We start in the leatherbound precincts of the Book Hut for a look at a classic piece of early travel writing, Alexander William Kinglake’s Eothen . Grab as a Gutenberg ebook , or in print . Still in a choleric mood, we nip over to the Gaming Hut to examine the presentation of epidemic disease in fantasy gaming worlds. Among My Many Hats provides an inside look at Ken’s new subscription series from Pelgrane Press, the euphoniously titled Ken Writes About Stuff . Snag it from the newly spiffed-up ...
Apr 19, 2013
Ken and Robin meet in the Gaming Hut to workshop a game mechanic—the interpersonal disadvantage. The Tradecraft Hut uses further evidence that Blackwater served as a CIA front as an opportunity to riff on the differences between reality levels in espionage games and fiction. Ask Ken and Robin sees our intrepid heroes venturing from behind the couch to answer HippyWizard’s query on overcoming the shyness factor at the game table. And finally, Ken’s Time Machine prevents the arrest and death in cu...
Apr 12, 2013
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 ...
Apr 05, 2013
Scoops of polyhedrals in hand, we enter the Gaming Hut to contemplate the power of experience points. Are they justified in a genre-emulative design? In Ask Ken and Robin , Darren Watts asks Ken to explain how zombies can be one of the two great 20th century myths, since this means either Superman or Godzilla aren’t? Science Hut puts American exceptionalism under the microscope, or at least sits it down in a room and offers it a sociological marshmallow. Have scientific theories of human nature ...
Mar 29, 2013
In the Gaming Hut , we consider the soul of the orc. How do you present this classic fantasy trope without letting in the toxin of real world racism? History Hut returns to crime in Chicago for a consideration of its gangland, then and now . In Ask Ken and Robin , Robin is asked to further expound on a Thing He Always Says, the nature of the iconic character. Finally we activate Ken’s Time Machine in a chrono-traveling effort to prevent the pardon of Richard M. Nixon. Update : We’ve re-uploaded ...
Mar 22, 2013
In our latest venture into the Gaming Hut , we consider the classic sandbox versus railroad opposition. Useful dichotomy, or intellectual black hole that swallows all other argument? From there we gain access to the Tradecraft Hut , to examine the wartime disinformation career of thriller novelist Dennis Wheatley. In Ask Ken and Robin , Craig Maloney prompts us to mull the role of mini-games in roleplaying design. And finally, with such matters back in the news, we tap the Consulting Occultist f...
Mar 15, 2013
We start by venturing into the Genre Hut to limn the fraught boundaries of the Fake Nerd crisis. Our examination of the Chelyabinsk meteor takes us into the Eliptony Hut , where we trace its impact on, and incorporation into, a cluster of competing conspiracy theories. In Ask Ken and Robin we tackle the role of laws and law-breaking in roleplaying games. Is it an American thing, or does it arise from an impulse that defies national boundaries? Finally we rev up Ken’s Time Machine , where Ken rev...
Mar 08, 2013
That Vitamin D sheen you see on Ken’s glossy coat shows that he recently escaped Chicago’s frigid embrace for the sunshine of California’s Bay Area, necessitating another Travel Advisory as we review his trip to Dundracon. An unusual clatter of gunfire punctuates activities at the Food Hut , as we parse press reports of connections between Europe’s horsemeat scandal and the shadow financial empire of Russia’s most notorious arms dealer. Andrew Brehaut prompts this week’s Ask Ken and Robin with a...
Mar 01, 2013
In Ask Ken and Robin , we field Conrad Kinch’s query about the politics of game design. Do a designer’s political beliefs show up in his work? Then, as you knew we would, we engage in some History Bending in honor of Richard III’s recently-confirmed excavation from a Leicester car park. Our new segment How To Write Good inaugurates with a barrage of style tips of both general and RPG-specific application. Finally, in Consulting Occultist , we review the stream-crossing career of African-American...
Feb 22, 2013
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 $...
Feb 15, 2013
In the Gaming Hut , we mull the economics of game design. Will the Kickstarter wave usher in a new era of component-driven play? Then it’s off to the History Hut for Ken’s long-anticipated final showdown with the historical legacy of Woodrow Wilson. Was he really America’s worst president? In Ask Ken and Robin , we are asked the most basic question of our craft: why do people game? Finally the Consulting Occultist considers the silver-shirted biography of American screenwriter, vision-haver and ...
Feb 08, 2013
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 gri...
Feb 01, 2013
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...
Jan 25, 2013
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...
Jan 18, 2013
Our first episode of the new year begins in the Gaming Hut , where we examine the difference between showing up to be entertained, and showing up to play. Ask Ken and Robin fields Paul Weimer’s question about fudging die rolls—when, if ever, is it acceptable? The Politics Hut takes on the classic modernist curvature of Toronto’s city hall as Robin recounts the saga that can only be called The Assassination of His Own Mayoralty by the Lunkhead Rob Ford. (Since we recorded, the libel suit against ...
Jan 11, 2013
In our final episode of 2012, we issue a Travel Advisory on our recent trip to Dragonmeet in London. A seamless segue then ushers us to the wonder of Ken’s Bookshelf , in which Robin vicariously enjoys the impressive pile of tomes Ken liberated from the British Isles during his journey. With yet another end of the world imminent, we are then behooved to cut the ribbon on the Mythology Hut to consider the State of the Apocalypse, 2012 edition. In Ask Ken and Robin , we ponder the ideal RPG rules ...
Dec 21, 2012
Join us for our first episode recorded in front of a live audience, in the council chambers at Kensington Town Hall as part of Dragonmeet 2012. We welcome special guest Simon Rogers for an uber edition of Ask Ken and Robin , which in turn encompasses a panoply of our trademark huts. In the process as we talk Pelgrane Plans, the experience of publishing, digital tools, dino-riding samurai, crowdfunded exhumations and why a question about the Spanish Inquisition and the Illuminati hardly counts as...
Dec 14, 2012
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 ...
Nov 28, 2012
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...
Nov 28, 2012
Inspired by Christian Marclay’s cinechronological video installation The Clock , Gaming Hut examines time and pacing in roleplaying. The Schaudenfreude Institute initiates a new PhD course and Ken plots a bold path forward for his beloved Republican party as we enter the ballot booth-like confines of the Politics Hut to mull the 2012 Presidential Election. In Ask Ken and Robin , Justin Mohareb, in a cleverly submitted audio question, asks Robin to expound on his theory of the one okay game store...
Nov 23, 2012
In The Business of Gaming , Robin shares the Kickstarter lessons he learned from the recent bumper crowdfund of his new roleplaying game, Hillfolk . Ken brings the light of his presence to a devastated New Jersey in Travel Advisory , recounting his adventures at Metatopia. Ask Ken and Robin envisions the Dominion of America, the alternate world political entity resulting from Britain’s sensible management of its North American colonies. Then Ken in his guise as the Consulting Occultist finds the...
Nov 16, 2012
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 prev...
Nov 09, 2012
This week’s Ask Ken and Robin asks us to turn a previous thing that Ken always says on its head. When is it better not to base your setting on the real world? Then Robin and Ken square off in the History Hut for their long-planned reenactment of the War of 1812. As in real history, the Canadian battles the American to a standstill and therefore achieves resounding victory, as graded on a curve. At the request of beloved sponsor Dork Tower, Ken and Robin then establish yet another new hut, this t...
Nov 02, 2012
We kick off with a Gaming Hut segment contemplating the question: is it ever okay to kick someone out of your game group and, if so, when? Jason Breti supplies our Ask Ken and Robin question, leading us to examine Sandy Petersen’s original draft for Call of Cthulhu as compared to the final game we all know and love. Then, in That Thing I Always Say , Robin, with a little help from Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, shows you how not to have wrong opinions about art. And in a surprise Ken’s Time Machine ...
Oct 25, 2012
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...
Oct 18, 2012
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 to...
Oct 12, 2012
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...
Oct 05, 2012
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 Occultis...
Sep 27, 2012
Travel Advisory whisks us on an aural journey to Worldcon, courtesy of Ken, who brings back knowledge of Chinese SF, steampunk semantics, the best vampire novel of the last 100 years, and the dreaded hallway seminar. Along the way we explore the sub-cultural differences between the literary side of geekery and its gaming cousin. We venture into the Gaming Hut to peer over the shoulders of Mike Mason and Paul Fricker as they refit the classic roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu for its seventh editi...
Sep 20, 2012•1 hr 11 min
It’s a bumper installment of Travel Advisory as Ken and Robin look back on the whirlwind that was Gen Con 2012. Amid the fast-flying references: Fantasy Flight’s Spartacus and Netrunner; GURPS Horror , Book of the Smoke , Bookhounds of London , the Coventry Street , Harmonsworth and Highgate Vampires; Charles Fort , Lorefinder , Ashen Stars , 13th Age , Delta Green , John Helfers, Matt Forbeck , Pathfinder Tales . In Ken and Robin Recycle Audio choice snippets of the GUMSHOE Investigative rolepl...
Sep 07, 2012
