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Posts Tagged ‘Cartography Hut’

Episode 53: My Feelings About Hatchets Have Completely Changed

August 23rd, 2013 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we power up our universal translators to contemplate the treatment of languages in roleplaying.

Then we review our way through the summer blockbuster season in the Cinema Hut.

In an Ask Ken and Robin lightning round, we dispatch questions right and left, entertaining queries from the diceless to the non-violent.

Then, under the watchful eyes of benevolent Google gods, our Cartography Hunt/Conspiracy Corner co-production takes the aerial view of the Kazakhstan pentagram.

Join us in a hearty welcome to our latest sponsor, Gorilla Games, now Kickstarting Monster  Derby, their full contact road rage road race board game!

Episode 49: No One Likes a Blood Frenzy

July 26th, 2013 | Robin

From the Cartography Hut we send our separate adventurers on intercut journeys of exploration, as we riff on the fantasy game potential of the Atlas of True Names series.

How to Write Good connects the dots of stakes, consequences, and reader engagement.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Geoffery Nelson asks how iconic characters can engage in meaningful conflict without stopping the story dead as both dig their heels in.

Finally we conclude Ken’s series on the Nazi occult by veering at an impossible angle into the Eliptony Hut for a look at Nazi UFOs and the Hollow Earth.

Episode 39: The Book of Not At All Sinister Church Names

May 17th, 2013 | Robin

Two mysterious doors provide ingress into the Gaming Hut. Which one do we take, as we contemplate adventure structure and the choice points that comprise it?

Ask Ken and Robin takes an alternate history turn as Crane Brinton wonders: What does the alternate timeline where the Kaiser won WWI look like?

Then we hop into a mapping car and head to the Cartography Hut, where we riff on the storytelling inspiration of Google’s recent documentation of the Fukushima ghost zone.

We close with a visit to the Consulting Occultist, who recounts the Theosophy-meets-Evangelical-meets-New Age tale of Elizabeth Clare Prophet.

Episode 26: Passing the Legislation To See What’s In It

February 15th, 2013 | Robin

In an unprecedented merger of the Gaming Hut with the Politics Hut, we look to political scientist Steven Teles’ theory of government as kludgeocracy to demonstrate why government should hire game designers like Ken and Robin to playtest their legislation for them.

Then we take latitudes with the longitudes of the Cartography Hut to examine the history and fantasy of Stonehenge.

The map above is from Profantasy Software’s  Source Maps: Temples, Tombs and Catacombs, which you can grab at a mere $10, a quarter of the usual price, until Feb 22nd, by following this special link to the Profantasy store. This informative pack of historical maps stands alone, with a built in viewer and tons of images and background. But if you have Profantasy Software’s flagship mapping package, Campaign Cartographer 3, you can edit the maps and use symbols from them.

In Ask Ken and Robin, we entertain Lisa Padol’s question about the edition wars inspired by the differences between old and new World of Darkness.

Finally, Ken’s Time Machine averts the sacking of China’s Old Summer Palace—or, at least, the most notorious of its several sackings.

Episode 22: Her Agile, Ventriloquistic Foot

January 18th, 2013 | Robin

In a special Cartography Hut / Ask Ken and Robin crossover, Troy Holoday invites us to contemplate the vanished D&D roles of mapper and caller.

On a serious note we go to the History Hut for a sense of perspective, if not solace, on America’s relationship with the gun.

In the Cinema Hut Robin finally uncorks his long-simmering rant on the fundamentally unBondian nature of Skyfall. Ken gamely and briefly attempts a role as devil’s advocate before reverting to true and inevitable doctrine.

We wrap with an ironic tale for the Consulting Occultist—the sad story of Margaret Fox, who accidentally founded 19th century spiritualism through a teenage prank.

Episode 17: A Gorgeous Work of Rosicrucian Monomania

November 28th, 2012 | Robin

In Ask Ken and Robin, we examine the popularity, or lack thereof, of the western as a roleplaying genre, and point to models historical and cinematic for the adventuring party in spurs and Stetsons.

We venture into a particularly cramped and cluttered iteration of the Cartography Hut to spin a passel of story threads from the real-life tale of the Mount Washington map hoard.

With zombie-like tread we shamble down the aisles of the Cinema Hut to chew over the career of director George A. Romero.

Then Time Incorporated once more dispatches Ken’s Time Machine, this time to prevent the murder of Salvador Allende and the ensuing ascension to power of Augusto Pinochet.

Episode 14: Undetectable Notes of Irony

November 9th, 2012 | Robin

We kick off with another film festival wrap-up in the Cinema Hut, this time Ken’s visit to the Chicago International Film Festival.

Ask Ken and Robin asks us to contemplate the differences between two of Robin’s game engines, DramaSystem and Skulduggery, leading us to contemplate a broader old saw: does system matter?

In the Cartography Hut we examine a map of Chicago gangland in 1926, limning an urban geography of booze and bullets.

Then we rev up Ken’s Time Machine, sending him back to prevent the burning of the library at Alexandria. Or burnings, if you prefer.

Episode 11: When Angels Tell You To Wife-Swap

October 18th, 2012 | Robin

This week’s installment of Ask Ken and Robin prompts us to wax autobiographical and reveal our similar yet opposite secret origins.

Then we descend into the Paris catacombs, escaping from what we find there only through the maps snatched from the high cabinets of the Cartography Hut.

[From Temples, Tombs and Catacombs, part of Profantasy Software’s Source Maps series.]

The Business of Gaming prompts mulling of the history and choices of open game licensing, now that Robin has to figure out the best license for DramaSystem.

We close with the ever-popular Consulting Occult as Ken gives us the 101 on Elizabethan magician, mathematician and cartographer (sense a theme here?) John Dee.

Episode 9: Riesling and Dirigibles

October 5th, 2012 | Robin

With a tip of the hat to sponsors Profantasy Software, we fling open the inaugural doors of the Cartography Hut to contemplate maps we have known and loved.

In a frenzy of construction, we then throw caution to the wind and cut the ribbon on Politics Hut, in which we look at the current US Presidential election from the Republican and Canadian points of view.

Ask Ken and Robin prompts us to consider: can comedy and Lovecraft coexist? (Thanks for the question, Monica Valentinelli.)

Finally, Ken faces his most daunting Ken’s Time Machine yet as Time Incorporated asks him to prevent Prohibition.

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