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Posts Tagged ‘Politics Hut’

Episode 154: Orange and Tufty From the Primordial Swamp

August 21st, 2015 | Robin

The featured headgear in Among My Many Hats is of a knitted variety as Robin talks about Ghosts in the Black, the Firefly campaign book he contributed to, and just what his credited role as story designer entails.

Wistful nostalgia for the antics of a certain former Toronto mayor wafts through the Politics Hut like a melancholy fragrance from days gone by. But wait, can an unruly orange toupee fill the not inconsiderable hole he has left in the hearts of podcast listeners? We ask if Donald Trump can become America’s Rob Ford.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Laroshe asks about games in which a party of sidekicks revolves around a more powerful central hero.

Then the Consulting Occultist risks possible heckling from a brazen head as he looks at the life and legend of Roger Bacon.


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.

 

 

Ken fans who did not partake of the Kickstarter will want to sink their fangs into the pre-order for the Dracula Dossier from Pelgrane Press, consisting of the Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted.

Download your consciousness into the Kickstarter for Transreality: New Worlds, the identity-bending graphic novel from Chris Lackey. Your inner pink gorilla will thank you.

 

Pilot your sky galleon to the Zodiac Empires Kickstarter. Explore a world of early industrialization, weird cults and noir intrigue, suitable for such fantasy games as Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

Episode 131: Helping People Steal Concrete

March 13th, 2015 | Robin

Join us in the Gaming Hut for a psychotropic ritual as we think about introducing entheogens into the magic of your F20 world.

The Politics Hut flips its municipal focus as Ken shares his perspective on the Chicago machine and mayor Rahm Emanuel’s forced confrontation with a run-off election.

How to Write Good takes a closer look at first acts, specifically the ones that set up your character’s status quo and the imminent threats to it.

Finally the Consulting Occultist crosses over with Among My Many Hats as Ken tells us about his Goetia instalment of Ken Writes About Stuff.


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.

 

Mapheads, rejoice. CAD maestro Jeff James is Kickstarting Scale Realms. This project will fund full color, high quality maps with 3D structures and landscaping, with a hex or square option.

Episode 110: Eat My Orange Slices, Peons!

October 10th, 2014 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut Robin asks Ken to resolve Robin’s ambivalence toward creativity rewards.

The Politics Hut puts one of Ken’s rules distinctions to real life use as we contemplate Stability, Sanity, and ISIL.

Another lightning round flashes its electrical mayhem in Ask Ken and Robin.

Finally Chris Huth prompts Ken’s Time Machine to journey to an even worse version of WWI.

Atlas Games again devotes its coveted anchor sponsor slot to windmill-kicking promotion for Robin’s Hong Kong action movie roleplaying game, Feng Shui 2, which is Kickstarting even as we speak. Worldspinner makes setting construction a breeze, from the map to the themes driving your adventures. Welcome them to the podcast sponsor roster by showing some geographical love to their Kickstarter.

 

Episode 108: Too Many Cyber-Monkeys

September 26th, 2014 | Robin

Before getting to the main meat of the episode, a Preamble Hut seems necessary to update a few stories of interest to KARTAS listeners. So gather round as Ken dispatches fresh claims of a DNA solution to the Jack the Ripper mystery, and Robin covers the latest bizarre twist in the Rob Ford saga. Or is that now the Doug Ford saga?

Then nestle in with your popcorn as Robin reports back from the Toronto International Film Festival for the 2014 edition of an obligatory Cinema Hut.

Ken’s Time Machine departs from formula to contemplate an omnibus question from Fridrik Bjarnason.  Which characters in history are so serendipitous or unlikely that they must have been undercover time-travelers?

Finally, Among My Many Hats sees Robin chatting about Feng Shui 2, which is Kickstarting even as we speak.

Episode 101: It’s Like Football Camp

August 8th, 2014 | Robin

Our multi-episode arc about the underwater dead who sell life and buy dreams comes to a conclusion in the Gaming Hut as we break out specific scenario ideas for our riffed setting.

In a new segment called Recommendation Engine we tell you what’s catching our fancy in the worlds of books, TV, movies, and food.

Rob Ford is back from rehab and onto the Toronto mayoralty campaign trail, and you know what that means: a midsummer night’s Politics Hut.

Finally Ken’s Time Machine takes a trip to 7th century India to save Buddhism’s bodhi tree from the conquering forces of King Sassanka.

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.

 

 

Joining us for the first time as sponsor is Jeffrey Wikstrom’s Arthur Dies at the End, an ebook series that spins the tedium of Malory into erudite fun.

 

 

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.

Episode 91: The Envy Must Flow Through Me

May 30th, 2014 | Robin

The titular emotion exudes from a certain Chicagoan as we issue a Travel Advisory for Robin’s trip to the Chimeriades convention in sunny Provence.

In Ask Ken and Robin, Chris Shorb asks about making alternate histories plausible in roleplaying.

We take another request in the Eliptony Hut, because Alan Scott wants to know about the Lemurians of Mount Shasta.

Finally an overdue Politics Hut catches up on the latest turns in the Rob Ford saga, which landed him in rehab and temporarily out of Toronto’s mayoral race.

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.

Episode 68: Why You Shouldn’t Ask Us to Destroy Civilization

December 6th, 2013 | Robin

News that US states are now legalizing Internet gambling within their borders send us to an unusually garishly lit and jingle-jangling Gaming Hut, where we consider hobby gaming twists on playing for cash online.

Then Ask Ken and Robin visits the Consulting Occultist on behalf of Steven W. King, who wants to know what to put on his beginning occult bookshelf.

In the Cartography Hut we look for the fun in the relative inaccuracy of period maps.

Finally, in an all-too-inevitable Politics Hut, Robin shares the local perspective on  the now-international Rob Ford story, from the release of damning search warrant evidence to his loss of all but titular authority. You learned about it here first, probably!

Anchor sponsor Slabtown Games remains with us to tout Storyscape, a tablet-based tabletop roleplaying game Robin is currently designing for them.

Episode 63: Pretending To Be Regular Daves

November 1st, 2013 | Robin

Gather in the Gaming Hut as we discuss differences of perspective between game players and game designers.

In How to Write Good we explore that most ancient of all fiction maxims. What does it mean to write what you know?

Erik Otterberg supplies us the subject for Ask Ken and Robin: what if H. P. Lovecraft had lived to a ripe old age?

Finally, popular demand, as it so often does, cries out for a sequel—in this case, the third Politics Hut retelling of the ongoing saga of Toronto mayor Rob Ford. In the segment you’ll hear Robin mention the strange suspended feeling of waiting over a period of months for the big shoe to drop. Well, it dropped yesterday, rendering this segment, recorded last week, a halcyon snapshot of a bygone day. Still, it will help to bridge the gap from when non-Torontonians stopped following the story and yesterday, when he once again made headlines worldwide.

Episode 42: A Faith Demand Moment

June 7th, 2013 | Robin

First up, Ken and Robin enter the Gaming Hut to transcend their origins and discuss transhuman RPGs. How do we create inhuman characters human players can still portray?

In the Tradecraft Hut, we discuss the implications of the Obama administration’s war on leakers, and how to bring press revelations into your espionage gaming.

Robin then bows to popular demand with a Politics Hut Rob Ford update, this one covering the first thirteen days of the Toronto mayor’s crack video problems. (Warning: contents of scandal may have shifted our recording date.)

Finally Ken’s Time Machine revs up, with an account of how Ken altered our timeline to keep the 1928 Baltimore space program an amusing footnote, and not a historical catastrophe.

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.

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