken’s second map, of 1840s Brooklyn, is here.
Among My Many Hats has Ken turning your players into an official bulwark against UFO incursion in his latest Ken Writes About Stuff installment, MAJESTIC OVERWATCH.
Ken and Robin Recycle Audio as the audience of Deep Ones at Toronto’s FanExpo pepper Robin with questions about exciting endings, compelling darkness, and NPCs your players care about.
Finally the Consulting Occultist gets architectural to discuss the occult tendencies of Le Corbusier.
Ken and Robin have oft been accused of being cards. Well, we can deny it no longer. We have become super-limited promo cards for Murder of Crows, Atlas Games’ fast-paced card game of murder and the macabre, for two to five players in the mood for something a little morbid. It’s Edward Gorey meets Caligari, by way of Edgar Allan Poe. Wait a minute, what does that graphic say? I’m not so sure about this…
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.
In a move that surely violates someone’s security clearance, this episode is also brought to you by our friends at Arc Dream Publishing. The Kickstarter for Delta Green: the Roleplaying Game has come to an end, but don’t let that stop you from indulging your fever for this classic game, or that pinnacle of the Cthulhu game zine world, The Unspeakable Oath.
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Episode 152: X-Acto Athame
August 7th, 2015 | Robin
Buckle up your extra special rapier for a jaunt into the Gaming Hut to consider the connection between gear and status.
Take extra reindeer with you, for your predecessor lost all of his when he entered the far confines of the Cartography Hut to talk Soviet map-making.
From hominids and their tapir pals to the contents of a teen’s bedroom, Ken and Robin delineate some great opening scenes in the Cinema Hut.
Then paranoia goes old-timey as the Conspiracy Corner recounts the story of America’s Anti-Masonic Party.
Look out, Lieutenants of evil! The sinister mastermind you work for has taken some time to shake the post-conquest blues. But he’ll be back soon, and your survival depends on impressing him. Thankfully, our lead sponsor Atlas Games has just what you need: their delightful new card game of competitive minion-stacking, Three Cheers for Master.
What’s that hiding behind your baseboards? Could it be a PDF copy of Philip Masters’ The Small Folk, in which you play fairy folk descendants sneaking, scheming, and avoiding the attentions of wily housecats? Grab it at Warehouse23.
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Episode 130: Regional Resentments of Canadian Mollusks
March 6th, 2015 | Robin
Yohann Delalande kicks us off with an Ask Ken and Robin question about portraying current real-world horrors in RPGs without lapsing into insensitivity.
We fulfill this podcast’s Canadian content requirements in the Tradecraft Hut with a look at iconic hooded defector Igor Gouzenko.
Patron hero of surveyors Nain Singh Rawat inspires a duck into the Cartography Hut to consider exploration-based campaign frames.
Blond Venusians await in the Eliptony Hut for a profile of prolific contactee, mystic, archaeologist and fascist George Hunt Williamson.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
Roll yourself a critical hit by ordering from a freshly discovered special trove of The Bones, the book on dice from our pals at Gameplaywright. Notables including Wil Wheaton, John Kovalic and our own Kenneth Hite wax both cubic and polyhedral, now at a crazy low price.
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Episode 122: Accelerated Gameable Force
January 9th, 2015 | Robin
The Magicians’ Guild turns out to be rife with factions and competing interests as the Gaming Hut looks at ways to add realistic messiness to your game’s imaginary institutions.
In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, Robin asks up-and-coming illustrator Rachel A. Kahn how an artist breaks into the roleplaying game market these days, and what her must-have tools and resources are.
The Cartography Hut unfurls this map of global criminal trading activity, and we wring gaming ideas from it.
Finally Ken’s Time Machine shakes off some mothballs, but not a sense of historical inevitability, as Lisa J. Steele asks Ken to keep Japan allied with the West in the run-up to WWII.
Attention, class! Anchor sponsor Atlas Games wants to enroll you in Mad Scientist University, the card game of evil genius, insane assignments, and unstable elements. Act now, Ken and Robin listeners, and they’ll throw in the Spring Break expansion set for free. Shipping within the US is also free.
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Episode 103: Francis Peameal Bacon
August 22nd, 2014 | Robin
Ken slaps down suggestions of a Gaming Hut renovation, but that poses little impediment to Robin as he sets out the four key components that make for an engaging obstacle. For more, see Robin’s latest publication, a fundraiser chapbook for the Kraken Convention called Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha, available to the public soon after that con wraps.
Cartography Hut finds Ken searching for Dracula’s castle, finding not one site but many, each dripping with gore and story potential.
Ask Ken and Robin has our titular podcasters flopping their pseudopods in response to a MarcAddress challenge to create a civilization absent fine motor control.
Finally theories about the Holy Grail taking up residence in the Oak Island money pit infuse the Eliptony Hut with a salty spray of Canadian content.
Lead sponsor Atlas Games announces a project near and dear to Robin’s heart, not to mention a good chunk of his year so far. It fires off warning shots concerning the upcoming Kickstarter for Feng Shui 2! Click the link to be notified when the campaign goes live.
Stone Skin Press has a deal for you. Until September 1st, all hardcopy purchases of Robin’s action-driven Mythos fiction anthology Shotguns v. Cthulhu come not only with the expected free electronic edition of that book, but also an ebook of Schemers, Robin’s anthology of betrayal and conspiracy. Just buy it at the Pelgrane Press store, as you normally would, no special links or offer codes required. 
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Episode 99: Methane Planet of the Rakshasas
July 25th, 2014 | Robin
We are honored and delighted to say that Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff has been nominated for a 2o14 ENnie Award for Best Podcast. If you are seeing this before Aug 1st, and want us bounding up to that podium on Friday night at Gen Con, please do us a huge solid and go to the ENnies voting booth and pull the virtual lever.
Watch out for wandering monsters as the Gaming Hut looks at random tables.
In the Mythology Hut we answer the call of listener Genus Unknown to examine the roots of the Faust legend.
The Cartography Hut encourages you to map your imaginary city’s zones of safety and danger.
Then the Consulting Occultist goes psychedelic with a look at the Source Family and its karate-chopping, bank robbing New Age guru, Father Yod.
From the magical land of sponsors comes Atlas Games, who with a twinkle of fairy dust revive their 2nd Edition Once Upon a Time clearance sale.
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Episode 97: Hamsterface
July 11th, 2014 | Robin
All hail the audio majesty of editor Rob Borges, who rescued this and last week’s episodes from the scourge of electronic interference, leaving only a touch of distortion in Robin’s sibilants.
A mystery questioner Asks Ken and Robin how they handle red herrings.
Ken flips on the projector in the Cinema Hut to get us started on the new Indian crime film.
The Cartography Hut looks at the aesthetic and propagandistic impact of legendary map artist Richard Edes Harrison.
We close with the Consulting Occultist, who tells us of the London stone and the magical significance of its current ignominious location.
From the magical land of sponsors comes Atlas Games, who with a twinkle of fairy dust revive their 2nd Edition Once Upon a Time clearance sale.
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Episode 93: A Damp 1968
June 13th, 2014 | Robin
We start in a submersible as the Cartography Hut takes you under the sea to riff on campaign and adventure possibilities arising from the mapping of sunken Dunwich.
In Ask Ken and Robin, Yohann Delalande asks us to find inspiration for Night’s Black Agents in the flamboyant and multi-pronged career of Uzbekistan’s Gulina Karimova. We oblige, throwing in some Hillfolk and The Esoterrorists for good measure.
The Business of Gaming lays down the wisdom on professionalism.
And Anne Boleyn’s life hangs in the balance as we take a trip to a dangerous Tudor moment in Ken’s Time Machine.
It’s yo ho ho and a pocketful of doubloons as Atlas Games surveys the seven seas from the crow’s nest that is our coveted anchor sponsor slot. Parrot on its shoulder, it orders up another special deal for Ken and Robin listeners, this time in the form of their innovative game of piratical nautical warfare, Pieces of Eight.
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Episode 90: Nine Yards of Crazy
May 23rd, 2014 | Robin
In the Gaming Hut we demonstrate scenario construction by brainstorming a Fear Itself adventure featuring the fearsome Crate Man.
Duck furtively into the Cartography Hut as we look at maps as secrets.
In Ask Ken and Robin we field a query from Tom Allman on prepping for Cthulhu games.
Then we sidle up to Ken’s Bookshelf to vicariously paw through the spoils of his recent raid on Powell’s Book City in Portland.
It’s yo ho ho and a pocketful of doubloons as Atlas Games surveys the seven seas from the crow’s nest that is our coveted anchor sponsor slot. Parrot on its shoulder, it orders up another special deal for Ken and Robin listeners, this time in the form of their innovative game of piratical nautical warfare, Pieces of Eight.
This week’s show is also brought to you in part by the World of Aetaltis. The Temple of Modren, the first sourcebook introducing this exciting new Pathfinder Compatible world, is now Kickstarting.
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Episode 81: If I Were an Otter
March 21st, 2014 | Robin
In the Cartography Hut we set out techniques to add a dose of psychogeography to the map of your imaginary city.
The Gaming Hut looks at the elasticity of vampire mythology, as inspired by Ken’s golden steampunk vampires of El Dorado, as seen in Fenix magazine.
How to Write Good confronts the pesky threat of word clusters, and how to avoid using the same word twice in one…dammit!
Consulting Occultist meets Tradecraft Hut as, at the request of listener Johnstone Metzger, we examine the work and shocking demise of mythological studies scholar and Romanian dissident Ioan Culianu.
Once again Fenix Magazine occupies our coveted anchor sponsor slot. After ten years delighting the Swedish gaming scene, they’re now bringing the Best of Fenix to English-language GMs and players with their now-active Indiegogo campaign. This project so resounds with Hitean goodness that you have surely chipped in already. But if you haven’t, that burning bird of prey is still passing the hat.
It’s yo ho ho and a pocketful of doubloons as Atlas Games serves up another special deal for Ken and Robin listeners, this time in the form of their innovative game of piratical sea battles, Pieces of Eight.
That rumble in your molars heralds the thundering approach of the Open Metalcast Podcast, joining us as sponsor in a crescendo of aural extremity!
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