Posts Tagged ‘Conspiracy Corner’

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!

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Episode 41: The Kind of Scary Energy That Doesn’t Exist

May 31st, 2013 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut, we examine the tradition of flaws and disads in RPGs. Do they put the “fun” in dysfunctional?

Then Ken and Robin adjourn to the Cinema Hut, where they try not to tell you too much about Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color while urging you to see it, and from there jump into the distinction between the explanatory and the experiential in storytelling.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Jon Leitheusser asks Robin to explain the process by which his game design aesthetic gelled.

Finally, fraud at Alaska’s ionosphere-bombarding HAARP facility sends us spiraling into an extra-chilly installment of Conspiracy Corner.

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Episode 33: Bring Your Own Goat

April 5th, 2013 | Robin

We kick off with another Travel Advisory, this one centered on Ken’s quest to Las Vegas and the Gama Trade Show, to prise from it premonitions of the new hotness.

Then History Hut takes a turn for the glandular as we examine the careers of quack testicular transplanter John R. Brinkley and perfectly respectable testicular transplanter Dr. G. Frank Lydston. Guess which one installed bits of dead prisoners between his skin and his ribcage. For more, see Pope Brock’s splendid Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam.

Ask Ken and Robin fields a query from listener DVanZandt. How do you avoid the minefields of player disbelief when running a game in the real world?

With a tip of the mitre to the newly elected Francis I, we enter the Conspiracy Corner to look at the role of the Jesuits in conspiracy lore.

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Episode 24: Conan Gets a Fish

February 1st, 2013 | Robin

After two bits of preamble business, one elegiac and the other bathetic , we issue a Travel Advisory to wring vicarious enjoyment from Ken’s journey to WarpCon in Cork, Ireland.

We then step into the Cinema Hut to regale one and all with our top ten picks from the sterling movie year that was 2012.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Lowell Francis asks Ken to expand on a past comment contrasting his sense of fun placement to that of our esteemed pal Dennis Detwiller, leading us to a consideration of the grind, character fragility, and when to bring the power fantasy.

Finally, we once more brave the shadowy depths of the Conspiracy Corner to explore the patterns and motivations behind the recent wave of truther movements.

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Episode 18: Conspiracy To Commit Ophthalmology

November 28th, 2012 | Robin

This week’s episode  commences with a trip to the Gaming Hut to consider Robin’s dichotomy of rewards versus incentives, which segues into a discussion of the co-designer syndrome in playtest feedback.

Ask Ken and Robin fields a question from Brett Evill on how one might bend history to add Ruritania-style postage stamp states back to the map of Europe.

We swap the key cooking tips we’d wished our time traveling present selves had told our neophyte incarnations as the Food Hut tackles minimaxing in the kitchen.

Then a recent report on the decoding of the Copiale Codex sends us to Conspiracy Corner to consider the history of secret societies through the obscured lenses of the Great Enlightened Society of Oculists.

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Episode 8: Cruller-Infested Demi-Paradise

September 27th, 2012 | Robin

If there is a mother of all Cinema Huts, it is the Toronto International Film Festival. We kick off the episode with Robin’s picks from the just-completed 37th fest.

Then we skulk into the Conspiracy Corner to put the inflammatory impact of Innocence of Muslims in historical context.

In Ask Ken and Robin, we compare the strong points of Dungeons and Dragons’ third and fourth editions, as we examine the emotional fuel behind the Great Schism.

Finally, we call again upon the Consulting Occultist for a primer on Aleister Crowley.

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