FanFare

We start with Ask Ken and Robin, as Patreon supporter Ross Ireland asks us to tell our best crazy game stories. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Apr 2, 2016 - 3 comments

Pull your swords out of your stones and step into the Gaming Hut for a consideration of the Chosen One trope. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Mar 25, 2016 - 7 comments

Now that backers of our exciting and handsome Patreon campaign get priority access to pose questions for the show, we have a bunch of great questions in the hopper. So let's get to four of them in a special celebratory all-request episode. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Mar 18, 2016 - 3 comments

In this special theme episode, we start in the uncharted waters of the Cartography Hut, to look at the struggle to accurately measure longitude at sea, and its underdog hero, clockmaker John Harrison. We shift to the Gaming Hut to ask ourselves how to introduce navigational uncertainty into magic-rich F20 worlds. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Mar 13, 2016 - 3 comments

Sneak up on us very carefully as Ask Ken and Robin responds to a Josh Kroger question regarding stealth systems in RPGs. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Mar 4, 2016 - 2 comments

Let's schmooze a while in the Gaming Hut as we spitball a game based on social experience points. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Feb 26, 2016 - 5 comments

There’s a rat looking at us and a hawk flying overhead as Ask Ken and Robin fields a Michael Shreeves question on making familiars narratively satisfying. Our lead time prevents the Politics Hut from engaging in prognostication, so instead we step back to look at ways of understanding this most chaotic and suspenseful of US primary seasons. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Feb 19, 2016 - 4 comments

Can you make it through the terrors of Ask Ken and Robin, when Sean Maclean asks us how to run survival horror? If so, the Tradecraft Hut awaits, where we deliver our promised full segment on legendary M15 counterintelligence honcho Maxwell Knight. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Feb 13, 2016 - 1 comment

Get your chlorophyll on as we enter a vine-choked version of the Gaming Hut to riff an alien species that feeds via photosynthesis. / Ken gets you started on your collection of books about maps in a bibliographic Cartography Hut. / It’s been a while since Ask Ken and Robin had a lightning round, so let’s have a lightning round. / Then the Eliptony Hut blows up real good with a look at the Martian nuclear armageddon theory.
posted by graymouser on Feb 5, 2016 - 1 comment

Oh, the humanity! How do we characterize being a human in F20 games and settings? Answers lie inside the Gaming Hut. You think the media is bad today. Back during Chicago's circulation wars you could get shot for reading the wrong paper on the subway. Elucidation waits in a hard-to-target corner of the History Hut. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Jan 29, 2016 - 1 comment

Roll the dice with us as Among My Many Hats finds Ken headed to Las Vegas 68. Grant our dramatic petition while How To Write Good breaks down dramatic scene construction. Join us for a plate of tamarind-infused noodles as the Food Hut looks at the politics of pad thai. Finally, narrowly avoid drowning not once but twice as Ken’s Time Machine explains why our hero saved both a young James Garfield and his eventual assassin Charles Guiteau from separate watery graves.
posted by graymouser on Jan 22, 2016 - 1 comment

In the Gaming Hut we rise to popular new demand to riff a whole bunch of scenario entry-points to get you started with a Dracula Dossier campaign. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Jan 15, 2016 - 3 comments

While in London in December, the Consulting Occultist got a sneak peek at key items of John Dee’s book collection. Join us in previewing the upcoming exhibit Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee, which runs Jan 18-July 29 at the Royal College of Physicians. [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Jan 8, 2016 - 4 comments

Once again we end a year of talking about stuff with a live episode from Dragonmeet in London. Join us as we discuss a time war involving Isaac Newton and the Crusades, GUMSHOE, Feng Shui, highly detailed games, hypothetical gaming-inspired cookbooks, what we’re afraid of now, and making gnomes interesting.
posted by graymouser on Dec 18, 2015 - 1 comment

Would anyone be interested in doing a listen of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff going back to episode 1? [more inside]
posted by graymouser on Dec 13, 2015 - 5 comments

What should you look for when revising a scenario? The Gaming Hut holds the answers. Cinematic technique, legacy and mortality all come out to play in the darkened space of the Cinema Hut as we delve into Robin’s powerful response to the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut. Then Ken and Robin Recycle Audio, specifically more clips from Robin’s Q&A at FanExpo in Toronto. Men in black peer into the windows of the Eliptony Hut as we round up the career of sardonic Fortean investigator John A. Keel.
posted by graymouser on Dec 12, 2015 - 6 comments