Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Andrew Miller asks for tips on playing paladins well. We enter  the History Hut to wonder what shattered the mind of Tudor historian John Leland. Amid t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-596-also-a-no-show-job/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Jason Thompson asks if the group dynamic known as the Tyranny of Structurelessness applies to GM-less roleplaying games. Estimable backer Gray St. Quintin...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-595-ipa-aliens/

In the Gaming Hut we identify the elements of a great recurring gamemaster character. At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Lester Ward, the Archaeology Hut mulls the ancient Egyptian fortresse...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-594-bishop-of-the-drowned-land/

Elves and dragons have some emotional needs to work out as the Gaming Hut answers beloved Patreon backer Nikolaj’s request for tips on bringing elements of DramaSystem into an F20 game. The Cri...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-593-supermarket-of-murder/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-a-mexican-machen-adaptation-french-jfk-paranoia-and-dean-martin-in-a-flying-saucer/

In the Gaming Hut we find ways to bring players back into the action when they make sensible decisions that sideline their characters. 2Beloved Patreon backer Paul S. Enns beckons us into the Tra...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-592-a-rhode-island-level-of-excitement/

In the Gaming Hut, Robin pitches Ken on a concept for a roleplaying game called Renfields. The Mythology Hut looks at the enigmatic Dacian god and/or person named Zalmoxis, who might have been a ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-591-good-fun-that-barbarians-have/

We hope you can make it to the Gaming Hut for a discussion of quorum and attendance vagaries. In the History Hut we answer the request of beloved Patreon backer Jeromy French to flesh out a topic...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-590-rolled-a-critical-and-saved-a-clown/

Players say they hate linear scenarios. Seasoned convention GMs extoll the efficacy of the greased rail session. In the Gaming Hut we ask what’s up with that. Beloved Patreon backer Monster Tal...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-589-ordo-veritatis-chicago/

Keep your ancient documents well-hidden in the Gaming Hut, as beloved Patreon backer Brian Thomas asks us how to construct a Bookhounds of London one-shot around explorer Aurel Stein, the Great G...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-588-full-stop-anti-marooning/

Beloved Patreon backer Mark Kenney inspires us to wear our classiest outfits in the  Gaming Hut as we seek ways to bring the vocabulary of clothing and fashion to tabletop narration. The Food Hu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-587-someones-gonna-wear-the-skin/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Hector Trelane takes inspiration from Robin’s EZ One Shot system to ask if designers are finding a root language of roleplaying that points toward a les...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-586-the-velveteen-rabbit-of-signage/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-slow-horses-american-fiction-anatomy-of-a-fall-the-holdovers/

In the Gaming Hut we look at the paradox of choice, in which players want many alternative paths yet also want to explore all of them. The Archaeology Hut surveys the career of William Stukeley, ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-585-advice-and-holy-water/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Joshua Randall asks for help dealing with players who like to shoot down everyone else’s plans. Fans of irony will appreciate the story of Edo firebrea...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-584-maybe-a-murder-is-good-sometimes/

In the Gaming Hut beloved backer Ludovic Chabant asks Robin to expand on his choice for favorite RPG adventure, as seen on the Scroll for Initiative blog. Naturally Ken also makes a choice or two...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-583-marge-the-druid-is-feeling-rejected/

In the Gaming Hut beloved backer Jamie Twine seeks tips on signaling weirdness and danger in horror games not set in our recognizable world. Esteemed backer Ginger asks for the Tradecraft Hut tak...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-582-thats-a-bad-laser/

Everything unravels in the Gaming Hut when beloved Patreon backer Tennant Reed asks us to use the Watergate docudramedy Gaslit as inspiration for a heist gone wrong game. Ken’s Bookshelf delive...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-581-bureaucratic-survival-horror/

The Gaming Hut contains a special rack for displaying fancy blades as beloved Patreon backer Stephen Dosman asks us to find the tabletop fun in Ulfberht swords. In the Cinema Hut we look at the n...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-580-the-most-fun-word-in-the-history-of-metallurgy/

Our annual live episode recorded at London’s Dragonmeet finds our audience of expert questioners in a substantive mood. Accordingly, after nerdtroping WWII and the Peloponnesian war and contemp...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-579-live-at-dragonmeet-2023/

The Gaming Hut explodes in a molasses fireball full of staplers, but then does something entirely sensible, as we consider ways to reframe the fumble. The Eliptony Hut studies a locally beloved c...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-578-subtitle-quibbler/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-godzilla-minus-one-poker-face-the-bear/

In the Gaming Hut we come to the aid of beloved Patreon backer Keelan O’Hea, who wants to know how to revive a campaign after a period spent on hold. Recent reports that it is the world’s old...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-577-a-glove-on-the-flipper/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-high-school-fight-club-twisted-apparitions-and-the-plot-against-hitler/

In the Gaming Hut we ask ourselves whether designers should include optional rules they don’t actually recommend using. The History Hut takes on the smell of rocket fuel as beloved backer Fred ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-576-pantheon-hop/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Alexander Arebalo wants to know how to make a building more of a character than a setting in a scenario. Glittering backer Josh King checks the Crime Blot...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-575-your-starter-past-life/

In the Gaming Hut show you how to remind players that their characters are the experts. The Tradecraft Hut profiles American novelist, journalist and Soviet spy Martha Dodd. Ken and/or Robin Talk...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-574-kettle-of-worms/

In the Gaming Hut we discuss ways to build premise acceptance into pregenerated characters. Beloved Patreon backer invites us to the Horror Hut to discuss H. P. Lovecraft’s view that Bram Stoke...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-573-have-a-train-handy/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Bart Mallio asks us for ways to make traps exciting. Redoubtable backer Patrick Crowley directs us to the History Hut for a look at St. Louis’ Veiled Pr...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-572-rains-of-peas-and-gravel/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-satanists-demon-contagion-and-a-science-vampire/

The Gaming Hut stands inconveniently close to a weapons and armor store as beloved Patreon backer Urchin Prince asks for advice on handling shopping-obsessed players. At the request of arborially...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-571-forensic-chainsawologists/

Our first all-request episode in many moons kicks off with a Gaming Hut question from beloved Patreon backer Derrick Yates, on running horror when you don’t love gory movies. Then compelling ba...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-570-perhaps-im-wrung-out/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-alien-invaders-outback-noir-and-a-curse-breaking-conspiracy/

The Gaming Hut completes its series on scenario structures, as inspired by Robin’s recent Adventure Crucible chapbook for the Kraken, with the intrigue scenario. In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Som...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-569-alacrity-was-their-dump-stat/

The Gaming Hut continues its look at the structures analyzed in Robin’s Adventure Crucible Kraken chapbook with the survival scenario. In the Cinema Hut Robin points you toward the best geek-fa...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-568-dream-ghosts/

The Gaming Hut continues its look at scenario structures, as found in Robin’s new Adventure Crucible chapbook, with the chain of fights. In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, Eric Prister f...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-567-all-this-stupid-wheat/

In the Gaming Hut, we look at the second of the scenario structures Robin breaks down in his new Adventure Crucible chapbook, the mystery. Beloved Patreon backer Joshua Randall beckons us into th...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-566-you-are-a-special-island/

Ken and Robin were together once more for a live show at Gen Con, and here it is, with the mystical confluence of Elvis, Ben Franklin, and zombies, plus harissa, fancy liquor labeling, our nemese...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-565-live-at-gen-con-2023/

The Gaming Hut hosts part one in a series breaking down the various scenario structures, as inspired by Robin’s new Kraken chapbook, Adventure Crucible. We start with a look at the dungeon and ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-564-speciation-event/

Among My Many Hats looks at Robin’s new Adventure Crucible Kraken chapbook, in which he breaks down the structures of various scenario types to help you design them better. Get in PDF from Driv...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-563-the-human-salmon-of-1737/

In the Gaming Hut, we propose ways to respond to the characters’ failures of stealth without killing story momentum. In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, both of us chat with author Howard...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-562-never-refer-to-peoples-necks/

For the first time since the Great Unpleasantness, not only Ken but also Robin made it to Gen Con. Picking up a tradition where it left off, we devote the episode to recapping our experience ther...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-561-if-sauron-was-an-eye-of-love/

The episode we record together in Indianapolis before Gen Con is back, starting with a Gaming Hut look at using the vagaries of attendance to guide your plot developments. In the Food Hut we look...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-560-a-total-gef-move/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Lauberfen asks for tips on achieving balance with F20 magic items. How do GMs find the sweet spot between a boring +1 sword and a full MacGuffin? The Book...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-559-its-not-a-two-demon-bag/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Hector Trelane asks us to discuss the Jeepform game design movement. A Crime Blotter investigation has us looking at Captagon, a licit pharmaceutical prod...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-558-any-other-stupid-cave-lake/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Michael David Jr. wants to know how to fold the 19th century French interest in Ancient Egypt into The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. In the Food Hut we l...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-557-all-four-sided/

Beloved Patreon backer and longtime GM David Rourke convenes us in the Gaming Hut to ask, is it okay if running published adventures doesn’t work for you? Travel Advisory features a report from...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-556-we-touched-the-thing-in-tomb-of-horrors/

The Gaming Hut looks at collaborative worldbuilding. Our Cinema Hut Science Fiction Cinema Essentials series reaches the back half of the 90s. In Ask Ken and Robin, beloved Patreon backer Kevin G...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-555-do-we-get-a-deal-for-seven/

In the Gaming Hut we look at a common GMing pitfall, which we like to call the Case of the Tight-lipped Informant. The Tradecraft Hut opens the dossier on 18th century antiquarian and spy Philipp...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-554-the-best-way-to-annoy-a-husband/

Beloved Patreon backer Ryan McClelland ventures into our seedy, low rent Gaming Hut to ask how Sam Spade’s monkeywrenching style of investigation fits in GUMSHOE. In Ken and/or Robin Talk to So...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-553-they-get-a-really-great-poem-out-of-it/

In the Gaming Hut we suggest ways to design your player character backstory to make you a premise accepter. Learn with Ken as Among My Many Hats discusses his upcoming online adult education cour...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-552-worse-hats/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Elias Helfer wants to hear our take on our esteemed colleague Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s take on investigative leads. Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Els...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-551-its-a-bad-gun/

The planet Earth has hurtled through time and space yet again to take this podcast to another milestone: our five hundred and fiftieth episode. Longtime listeners know what that means—LIGHTNING...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-550/

Flashbacks and cold opens fill the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Kelly Fisher asks how scenes without the player characters work as downbeats. In the Cinema Hut Science Fiction Essentials ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-549-secretly-about-papyrus/

Your heroes don masks and top hats in the Gaming Hut as beloved backer Daniel Fidelman asks how to use iconic French pulp villain Fantomas in The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. The Tradecraft Hut ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-548-the-rhino-and-i-have-an-alibi/

In the Gaming Hut we wonder how running games for a streaming audience will change GMing practice in general. At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Dan Noland with proceed with extreme caution ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-547/

We enter the secret chamber of the Gaming Hut at the behest of beloved Patreon backer Ian Carlsen, who seeks guidance on a campaign built around initiation into a mystery cult. Speaking of myster...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-546-now-i-can-talk-to-plants/

Get your spreadsheets and notebooks out because in the Gaming Hut we’re talking bluebook-heavy games. In the Command Hut beloved Patreon backer Andrew Miller waves his saber to precipitate a di...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-545-b-52s-are-just-very-large-horses/

The Gaming Hut makes knowing reference to the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Joshua Hillerup asks how one might make a game that is to roleplaying what Community was to the sitcom. Malaise ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-544-sean-connerys-speedo/

In the Gaming Hut we examine the social contract of F20, specifically whether players want the GM to move the boss fight into a room convenient to session pacing. Part eleven of our Cinema Hut sc...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-543-truffle-bulettes/

We begin in the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Ludovic Chabant asks for tips on porting the single-protagonist assumptions of much genre source material to the party-driven play typical to ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-542-classic-snake-swap-out/

In the Gaming Hut we look at the Efficiency Paradox, where players who most effectively grapple with the choices of a scenario are the most likely to regard it as linear. A Zillow floorplan of a ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-541-thats-where-you-collect-your-bonus/

Things get both creepy and capey in the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Sean asks how to combine superheroes with cosmic horror. At the behest of estimable backer Cynistrategus, Ripped From ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-540-kaiju-angering-chemical/

In the Gaming Hut we wonder whether it is always bad for the players to figure out the mystery prior to the big reveal scene. A relic heist comes under scrutiny in the History Hut as beloved Patr...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-539-players-and-or-humans/

We hope you’re wearing headphones for this one because we start in the Gaming Hut with a request from beloved Patreon backer Kevin L. Nault asks us to wrap a campaign around ear-entering, disea...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-538-perhaps-an-exploder/

We appear to be stuck in the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Walter Manbeck seeks tips on scenarios set in confined spaces. In the Tradecraft Hut estimable backer Dan L seeks gaming inspirat...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-537-bring-me-the-incompetent-laggard-file/

In the Gaming Hut we ask ourselves what we would pitch to Disney if they asked us to design an F20 game using their characters. Beloved Patreon backer Toonspew draws us to the Monster Hut to cont...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-536-a-box-somewhere-in-scotland/

The topic may be vagueness but the analysis remains sharp as the Gaming Hut looks at open questions and unsolved mysteries in RPG setting material. In Fun With Science, we look for plot hooks in ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-535-nasa-is-not-in-the-neck-adjustment-business/

Beloved Patreon backer Michael Gemar requests that The Business of Gaming tackle Wizards of the Coast’s latest adventures in managing the Dungeons and Dragons Open License. We thought that woul...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-534-manimal-utopia/

In the Gaming Hut we look at what characters should do more often in horror: run! At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Eric Saltwell, the Word Hut seeks the real truth behind Unicode ghost kan...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-533-best-non-answer-of-the-19th-century/

In the Gaming Hut we remember our friend and colleague Darren Watts, prolific Champions designer and former head of Hero Games. The Crime Blotter comes a little too close to home for comfort as K...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-332-in-which-ken-is-shot/

In response to this Caity Weaver New York Times Magazine article, beloved Patreon backer Scott Wachter makes the Gaming Hut a very quiet place indeed by asking us for the scenario possibilities o...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-531-the-copts-still-have-his-head/

Fire up your automated die rollers as the Gaming Hut goes digital to answer beloved Patreon backer Marc Kevin Hall’s request for guidance on running tabletop RPGs online. In the History Hut, un...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-530-more-than-one-adida/

We start by whittling some polyhedrals in the Gaming Hut, as beloved Patreon backer Derrick Yates asks us to sketch out an Appalachian cryptid campaign. In The Business of Gaming we discuss anoth...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-529-more-cryptids-than-it-can-consume-domestically/

After nearly three chaotic years, the universe has begun to right itself, as you can tell when this episode recorded live at Dragonmeet enters your ear canals. Ken answers the call of the nerdtro...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-528-live-at-dragonmeet/

Our weary protagonists, fresh from Dragonmeet, stumble into the Gaming Hut. There they undergo the sort of deductive epiphany required, as per a request from beloved Patreon backer Keelan O’Hea...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-527-100-game-handoutable/

We start as per usual in the Gaming Hut, where this time beloved Patreon backer Bart Mallio asks for tips on combining The Esoterrorists with Night’s Black Agents. Then we move onto an ever-shi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-526-from-what-steve-did/

In the Gaming Hut we look at scenario text as a place to put GM advice. At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Bret Kramer the History Hut hosts the tale of German-born eventual doctor Gottfried...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-525-neptune-reveal-party/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-andor-guardians-holiday-special-and-wednesday/

In the Gaming Hut we mull a peculiar property of RPGs as narrative, the expectation that a scenario will set up more plot elements than it actually pays off. At the behest of beloved Patreon back...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-524-lets-just-dump-it-in-the-west/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Elias Helfer asks us how to start researching real-world places we intend to use in our games. The Archaeology Hut dusts off a request from estimable back...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-523-never-seen-with-a-windsock/

As noted wearers of colorful shirts, we are uniquely qualified to enter a Hawaiian edition of the Gaming Hut. There we respond to the call of beloved Patreon backer Kristian Groenseth, who wants ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-522-pre-rex/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Neil Barnes dons his lovingly constructed Benjamin Disraeli costume to ask how to best portray historical figures at the roleplaying table. The Cinema Hut...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-521-you-cant-see-atlantis-for-all-the-cheese-curds/

In the Gaming Hut we address a query from beloved Patreon backer Steven Dosman on keeping the solutions of mysteries far enough away from characters with the competence and point spends to solve ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-520-cell-phone-from-the-elder-things/

The Gaming Hut as always uses Skynet for your benefit, providing ways to use AI art at your roleplaying table. In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, Ken talks to two someones: Katarzyna “Ka...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-519-everything-weak-and-flimsy/

Belle Époque wings flutter as the Gaming Hut brings the faery world into The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. Ken issues a Travel Advisory for his recent visit to the Mothman Festival in Point Plea...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-518-a-big-fan-of-heliocentrism/

 The first annual Robin and Valerie International Film Festival has come to an end, and just like TIFF before it, that means Robin has a list of movies to recommend to you in the Cinema Hut. The...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-517-kinda-goopy/

We enter the Gaming Hut to ponder the constituency of gamers who prefer lots of crunch, but don’t actually use it when they play. In the History Hut beloved Patreon backer Gene Ha asks if elect...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-516-co-frankensteining/

Rob Heinsoo and Gareth-Ryder Hanrahan step in for a sadly absent Robin as the annual live episode from Gen Con returns from the slumber of Pandemicland. They join Ken for a robust discussion of t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-515-live-from-gen-con-2022/

In the Gaming Hut we look at a largely foregone phenomenon in tabletop, the roleplaying tournament. At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Dan L, the Tradecraft Hut examines Project Coast, South...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-514-joseph-campbell-in-a-jar/

The Gaming Hut exists in all dimensions as beloved Patreon backer Jacob Boersma asks how to giving Evelyn Wang’s multiversal powers from Everything Everywhere All at Once to player characters. ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-513/

In the Mythos Hut we decide that fish people and serpent folk have hogged the spotlight for too long. It’s time for us to invent some humanoid toads, of the psychedelic variety of course, and w...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-512-the-spiders-pay-for-themselves/

Foul sorcerers flee the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Jesse Lowe asks for the best Earth-based setting for swords and sorcery—the Hellenistic Era excepted, of course. In Ken and/or Robin...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-511-i-just-wanted-to-say-astrosome/

Normally a post-Gen Con debrief takes up an entire episode. But since only one of us was there, Ken gives Robin the lowdown in a double-header Travel Advisory segment. In the Gaming Hut, beloved ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-510-the-worst-chocolate-the-worst-cake/

In the Gaming Hut we demonstrate how to dovetail player-created character hooks into your scenario, as Ken proposes a Freaking Weird Moment for his This is Normal Now character and Robin weaves i...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-509-charismatic-megafauna-of-food/

On August 2, 2012, the first installment of Ken and Robin Talks About Stuff debuted to a waiting gaming world. For our recent 500th episode celebration, we held the traditional Lightning Round. F...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-508-kartas-a-z/

  In the Gaming Hut, Beloved Patreon backer Eric Jeppesen, or a clever facsimile thereof, kicks off an all-request episode, as he wonders how to run GUMSHOE One-2-One with a doppelganger protago...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-507-awesomely-underfunded/

The Gaming Hut floats further from land than it ever has as beloved Patreon backer Alden Strock seeks the tabletop uses of Point Nemo, the planet’s literal middle of nowhere. In Ken and/or Robi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-506-his-bonaparte-eyes/

The next time you’re about to design a situation where the players can’t do what they want to do, you’ll recall this week’s Gaming Hut segment and think, “How do I let them do that with...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-505-move-them-back-to-the-fun/

In the Gaming Hut we ask when the GM should apply a rules set’s cost system for actions, and when it is instead best to make it a freebie. The Command Hut provides a dossier on the Russian merc...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-504-area-nihilists/

Ken kicks us off with a Travel Advisory on his journey to Poland’s Pyrkon, with ancillary adventures in Poznan. Then the Gaming Hut subtly ratchets up the tension as we ask how long a horror sc...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-503-distinctively-muppety/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-obi-wan-doctor-strange-rothaniel-and-the-first-shin-honkaku-novel/

Surprisingly often, mysteries in other genres show clues landing in the detective’s lap. The Gaming Hut asks how to do this at the roleplaying table without leaving players feeling that they’...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-502-aramaic-mutterer-whisperer/

The Gaming Hut mines a new source of mysterious, danger-laden plot hooks: Reddit’s WhatIsThis forum. The Horror Hut takes the unusual step of profiling a real person, as beloved backer Louis Sy...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-501-go-toward-the-omen/

We don’t believe it, you don’t believe it, but it’s true all the same. Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff has reached that milestone of milestones, Episode 500. Which means, thanks to the persp...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-500-lightning-round/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-top-gun-ghostbusters-we-own-this-city/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Bill Durfy asks us to provide advice for budding professional GMs. The Tradecraft Hut looks at John Stonehouse, a British MP who spied for the Czechs and...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-499-the-easily-discouraged-ones/

Beholders swoop around the futuristic spires of the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Ian Carlsen seeks tips on time travel in F20 games. Estimable backer Jason Thompson beckons us into the Cu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-498-time-narcs/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-dr-strange-men-and-a-demon-possessed-skull/

Beloved Patreon backer Ryan McClelland kicks of an all-request episode in the Gaming Hut, seeking advice on how to convincing players to treat former adversaries as questionable allies. In the Hi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-497-edgelord-tarot/

Beloved Patreon backer Urchin Prince beckons us to the shiniest throne of the Gaming Hut to ask about boons the PCs’ patrons might give them. The Architecture Hut faces cost overruns for its fi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-496-tonsils-not-included/

The Gaming Hut investigates the difference between problems that rules sets should set out to solve and mere conceptual issues that never come up in play. The History Hut gets hairy as we reveal ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-495-more-of-an-octagon/

In an episode dedicated to recreating for posterity the good half of an old installment that has since gone missing, the Gaming Hut looks at campaigns where most of the PCs are sidekicks to a sup...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-494-sidekicks-to-the-bear/

With the Gremlins franchise coming back, warnings are on the mind of beloved Patreon backer Bryan. He beckons us into the back room of the Gaming Hut to ask how to handle them at the roleplaying ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-493-that-new-cleaning-acid/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-everything-everywhere-the-protege-argentinean-noir-and-italian-jack-london/

In the Gaming Hut we provide advice on working with the  GM to play a mastermind character. At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Drew, the History Hut goes all the way back to 2004 for the ta...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-492-more-feck-in-the-bank/

In the Gaming Hut, we look at the elements that ought to go into an introductory scenario. Beloved Patreon backer Todd W. Olson has not left the building, but has rather entered the Culture Hut, ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-491-stormy-petrels-of-crime/

In the Gaming Hut we lay out goals the GM should set for convention games and other one-shots. The Command Hut looks at an invasion of a smaller power by a larger one that has somewhat fallen dow...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-490-they-left-the-irony-bridge-intact/

In the Gaming Hut we look at that most elusive of GM skills: knowing when to shut up. The smell of ancient newsprint pervades the Horror Hut as beloved Patreon backer Jamie Twine seeks the connec...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-489-ideally-a-themologue/

Among My Many Hats looks at Ken’s latest work of Cthulhoid essays, Tour de Lovecraft: the Destinations, available as of March 22nd from Atomic Overmind Press. The Gaming Hut looks at ways you, ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-488-the-da-vinci-code-of-numbers/

Beloved Patreon backer Chihiro Yamata has access to an Edwardian house with a creepy ghost plaque, and wants the Gaming Hut to do something about it. Esteemed backer Jake beckons us into the Cart...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-487-nothing-more-organic-than-a-moon/

The Gaming Hut gets a snazzy Architecture Hut retrofit as beloved Patreon backer Alexander Arebalo seeks tips for a game based around physical locations. In Conspiracy Corner we ask ourselves if ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/repost-episode-486-temple-of-political-evil/

The Gaming Hut gets a snazzy Architecture Hut retrofit as beloved Patreon backer Alexander Arebalo seeks tips for a game based around physical locations. In Conspiracy Corner we ask ourselves if ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-486-temple-of-political-evil/

Beloved Patreon backer Walter Manbeck chases a bad guy we thought we vanquished into the Gaming Hut, asking us how to keep recurring villains scary after the group has teamed up to defeat them. A...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-485-what-i-might-have-done-in-the-future/

In the Gaming Hut we wonder how many possible player character choices the writer of published scenarios should provide guidance for. The Mythology Hut makes room for a round table as beloved Pat...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-484-unprecedented-snow/

In the Gaming Hut we look at GMing techniques to respond to that moment when one player makes a unilateral choice that causes the rest of the group to groan in protest. The History Hut acquires a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-483-dont-come-at-me-circle-people/

The launch pad has been positioned uncomfortable close to the Gaming Hut, as beloved Patreon backer Neil Barnes seeks ways to center a game around the Soviet Space Program. The Crime Blotter has ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-482-i-never-really-got-rid-of-her/

In the Gaming Hut we consider the genre all tabletop roleplaying games bend toward. Spoiler: it has to do with the players. Our ongoing Mythos Hut process of creating a new Lovecraftian god reach...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-481-we-love-this-gnoll/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-hawkeye-finch-eternals-and-the-velvet-underground/

The Gaming Hut attempts to pin down a much-used bit of tabletop terminology as beloved Patreon backer Ludovic Chabant asks what we mean when we say that a game breaks. Esteemed Patreon backers Je...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-480-not-described-otherwise-as-being-a-metal-tube/

Get ready for twists and Gaming Hut turns as beloved Patreon backer Terry Robinson asks for advice on genre shifts on the tabletop. The Tradecraft Hut finds intrigue behind an old-timey Canadian ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-479-his-old-draping-skills/

We open up the Gaming Hut for another year and find a strangely folded missive from beloved Patreon backer Stephen Dosman, who wants us to incorporate the practice of letter-locking into historic...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-478-his-pursevant-had-dropsy/

Nestle your rattling dice and thumping miniatures with care for our final episode of 2021. In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Bob Grider seeks the connection between the King in Yellow and ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-477-not-for-that-but-not-not-for-that/

In the Gaming Hut we find ways to design scenarios that highlight the cool and unique features of a location. It’s that most wonderful time of the year as the Horror Hut contemplates Christmas ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-476-homeostasis-and-recurrence-in-great-power-relations/

Hey look it’s another all-request episode! Beloved Patreon backer Kieron Gillen opens the Gaming Hut, which we hope isn’t a portal into a hellish otherrealm, to ask how designers screen out t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-475-romance-or-blasphemy/

In the Gaming Hut we look for ways to design F20 encounters that players don’t want to skip. The Architecture Hut reaches unprecedented heights as beloved Patreon backer Philip Masters seeks th...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-474-becuthbert/

In the Gaming Hut we take on a classic horror scenario design issue. When the menace stems from ambient weirdness, how do you build fresh ways for the player characters to conclude the story? Bel...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-473-the-special-ability-is-its-a-gun/

An all-request episode kicks off with a Gaming Hut question from beloved backer Tom Abella, who wants to know if, when playtesting, there is such a thing as too good a GM. Estimable backer Elias ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/corrected-episode-472-running-away-from-a-bush/

An all-request episode kicks off with a Gaming Hut question from beloved backer Tom Abella, who wants to know if, when playtesting, there is such a thing as too good a GM. Estimable backer Elias ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-472-running-away-from-a-bush/

Our Gaming Hut series on the axes of tabletop RPG design concludes, we think and hope, with an opposition separately suggested by beloved Patreon backers Nicola Wilson and Lauberfen: Randomness v...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-471/

The Gaming Hut axes of RPG design series turns toward setting for its next opposition, Canon vs. Open. Ken is back from the Chicago Film Festival to report on his findings in the Cinema Hut. In K...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-470-snailteaser/

Axes keep showing up at the Gaming Hut, and this week we look at the Abstract vs Emotional slider in roleplaying game design. Inspired by the passing of one of its prime exponents, Owen Luder, th...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-469-real-rumors/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-the-card-counter-secret-origins-of-the-afterlife-and-gems-from-the-chicago-film-fest/

Our Gaming Hut look at the axes of roleplaying game design continues with the previously teased Ease versus Mastery. In Ask Ken and Robin beloved Patreon backer Joe Webb takes the bait and reques...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-468-can-we-make-it-blow-up/

Our Gaming Hut series on axes of roleplaying design continues with Robin’s handling cost opposition, Harmonica versus Violin. In the Architecture Hut, beloved Patreon backer Anders Gabrielsson ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-467-can-we-make-it-blow-up/

Our Gaming Hut series on the axes of RPG design takes a turn as Robin looks at the trade-offs he thinks about while working on games, starting with Simulation vs Emulation. Fun With Science goes ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-466-foolish-enough-to-get-near-us/

If it’s September, it must be, uh, Gen Con? Ken kicks off with a Travel Advisory on how the in-person side of the event went. Speaking of unusual versions of long running events, Robin opens up...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-465-sour-joe/

Our continuing Gaming Hut survey of tabletop RPG design principles tackles Power. That sounds like something we always want. Does it belong at one end of a spectrum, or does it corrupt absolutely...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-464-by-fun-you-mean-opaque/

In the Gaming Hut we continue our series on axes of tabletop RPG design with an examination of Resilience and Robustness. At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Allen Wilkins, Ripped from the He...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-463-the-bubble-wrap-of-roleplaying-games/

The Gaming Hut kicks off a series looking at the axes of RPG design, so appropriately enough we start with elegance. In the Architecture Hut beloved Patreon backer Nicola Wilson seeks the truth s...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-462-i-can-turn-him-into-a-skink/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer JP Moral asks for steps to take when homebrew adventures don’t feel right in play. Estimable backer Bryan takes the History Hut to 1970 for a look at Oh...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-461-armed-for-the-wedding/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer V. R. Weather asks for a 101 on playtesting. Surprised that we have not directly tackled this basic topic before, we immediately comply. The Tradecraft Hu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-460-the-price-is-scarecrow/

The T-Shirt Justification Hut gets scaly and doomy with a look at the connection between dragons and apocalypses. In the Money Hut, we reveal high-frequency trading as yet another Carcosan front ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-459-dragons-are-the-federal-reserve/

In the Gaming Hut we provide tips on GMing for a loose cannon character. Surely not a loose cannon player. None of us have ever had that experience. Beloved Patreon backer Travis Johnson summons ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-458-slacker-infant/

In the Gaming Hut, we look at game balance. What is it, and when do we care about it? We try not to step on any skulls in the Archaeology Hut as Beloved Patreon backers Liz & Siskey seek the scoo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-457-a-lot-to-lay-on-the-genius-loci/

Hey, it’s an all-request episode! Count the syllables and jot down the allusions as an anonymous Patreon backer beckons us into the Gaming Hut to ask how to do spontaneous poetry duels in rolep...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-456-least-worst-hell/

The Gaming Hut hits the streets, many of them, for a look at designing scenarios to introduce a city. We find the Crime Blotter is covered in ancient leather and animal glue, our cue to find the ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-455-ambush-us-with-ghosts/

Make sure anyone else in the room is really them as the Gaming Hut looks at fox spirits, doppelgangers, and other foes who disguise themselves as human. The Tradecraft Hut profiles CIA operative,...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-454-a-disreputable-trade/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-black-widow-summer-of-soul-and-the-fate-of-the-artist/

Don’t forget you’re in the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Lauberfen asks for tips on finding the fun in amnesia and similar player character flaws. In Ripped from the Headlines, estimab...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-453-the-chicago-discount/

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer as the Gaming Hut provides advice to players running in political intrigue games. In Fun With Science beloved Patreon backer Josh King asks for the...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-452-dont-look-at-the-leopards/

Keep an eye out for incoming candlesticks as the Gaming Hut finds ways to engage players in the prelude part of a scenario, for example the bit in a cozy mystery before any genteel murdering happ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-451-bring-a-bunch-of-idiots/

Just when time had lost all meaning, the ineffable power of numbers tells us that we’ve hit Episode 450. Seasoned investigators know what that means: our beloved Patreon backers pose them, and ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-450-lightning-round/

We venture from the Gaming Hut into a wider world of stashed items as beloved Patreon backer Carrie Schutrick requests the RPG angle on geocaching. Estimable Patreon backers pool their resources ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-449-quietly-judging-you/

In the Gaming Hut we spitball scenarios that take place over a period of many years. Fun With Science answers the call from beloved Patreon backer bt to examine Freudian psychologist Charles Seli...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-448-mice-and-diamonds/

We start out in the Gaming Hut to tell your GM that the shocking premise subversion they have in mind isn’t as fun or cool as they might think. A segment that had to hibernate during the pandem...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-447-the-bert-adjacent-ugly-wheels-of-commerce/

An all-request episode kicks off in the Gaming Hut with beloved Patreon backer Chris Camfield’s request to follow up on a carelessly dropped side reference about realist F2O. Esteemed Patreon b...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-446-well-also-h-r-giger/

In the Gaming Hut we provide tips enabling you to convince your fellow players to go along with your plans. Beloved Patreon backer Jurie Horneman asks us to convene a Book Hut to talk about Rober...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-445-the-cavern-of-boring/

Prepare to reverse polarity as the Gaming Hut looks at scenarios that revolve around science mysteries. Beloved Patreon backer Tennant Reed asks us to unfurl the Crime Blotter for the story of pe...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-444-axe-democracy/

In the Gaming Hut, we help you, the player, bring your character’s narrative hook, in this case a Freaking Weird Moment for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, into play. As befits this weird yea...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-443-ruined-by-farm-children/

Bravely we enter the Gaming Hut, at the behest of beloved Patreon backer Scott Wachter, to roast the cockatrice and other weaksauce monsters. The History Hut runs aground as estimable Patreon bac...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-442-mad-at-unicorns/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Joe Webb asks for a Fall of DELTA GREEN / Night’s Black Agents crossover inspired by a Cambodian pop song. (After we recorded this segment Ken remember...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-441-cheese-made-of-cheese/

In the Gaming Hut the beloved Patreon backer known as Ed, Speaker in Digressions, asks us to envision a game that that arcs from a state of nature to civil society. The Tradecraft Hut steams open...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-440-all-the-van-helsings/

Would we rather fight a turnip-headed wyvern, or an enormous Jenny Haniver? The answer awaits in the T-Shirt Justification Hut. In Ask Ken and Robin, mighty-thewed Patreon backer Mike Mearls asks...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-439-untainted-by-dockyard-activities/

Beloved Patreon backer Jonathan Keim asks us to take care of the Gaming Hut for the winter, during which time we will contemplate making place as big a part of a game session as the Overlook Hote...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-438-anyone-can-bilocate/

Pick up that flashlight and head down into the basement as the Gaming Hut looks at building moments that take advantage of a single protagonist for one-player games like GUMSHOE One-2-One. The Hi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-437-your-chartreuse-leotard/

In the Gaming Hut we parse the differences between crunch and simulation, as we examine the yen for complexity and the various related but separate impulses behind it. At the behest of beloved Pa...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-436/

Sidle up to the Gaming Hut as we provide tips on bringing your player characters into historical events. In Ask Ken and Robin, beloved Patreon backer Dennis Harlow asks us to add detail and credi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-435-unreliable-satanists/

Beloved Patreon backer Michael Curtis dons a Nehru jacket and John Lennon glasses to duck into the Gaming Hut for tips on running occult investigation in Swingin’ London. In part 9 of the Cinem...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-434-fight-the-mimes/

The Gaming Hut nestles next to an apothecary and a retailer of used armor pieces as we suggest techniques to populate buildings for a city sourcebook. Fright film enters the psychic hangover of t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-433-leave-out-a-syllable-for-elijah/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Jacob Ansari seeks tips on introducing complex settings to the players. Part 8 of our Cinema Hut horror essentials series sees the genre take an apocalypt...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-432/

Keep that Abingdon Island giant tortoise under a blanket as beloved Patreon backer Kevin L. Nault beckons us into the Gaming Hut to work animal trafficking into RPG scenarios. Part 6 of our Cinem...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-431-working-for-bigfoot/

Classic occult conspiracy meets eldritch espionage when beloved Patreon backer Daniel Fidelman pokes his head into the Gaming Hut, asking how to incorporate Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-430-look-whats-happened-to-consensus-reality/

In a co-production between the Mythology Hut and the T-Shirt Justification Hut, a particularly mournful example of the species inspires us to find ways to put the phoenix in your games. Then put ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-429-it-will-make-a-lovely-allegory/

In the Gaming Hut we return to that perennial, not at all distracting topic of the red herring, as beloved Patreon backer Kevin Greenlee asks how to work player-generated herrings into the drama....

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-428-only-a-modernist-horse/

We’re back for another year, starting in the Gaming Hut, where beloved Patreon backer Nicola Wilson wants to know how to incorporate the relatively high cost of clothes and food in the Middle A...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-427-poor-bactrian-saps/

In our last episode of 2020 we lurch, masked and tipsy, into the Kringle Hut, to fashion a horror scenario around the Newfoundland tradition of mummering. Beloved Patreon backer Noel Warford conv...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-426-licensed-mumming/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Jacob Boersma asks how, with conspiracies theories going mainstream, we should create them for our horror games. In Ripped from the Headlines, backer Gra...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-425-pork-chop-of-the-truth/

  Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, m...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-mank-writes-kane-and-h-g-wells-is-full-of-himself/

In the Gaming Hut we discuss a key difference between RPG settings and the real world: imaginary politics has a lot more smart people in it. Beloved Patreon backer Andrew Miller lures us into an ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-424-reverse-darwinism/

In the Gaming Hut, Lisa Steele and Neil Fortier ask how to adjust Robin’s police procedural superhero game, Mutant City Blues, in the wake of the George Floyd murder. George III’s topographic...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-423-the-mysterious-g/

In the Gaming Hut we look at narrative coherence and whether GMs should enforce it by trying to make all introduced story elements pay off. Something sufficiently definitive has happened that we ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-422-sumerian-gm-screens/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer David Sowa asks us how to incorporate machine politics into an F20 game. Ken beckons us into the Cinema Hut to discuss his discoveries at this year’s v...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-421-the-lawful-evil-parade-corrected/

Beloved Patreon backer John Scheib summons us to the Gaming Hut to find techniques for infusing Earth-based settings with your chosen nerdtrope. In the Tradecraft Hut we find that the Cuban sonic...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-420-they-were-hurt-frankly/

We risk mixing up our aromatics with our alembics as beloved Patreon backer Jason Gorkisch enters the Gaming Hut to ask which ingredients and cooking styles make the best basis for magic. Peter M...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-419-five-hour-haste/

A Theosophical choir sings in the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Brad McClain asks for Trail of Cthulhu scenario seeds inspired by Alexander Scriabin’s unfinished, Armageddon-inducing com...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-418-professor-x-will-hug-me/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Ross Ireland asks about the possibility of victory in an ongoing game. Is it essential, or can certain doom become its own kind of win? Regal backer Mike...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-417-double-devil/

An all-request episode kicks off in the Gaming Hut as Dicegeeks asks us how to incorporate the Fossil Showman Albert Koch and his Missouri Leviathan into a game. We jump some bulls on our way int...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-416-theyre-gonna-have-their-lifeforms-fight/

The pandemic didn’t stop Robin from attending the Toronto International Film Festival, because it took place in his living room this year. In the Cinema Hut he reviews the best of a cut-down sl...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-415-psychedelic-tupperware-party/

The Gaming Hut transforms into a spooky manor by the moors as beloved Patreon backer Ian Carlsen asks what you can do, outside the setting, to make an F20 game more gothic. In Ripped from the Hea...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-414-thats-how-you-get-your-grants-approved/

Convention season has gone into hibernation, but that didn’t stop us from doing a live episode at Gen Con Online. The Nerdtrope deck served up a duplicate, but that didn’t stop us from sticki...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-413-live-from-gen-con-online/

The Gaming Hut gets into a crossover mood as beloved Patreon backer Adam Grotjohn wants to know how to turn player characters from Vampire: the Masquerade into the antagonists for Night’s Black...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-412-dumas-salads/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Philippe Marcil asks how you start with Earth when it is full of racism, sexism, and a plethora of other isms. A man in a barrel pleads with a man not in...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-411-chief-plant-health-officer/

The Gaming Hut dares to risk horrific ill fortune to answer beloved Patreon backer Kevin Greenlee’s request for tips on game mastering powerful but cursed objects. The History Hut looks at ways...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-410-my-uncle-never-had-an-owl/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Michael Brodhead seeks our assistance in moving from setting to story. Might taxonomies of storytelling help? The Architecture Hut provides grand surround...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-409-league-of-extraordinary-liability-lawyers/

In lieu of our usual Gen Con wrap, we reach for an all-request episode. Beloved Patreon backer Lauberfen meets us in the Gaming Hut to ask how to incorporate TPKs and character death into the nar...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-408-not-that-my-players-would-do-anything-like-that/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-american-pickle-ill-be-gone-in-the-dark-and-iconic-michael-caine/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Gene Ha asks about trusting players with knowledge of upcoming secrets, for example the vampire content in Night’s Black Agents. The Tradecraft Hut delv...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-407-you-may-be-competent/

Beloved Patreon backer Manfred convenes us in a camouflage-covered Gaming Hut to ask how to run Fall of Delta Green agents through the Vietnam War. Complicating factor: his players are ex-militar...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-406-the-mystical-land-of-hat/

Robin has coined yet another new term and so naturally we must enter the Gaming Hut to talk about table sense. The T-Shirt Justification Hut wrings a segment out of our latest foray into feline-t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-405-it-would-totally-match-her-raven/

Podcast by Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-404-toss-in-your-werecows/

In the Gaming Hut we look at villain plans, and why they have to make sense in investigative games. The Food Hut goes to the drive-thru for a double-double as beloved Patreon backers Tim Maness a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-403-someone-thought-to-give-it-beer/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-harlem-renaissance-detecting-italian-renaissance-painting-and-that-play-youve-heard-about/

Beloved Patreon backer Bob Grider invites us into the Gaming Hut to discuss top-down vs bottom-up design. Discerning Patreon backer Allen Wilkins invokes his Ask Ken and Robin powers to request a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-402-nbimby/

In the Gaming Hut, Ken introduces us to the meta-textual, meme-filled wonderland that is his Fall of Delta Green player group. The Crime Blotter visits the wild mobbed-up years when Montreal Queb...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-401-chorus-cubed/

On August 3, 2012, Ken and Robin debuted into a podcast-starved world the first edition of their weekly podcast. Stuff we talked about incluuuuded a brand new game called Night’s Black Agents, ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-400-lightning-round/

The Gaming Hut goes below the depths for beloved Patreon backer Hector Trelane, who seeks tips on adapting the feel of Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 classic Das Boot into a roleplaying setting. How ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-399-websters-defines-a-shoggoth-as/

Podcast by Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-398-dragons-love-merch/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer wants to know about arc-sized endgames for player characters. Your Call of Cthulhu characters may have wound up in a sanatorium, but did your D&D heroes e...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-397-terrifying-gauziness/

If the hairs on the back of your neck are tingling, you must be in the Gaming Hut, and we may be providing tips on using Sense Trouble abilities. In Fun With Science beloved Patreon backer Chris ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-396-submarine-for-sea-ghouls-2/

In the Gaming Hut we fulfill a Tell Me More Request from beloved Patreon backer Bryan, who wants us to wring gaming ideas from the most recent version of The Invisible Man. Ask Ken and Robin find...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-395-uninterested-in-not-attacking/

The Cartography Hut gets smart as beloved Patreon backer Gerald Sears asks us to riff on intelligent maps. Esteemed Patreon backer Sibel Permann urges the History Hut to find gaming gold in the G...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-394-fruit-cutting-policies/

In the Gaming Hut we help beloved Patreon backer Jamie Twine as he seeks to adapt scenarios written for standard GUMSHOE to the QuickShock version of the system found in The Yellow King Roleplayi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-393-sonia-plus-melted-cheese/

Remote play is all the rage and we’ve convened in the Gaming Hut, physically distanced as always, to provide our tips to smooth your sudden conversion to the format. In the Archaeology Hut, bel...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-392-existence-does-exist/

You are getting sleepy very sleepy in the Gaming Hut as we look at ways to make being mind-controlled fun for players. The Yellow King Roleplaying Game profiles move back to the Culture Hut for a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-391-vigorous-deaccessioning-policy/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-an-iconic-illustrator-and-ontario-bike-gang-history/

The aroma of a damn fine cup of coffee wafts through the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Drew Eicholz asks us to pitch a non-frustrating version of Lynchian roleplaying. In Fun With Science ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-390-open-a-can-hut/

In the Gaming Hut we spitball ideas for GUMSHOE One-2-One scenarios enterprising listeners might turn into self-published PDF products under the auspices of its Creative Commons license. We enter...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-389-the-owl-costume-never-pulled/

In the Gaming Hut we ask when a historical event the players can research might also be a spoiler. Ripped From the Headlines allows beloved Patreon backer Chris Lydon to discover the hidden signi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-388-the-toppling-is-the-point/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Peter McAveney asks how to set up a Night’s Black Agents game as if it is, at first, some other less vampire-infested game. The Tradecraft Hut goes to ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-387-yell-down-into-the-hollers/

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Trung Bui asks us for tips and tricks on running open-ended games without interfering with player agency. The Food Hut remains just as crispy, with a fra...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-386-the-apache-helicopter-of-toaster-ovens/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Gray St. Quintin asks us to expand on our past fleeting discussion of the various voices and modes used in a roleplaying session. The Tradecraft Hut has n...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-385-shill-for-the-macedonians/

Look out for dirigibles as the Gaming Hut looks at the process of selecting your tech level when building an alternate timeline. The Aftermath sequence of The King in Yellow Roleplaying Game serv...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-384-number-one-nightmare/

Longtime listeners know that “Start with Earth” is a Thing Ken Always Says. But in the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Nicola Wilson wants to know exactly where. In the Conspiracy Corner e...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-383-not-quite-doctor-cowboy/

In the Gaming Hut we come to the rescue of beloved Patreon backer Keelan O’Hea, whose players have conceived the inexplicable desire for a version of GUMSHOE with more die rolling in it. The Fo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-382-health-and-safety/

They tried to suppress it. They tried to contain it. They left it for months on a loading dock in Estonia. But now The Yellow King Roleplaying Game has made its final crack in reality by heading ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-381-anthropodermic-wallet/

In the Gaming Hut, we show you how to turn otherwise inert scenes in a sandbox game into prompts for activity. With the Academy Awards creeping up on us yet again, it’s time for us to sashay in...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-380-he-said-foreshadowingly/

That knife you smuggled into the Gaming Hut will finally pay off as we provide tips on playing the secret assassin character. Patreon backer Tom Abella provides us a story Ripped From the Headlin...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-379-stealth-out-and-touch-the-egg-wrong/

With a wave of his chainsaw hand, Patreon backer Walter Manbeck summons us to the Gaming Hut for tips on running comedy horror games. Inspired by a recent New York Times Magazine piece, the Trade...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-378-killer-puppies/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Tom Shaw asks us to even the odds when strong PCs fight weak opponents. A gruesome find in the History Hut prompts estimable backer Polydamas to seek guid...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-377-everyone-believes-in-horse-theft/

Pull up a comfy chair and get your fireballs back in the Gaming Hut as we look at the timing of resource refreshing. In the Tradecraft Hut we peer into the espionage activities of William Playfai...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-376-landlord-reform/

In our final episode of the year, we unwrap the annual Christmas present that is our episode recorded live at Dragonmeet in London. Join us for the nerdtroping of the Norman Conquest and Hindu my...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-375-live-from-dragonmeet/

Freshly home and invigorated, or perhaps exhaugorated, by our annual trip to Dragonmeet in London, we issue a Travel Advisory for the William Blake exhibition at Tate Britain. Rocketed by the pow...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-374-all-books-are-tax-deductible/

In the Gaming Hut we figure out what people are really talking about when they take sides in the system matters debate. The Tradecraft Hut peers into a classic tabloid spy scandal, 1961’s Profu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-373-nutty-crab-soup-corrected/

Join us not midway through but at the top of the podcast as the Gaming Hut finds ways to introduce a new player to a long-running series. In the Television Hut beloved Patreon backer Jeromy Frenc...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-372-we-welcome-all-people-with-mithril/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Elias Helfer asks us how to invent great magical artifacts. The History Hut exits pursued by a bear, and also flying bricks, as we look at New York City�...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-371-werewolf-adjacent/

, We show up in the Gaming Hut with our usual punctuality to look at ways of handling player absences. Crime Blotter looks at video games as a platform for money laundering. Beloved Patreon backe...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-370-dire-satanic-chili/

In the Gaming Hut, Patreon backer Jacques de Villiers wonders how one might use The Armitage Files or Dracula Dossier in The Fall of Delta Green. Then Ken convenes a Cinema Hut to talk about his ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-369-lotta-garlic-there-though/

The Gaming Hut chunks a double-double in the pentacle as Patreon backer Louis Sylvester asks us to riff on regional linguistic magic. Backer Nikolaj Hansen runs into a Mythology Hut shaped like a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-369-good-government-and-dry-socks/

The Gaming Hut warms up its blue bolts as we mull the exasperated Dungeon Master trope. Beloved Patreon backer Corey Pierno asks the Book Hut for tips on researching the everyday lives of histori...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-367-ungrateful-mopes/

We hunker down in the mud and fear of the Gaming Hut to answer beloved Patreon backer Bill Durfy’s request to combine WWI and ghouls. Impeachment is in the news, the 1867 news that is, as the H...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-366-ample-provender/

Our forces muster outside the Gaming Hut as Patreon backer Robert Dean asks us how to fold mass battles into D&D. Thanks to a redaction failure the Tradecraft Hut discovers ICE’s requisition fo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-365-the-grumpocene/

The PCs are being pursued! Run to the Gaming Hut to learn how to make this fun! A sinister substances drips in your direction! Creep into the Horror Hut for an examination of ooze horror. Fill yo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-364-in-the-world-of-awful-meats/

Beloved Patreon backer Timothy Daly meets us in the Gaming Hut to ask why D&D remains the most popular roleplaying game. Speaking of D&D, Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else, specifically Jim Z...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-363-movie-movie-movie/

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Walter Manbeck asks how to do El from Stranger Things as a player character. Expressionistic shadows flit across the Cinema Hut as we take a look at F. W....

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-362-the-dinosaurs-always-won/

We take a closer look at Ken’s new Pelgrane Press book Hideous Creatures by way of the Monster Hut, which seems to be full of our pals, the Deep Ones. In How To Write Good we talk about foils a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-361-step-away-from-the-arras/

This week’s Gaming Hut comes to you by telegram as Patreon backer Jay Tea asks us how to research and deploy historical communications technology, oh let’s say, FALL OF DELTA GREEN. Patreon b...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-360-sir-gawain-the-rock-johnson/

The Gaming Hut shows up with its usual punctuality as Patreon backer Ken Ringwald asks to hear about time as a resource in RPGs.   It’s dark out. He has a full tank of gas. He’s wearing sung...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-359-stith-thompson-entries-all-over-it/

Present your badges for scanning and take a seat as we present our annual episode recorded before a live audience bursting with Patreon backers. Join us as we talk squishy Habsburgs, chron0-suppr...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-358-live-at-gen-con-2019/

Voices weary and brains bleary, Ken and Robin return from Gen Con 2019 to take their annual look at the state of the industry through the lens of the convention that invented roleplaying. Want to...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-357-thunder-and-filk/

Our annual Indianapolis hotel room episode begins in the Gaming Hut, where we find ways to be a lone wolf PC the rest of the players won’t hate. In the Food Hut we look at our favorite cooking ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-356-jealous-of-my-katana/

In the Gaming Hut, we build on some recent articles by Robin to further explore a crossover between the surrealist adventures of Dreamhounds of Paris to the psychedelic spycraft of THE FALL OF DE...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-355-if-abstract-expressionism-doesnt-do-the-trick/

An all request episode kicks off with a co-production between the Gaming Hut teams and our Tell Me More benefit for Patreon backers. Backers Mike Marlow and Kevin J. Maroney, seeing the Ken and R...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-354-it-aint-that-non-euclidean/

In the Gaming Hut we deconstruct scenarios where the PCs have to wait for certain events to take place. How to Write Good comes to the aid of Patreon backer Dustyn Mincey, who seeks guidance on t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-353-you-cant-say-eliptonic-without-tonic/

The Gaming Hut starts us strong as we look for ways to avoid stock scenario openings. In the Culture Hut we examine the way critical terms lose their meaning when they penetrate popular conscious...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-352-weve-still-got-that-other-folder/

In the Gaming Hut Patreon backer(s) The Armchair Adventurers ask if we agree with Greg Stafford’s prohibition on invisiblity spells in his games. Was every noteworthy English writer also a spy?...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-351-the-molticore/

Like much of our content, it’s hard to believe. Unlike much of it, it’s true. Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff has reached its milestone 350th episode. Yes, we’ve been laying down the skinny ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-350-7th-anniversary-lightning-round/

In the Gaming Hut Patreon backer Ethan Schoonover asks us to explain the bespoke game terms we use, from F20 to GMC. Mikko Airaksinen puts a chill in the History Hut with his request for the esot...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-349/

The Gaming Hut manifests somewhere between Balla Balla and Yagga Yagga as Patreon backer Bill Cohen asks us how to lure RPG characters to adventure in Australia. The Crime Blotter profiles Dai Ca...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-348-marsupial-valley/

Patreon backer Ross Ireland pulls a fast one on us in the Gaming Hut, asking how to pitch campaigns with switcheroo premises to players. Via the Tell Me More Feature of Ken and Robin Consume Medi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-347-weve-warren-commissioned-your-witch-problem/

In the Gaming Hut, Patreon backer Hyperlexic asks Robin to elucidate the core pleasures of RuneQuest. The History Hut finds us obeying the commands of backer Antti Elomaa to get to the bottom of ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-346-everybodys-limbs-are-still-on/

We enter the Gaming Hut pursued by powerful patrons as backer Remi Permann seeks help importing 13th Age icons to other games. In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, Ken chats with Nathan Paol...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-345-go-talk-to-some-other-trees/

The Gaming Hut looks at the task of assembling a game’s skill list. In the Cinema Hut Patreon backer Andrew Miller observes the North American launch of the Criterion Channel by asking for a 10...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-344-moses-does-a-heel-turn/

Patreon backer Jacob Ansari collars us in the Gaming Hut to ask about running alternate history games. The Tradecraft Hut looks at the February raid on Madrid’s North Korean embassy by the Free...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-343-im-a-baron-and-classy/

  In the Gaming Hut Patreon backer Jake asks us how to portray a character modeled on Janet Armstrong in a NASA adventure series. We dust off the long-disused Politics Hut so that Ken can give u...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-342-traduced-by-raisins/

We lit the fires of the Gaming Hut the old-fashioned way before answering a question from Patreon backer Jason Thompson on interesting players in low-tech settings. In the Cinema Hut we revisit t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-341-trouser-leg-of-the-mythos/

In another imperious edition of That Thing I Always Say, Robin says, “Envision this in  play.” Ask Ken and Robin finds Patreon backer Kevin Roy seeking the scoop on remote control inventor J...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-340-jar-cats/

Last week you heard us from Carcosa Con in Poland. This time we’re back and ready to share out experience of the show and the local RPG scene in the Gaming Hut. Then, in Ken and/or Robin Talk t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-339-a-lot-of-bathories/

Recorded in front of a live audience, this episode emanates from the 14th century confines of Czocha Castle, on Lake Lesnia, in southwestern Poland, courtesy of our lovely hosts at CarcosaCon. Wa...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-338-live-from-carcosacon/

An all request episode kicks off in the Gaming Hut, where Patreon backer Michael Fox asks about picking exactly the right Mythos creature for your scenario. Backer Jacob Boersma meets us in the F...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-337-bound-by-a-wussier-reptile/

The Gaming Hut stages a baccarat game with the devil as Patreon backer Eain Bankins asks for help introducing the main villain without devolving into an immediate and disappointing fight. In the ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-336-the-trees-need-nutrients/

The Gaming Hut delves into a design issue at the behest of Patreon backer Mikey Hamm, who wants to know how to balance player options against the archetypal experience of a game. We keep mentioni...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-335-any-smart-gundamologist/

Protect the precious store of dwindling oxygen in the Gaming Hut as we riff a crew of GMCs for an installation horror scenario. Journey into the History Hut to hear us satisfy Martin Rundkvist’...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-334-the-number-one-mistake-of-smart-people/

Time to check your dermal surfaces for sigils as the Gaming Hut takes a look at spell side effects. The Tradecraft Hut goes contemporary and shadowy to examine private spy agencies, including Bla...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-333-our-earth-and-cincinnati/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-mumbai-rap-dreams-and-classic-fu-comedy/

In the Gaming Hut we contemplate lunar havoc as Patreon backer Ray Slakinski asks us to turn Project A119 into a Fall of Delta Green scenario. We walk the red carpet into the Cinema Hut as we ind...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-332-unencumbered-by-space-cats/

In the Gaming Hut we imagine what will happen when LARPs meet e-sports. Call our people, TV industry. Patreon backer Jason Thompson summons us to the Cartography Hut to express disbelief in the n...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-331-tomb-of-the-kardashians/

We find a new disruptive way to travel to the Gaming Hut as we consider scenarios inspired by scooter charger culture. In the Conspiracy Corner we ask if journalists and police could do with some...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-330-the-crocodiles-are-strictly-notional/

The Gaming Hut goes retro goth cartoony as Patreon backer Arthur invites us to envision an Edward Gorey RPG. In the Crime Blotter we look at Los Caballeros Templarios, the drug cartel that borrow...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-329-the-looming-party/

Get ready for a tear gassing as the Gaming Hut finds us riffing a Fall of Delta Green scenario set during the 1968 Democratic convention. Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else features a chat wit...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-328-that-doesnt-sound-like-ygolonac/

In the Gaming Hut we examine the desire to play less than competent characters. The History Hut takes us back to the 7th century BC and the reign of Assyrian super-king Ashurbanipal. In How to Wr...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-327-good-luck-getting-any-wood/

Struggle to stay one step ahead of the authorities as the Gaming Hut finds ways to do the classic trope of the protagonist framed for a crime in a roleplaying scenario. The Horror Hut enters an o...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-326-credulous-ghost-hunting-dupe/

We kick off 2019 with an all-request episode, starting with Patreon backer Bryan Gustafson, who enters the Gaming Hut to ask us how to use the tiny houses movement in a Cthulhu Confidential scena...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-325-nimby-horror/

Once again we close out the year with an episode recorded in front of a live audience at Dragonmeet in Hammersmith, London. Topics include the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and the Pelopon...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-324-live-from-dragonmeet/

Jet-lagged and full of pudding, we return from our latest trip to Dragonmeet to issue a Travel Advisory about the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms exhibit at the British Library. In the Gaming Hut we pursue ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-323-they-pecked-the-anglo-saxons/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/holy-forking-shirtballs-ken-and-robin-are-consuming-media/

Not to spoil anything, but we open in the Gaming Hut as Patreon backer V Weather asks us what to do when it turns out you’ve already read the adventure your GM is running. In How To Write Good,...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-322-the-cinnabon-of-the-17th-century/

Get out your space calculators as we meet in the Gaming Hut to entertain a request from Patreon backer Robert Dean, who wants to hear more about the time Ken ran Traveller for accountants. In the...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-321-red-dawn-times/

  This podcast never wastes your time, but what if you, as a GM, have to fill some space in your session? The Gaming Hut looks at ways to vamp for time. In the drafty confines of the Architectur...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-320-ghost-rationing-policy/

Under the black stars of Carcosa, we celebrate the impending publication of Robin’s The Yellow King Roleplaying Game and the manuscript completion of Ken’s The King in Yellow Annotated Edit...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-319-eventually-you-run-out-of-zigs/

  We open in the Gaming Hut, or is all part of an elaborate trick, as Patreon backer Sean asks how to pull switcheroos on players who don’t like being fooled. Ken meets us in the Cinema Hut to...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-318-bootlegger-reverse/

  Join us in the Gaming Hut to assist Patreon backer Dustyn Mincey with his difficulty in sticking with a single game, when there are so many awesome games in the world. Then Ken and/or Robin Ta...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-317-to-be-sure-the-romans/

  Join us for an elegaic Gaming Hut as we tackle but a single topic: the life and work of our friend and inspiration, the grand shaman of gaming, Greg Stafford (1948-2018.) Want to pose a questi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-316-remembering-greg-stafford/

  In the Gaming Hut we assist Patreon backer Jean-Francois Paradis in creating a campaign where the PCs’ homeland is invaded by a technologically superior rival. Stay far from manhole covers a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-315-eloi-au-vin/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-ken-does-the-chicago-film-fest-robin-homebrews-his-own-horror-fest/

  Another all-request episode kicks off in the Gaming Hut as Patreon backer Gene Ha asks what F20 evil deities get out of all the dungeons they create and manage. In the Cartography Hut we look ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-314-preamble-snipper/

  The Cinema Hut bursts with upcoming delights as Robin returns from his annual jaunt to Toronto International Film Festival to provide highlights on a banner year. In the Gaming Hut we tackle a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-313-all-the-hitting-in-the-world/

Advice for players kicks us off in the Gaming Hut, as we suggest ways to react when the GM provides you with a magic gun. Then in a segment we persist in calling How To Write Good, rather than Ro...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-312-short-inspirational-napping-pieces/

  Let’s summon the spirit of summer one last time by hearkening back to a balmy Indianapolis Friday, when Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff live from the surprising new confines of the Lucas Oil ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-311-live-from-gen-con-2018/

  The Gaming Hut makes room for our collection of crystal balls as Patreon backer Rob Towell asks for hints on GMing prophecies and divinations. The Crime Blotter looks at a rash of highly profe...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-310-the-social-media-impact-of-ulthar/

On the alert for treacherous banana peels, we gather in the Gaming Hut to wonder if GUMSHOE can handle incompetent PCs. In Ask Ken and Robin, Patreon backer Frank Rafaelson wants Ken to pitch a n...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-309-snort-the-pringles/

    Another all-request episode opens in the familiar confines of the Gaming Hut, where Patreon backer Trung Bui wants to know how we pull out all the stops for climactic campaign-ending episod...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-308-a-stargate-in-his-district/

  Patreon backers, specifically Patreon backer Brian Malcolm, demand yet more dungeon talk from us in the Gaming Hut. How do you lend a dungeon complex a narrative quality, instead of making it ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-307-nobody-wants-to-be-a-gate/

  We’re scratchy voiced and mushy headed from our journey to Gen Con 18. The Best Four Days in Gaming got bigger than ever this year, and we’re here to sort through the awards, the announcem...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-306-gen-con-2018/

  Once more we’re in the same room together with an episode recorded in our hotel the day before Gen Con. Hmm, what easy topics shall we tackle? Does the game system you’re playing expect yo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-305-i-put-my-whole-head-in-and-i-am-fine/

  Mystery scenario construction is once again on our minds in the Gaming Hut, as we discuss ways to run a mystery in which the investigators respond to an ongoing spree of murders, monster attac...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-304-were-not-running-a-party-of-death-here/

  Most RPG scenarios assume that it’s up to the player characters to conclusively defeat the bad guys at the end. In the Gaming Hut we ask when it’s okay to leave the mop up to outside force...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-303-its-not-owls-its-charlemagne/

  In the Gaming Hut we look at how the same adversary can play very different roles from one game to the next. Serving as an example is Red Jack, created for Night’s Black Agents but presently...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-302-jack-the-riffer/

  The Gaming Hut lies at the end of a ten foot corridor this week as Patreon backer Elias Helfer asks us, as paragons of story-driven RPGs, to explain why we think dungeons are awesome. In Fun W...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-301-thanks-for-knowing-we-were-right/

  It’s been 300 installments, just a smidge shy of six years, and longtime listeners and backers know what that means. Time for another episode-length Lightning Round, as we provide uncharacte...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-300-lightning-ro-o-o-o-o-o-ound/

  The Gaming Hut has a bunch of vampires in the shop for adjustments as we look at the process of adapting creatures between systems. In Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else, Ken talks to Rich ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-299/

Having both recently moved big projects off our plates and into post-production, we convene in the Gaming Hut to look at lessons and surprises from our design work on Vampire: the Masquerade 5th ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-298-now-were-just-gygaxing/

Do gamers like choice more than ordinary humans? We raised the question several episodes back, and now it’s all grown up into its very own Gaming Hut segment. In the Tradecraft Hut we look at t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-297-walrus-revenge/

  Not by chance do we start in the Gaming Hut, for a look at the role of coincidence in various mystery genres. Then at the behest of Patreon backer Stewart Robertson we duck into the secret rec...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-296-build-a-crummy-robot-and-call-it-gnostic/

  Another all-request episode begins in the Gaming Hut, where Patreon backer David Shaw wants us to turn supermarket tokens into an eldritch menace. In the Architecture Hut Ken fills us in on th...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-295-thats-why-they-call-it-ichor/

  Patreon backer Andy Olson invites us to plan a fantasy heist in the Gaming Hut. In the Tradecraft Hut backer Andrew Miller debriefs us on the Fat Leonard case. How to Write Good looks at inven...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-294-more-poison-duck/

  Stop plinking those kobolds and pop into the Gaming Hut as we ask if today’s median gamer is less motivated than before by the prospect of in-game reward. In Ask Ken and Robin, Patreon backe...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-293-kill-americas-famous-pigs/

  The Gaming Hut takes place inside the Tradecraft Hut, or is it the other way around, as we, with the assistance of a FOIA request, investigate CIA-designed board games. How to Write Good looks...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-292-double-skeleton-town/

  In the Gaming Hut, Patreon backer SR points us to an archived trove of CounterSpy magazine and asks how to make use of it in Fall of DELTA GREEN. We wouldn’t lead you on in an elaborate sche...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-291-where-magic-goes-to-die/

  In the Gaming Hut we cover ways to design monsters to star in investigative scenarios. We tromp into the Command Hut at the behest of Patreon backer Thomas Vallejos, who wants to know the deep...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-290-leaves-dont-work-on-paypal/

  Picking up a thread left hanging a few episodes back, the Gaming Hut looks at ways to make a mundane solution to an apparently occult mystery work satisfyingly for your players. The Tradecraft...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-289-chronocah/

Another all-request episode begins in the Gaming Hut, as Patreon backer Ruth Tillman asks us how we might game Annihilation in both its film and novel iterations. We head into the Book Hut at the...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-288-grift-the-pope/

Robin tries out a new maxim in That Thing I Always Say: in a game RPG session, the only way to go off track is a dead end. In The Culture of Gaming, we look at gatekeeping, which rears its head o...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-287-in-league-with-leopard-seals/

  Keep a close eye on your open beverage as the Gaming Hut spins a Fall of DELTA GREEN arc from that most notorious of covert programs, MKULTRA. The Food Hut goes sequel for Instant Pot II: The ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-286-guy-across-the-stupid-mountain/

You have nothing to lose but your chains, and also your handcuffs, and possibly also your orange prison scrubs, as the Gaming Hut shows you what to do the next time your PC gets captured. The Tra...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-285-2-get-in-too-deep/

Ken dons raffish 60s-vintage headgear to give The Fall of DELTA GREEN, now available for preorder, the Among My Many Hats treatment. Robin reviews ways to shape a dramatic scene in How to Write G...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-284-theres-always-a-worse-writer-death/

  We gather suspiciously in the Gaming Hut to ask if and how GMs can assist players in horror games who want their characters to exercise a Scully-like skepticism. We break into the History Hut ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-283-its-just-a-tumor-tree/

In the Gaming Hut we put up our dukes and look at ways to frame fights that advance the story. Oscar time is upon us, so as is our annual wont we pop into the Cinema Hut for a look back at our fa...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-282-haunted-anarchist-texts/

We swear we didn’t plan this, but Patreon backer Chris Sellers showed up unexpectedly in the Gaming Hut to ask about improvising GUMSHOE scenarios. The location of the Tradecraft Hut has been d...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-281-in-service-of-the-yeast-god/

  February loses its rep as the cruelest month when we confront it with an all-hut, all-request episode, in tribute to our fabulous Patreon backers. In the Gaming Hut, Tom Bagatelle seeks guidan...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-280-problem-solving-gases/

  Brace yourself for musical metaphors as we head into the Gaming Hut and find that Patreon backer Brian Thomas has left us the logical analogy Orchestra: jazz combo :: play’s ensemble cast : ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-279-logical-analogy-shock/

  In Among My Many Hats Robin talks about Beating the Story, which gears the story beat system you may know from Hamlet’s Hit Points to fiction writing in all of its forms. Pre-order the print...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-278-full-of-panthers/

Ladies and tigers abound as the Gaming Hut looks at story choices and how players respond to them. Then Patreon backer Scott Wachter dusts off the Archaeology Hut to ask why King Tut armed himsel...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-277-knife-fight-in-the-afterlife/

  Yeah verily and anon, the Gaming Hut goes iambic pentameter as Patreon backer Chris Camfield asks us how to add Shakespearean flavor to a roleplaying campaign. Then your sweet and savory hosts...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-276-retinue-of-clowns-and-goofs/

  In the Gaming Hut we mull the process of scenario writing, specifically the differences between writing first, or playing first. Backer Fred Kiesche takes advantage of his Patreon priveleges i...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-275-convenient-anti-harpy-shield/

  It’s 2018 and we’re back, starting as usual in the Gaming Hut. Within its cozy confines we answer a question from a mystery backer on achieving genuine emotional investment in roleplaying....

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-274-what-would-thagdar-do/

  Our final episode of 2017 arrives with bells a-jangling in the form of our traditional live show from Dragonmeet. Learn about Stalin and Atlantis, what elements of our work we think other desi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-273-live-at-dragonmeet-2017/

Our throats showing the wear of travel to that most lurghy-inducing of wonderlands, we issue a Travel Advisory on Dragonmeet and the Modigliani show at the Tate Modern in London. In the Gaming Hu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-272-we-laugh-at-your-fireball/

  Hey, it’s an all-request episode! Patreon backer Joshua Trowbridge entreats us in the Gaming Hut to return to a perennial puzzler: how to convince change-averse players to try the awesome ne...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-271-the-friends-we-met-along-the-way-and-ate/

  Patreon backer Doc Cross pulls his satin bell-cord to summon us to the Gaming Hut to mull the droll possibilities of P. G. Wodehouse gaming. In the Tradecraft Hut we journey to the shadowy isl...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-270-nobody-wants-to-be-a-waistcoat/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-mystery-elephant-coins-and-a-true-crime-masterpiece/

  We’ve installed additional measures in the Gaming Hut to discuss security camera surveillance and how to stop it from wrecking your mystery plots. Jump scares await in the Horror Hut as we l...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-269-egg-nog-related-time-travel/

  Make sure your copy of this podcast has been properly authenticated, preferably by a person in a pointy hat, as the Gaming Hut looks at forgery in worlds with truth magic. Get your drama on in...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-268-i-dont-want-to-say-tax-dodge/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-heaven-asgard-and-times-square/

  Gather in the Gaming Hut but keep an eye on who might be creeping up on you with a knife or candlestick as we riff a cast of murder suspects. Ken then meets you in the Cinema Hut to report on ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-267-the-first-two-things-are-metaphors-for-the-third/

  Evade lasting shame by joining us for tea and scones in the Gaming Hut, where Patreon backer Tom Abella asks us to riff on the subject of social spirals. Sneak into the Tradecraft Hut for a lo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-266-moral-crisis-dungeon-tile/

  We situate the Gaming Hut near a wolf trap as we answer a request from Patreon backer Dicegeeks and find ways to use the Green Children of Woolpit in a game. In the Food Hut backer Bryan Gusta...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-265-vegan-vampire/

  In the Gaming Hut we examine a classic dichotomy in GMing technique: when do you use the world to nudge the story, and when do you address the players out-of-character? The Tradecraft Hut look...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-264-diagetic-prod/

  Some monsters we want to kill. But others we want to figure out, then kill. The Gaming Hut looks at designing creatures that make for good mysteries. Then at the behest of Patreon backer Fridr...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-263-all-seven-spleens/

Robin is back from his annual sojourn to the Toronto International Film Festival, so it’s time to open up the Cinema Hut to alert you to the best and nerdiest of the 44 titles he saw there. Fro...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-262-profit-motive-and-a-fast-boat/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-now-kens-in-the-black-lodge/

Hold onto your wallet when you enter this Gaming Hut. It’s full of scamsters, as we look at clipjoint towns in F20 games. Patreon backer Elias Helfer digs into the files for a declassified Trad...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-261-them-doritos-is-rigged/

  When Ken and Robin go live, as they do here in this episode recorded in August at Gen Con, the audience, aided by a mythic pack of index cards, tells us what the topics are. And in this case t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-260-live-from-gen-con-2017/

  In That Thing I Always Say, we examine Ken’s maxim that death spirals make for good gaming. With Labor Day in the rear view mirror, the Cinema Hut looks back at blockbuster season for a roun...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-259-all-the-cute-girls-are-capulets/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-golden-age-mysteries-and-the-sewer-clown/

  A couple of episodes ago we put a pin in the idea of Magic Blackwater and now in the Gaming Hut we unpin it for further consideration. In yet more business arising from the previous minutes, t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-258-mom-hes-in-cisalpine-gaul/

  Annual traditions happen only once a year, and since Gen Con has now happened fifty times, we must bring you an extra special convention review Gaming Hut. With a Travel Advisory on something ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-257-gen-con-2017/

  That ambient sound you hear is the muffled bustle of the Embassy Suites in beautiful downtown Indianapolis as we record a face-to-face episode immediately prior to the sweet chaos of Gen Con. ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-256-1310-would-betray/

The Gaming Hut goes inside the design process as Robin discovers he wants to make a humble sub-system a little less humble. The Food Hut goes inside the casing as Ken waxes rhapsodic on the histo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/repost-episode-255-the-devils-condiment/

The Gaming Hut goes inside the design process as Robin discovers he wants to make a humble sub-system a little less humble. The Food Hut goes inside the casing as Ken waxes rhapsodic on the histo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-255-the-devils-condiment/

We clatter our dice and thump our miniatures in the Gaming Hut, considering a Patreon backer Travis Johnson question about what to do when the players break the tone they asked you to instill. Wi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-254-snouted-meepers/

The Gaming Hut falls all over itself answering a question from Patreon backer Daniel Krauklis: “What does the choice to have fumbles in your rules that tell us about your game and the moral uni...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-253-thats-more-of-a-gloss-on-aristotle/

Are your modern investigators getting cocky? Join us in the Gaming Hut as we riff a rival team to toss some sand in their gears. The Cartography Hut looks at the process of mapping fictional citi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-252-a-different-less-pear-like-shape/

As heard on this very podcast, I and Atomic Overmind Press are launching — nay, have already launched — the Kickstarter for my book Tour de Lovecraft: the Destinations, the sequel to my much ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/get-on-the-bus-tour-de-lovecraft-the-destinations-kickstarter-has-launched/

As one Kickstarter ends, another begins, specifically on Wednesday, July 26. In Among My Many Hats Ken tells us about his cool new book, Tour de Lovecraft: The Destinations, which is Kickstarting...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-251-where-as-opposed-to-what-and-aaahh/

Who would have believed that when they started a podcast two scrappy writer/game designers could make it all the way to episode 250? You know what that means: time once again for another Lightnin...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-250-lightning-round/

  Run! Hide! The Gaming Hut is coming for you, with a look at chase rules for horror RPGs. Homicide and puppets collide as the Crime Blotter recounts 1929’s Benny Evangelist murders. The recen...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-249-you-take-what-toes-you-can-get/

In the Gaming Hut we find ways to design compelling consequences, with a particular nod toward Robin’s recent work on GUMSHOE One-2-One and The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. The Tradecraft Hut ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-248-bill-somewhat-american-johnston/

Stare! Stare my friends, into the most psychically destablizing hat of all. For this week Among My Many Hats has the Yellow Sign neatly embroidered upon it, and you know what that means: Robin’...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-247-so-fair-it-shines-as-a-marketing-quote/

We interrupt the tranquility of your regular podcast subscription feed to riff briefly on some long anticipated yet terrifying news. The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, which Robin has been covertl...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/special-dire-announcement-the-yellow-king-roleplaying-game-is-now-on-kickstarter/

Uh-oh, looks like Robin wants to introduce another term of art into the RPG design lexicon. Ken joins him in the Gaming Hut to consider system humility. Transfixed by the hypnotic gaze of Patreon...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-246-a-number-of-anonymous-grand-dukes/

A guy in a hat was going to tell us what was in the Gaming Hut this week, but then one of your PCs just shot him with a crossbow. That leaves us to figure out what to do when the players kill off...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-245-floaty-mcbeercan/

We knew you were going to join us in the Gaming Hut, where we answer Patreon backer Bret Kramer’s question on running omniscient GMCs as allies or enemies of the player characters. In the Food ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-244-you-have-to-sit-in-the-jar/

We know you want to hear about it, so Among Our Many Hats digs into the announcement that a certain Ken Hite will serve as lead designer for the new edition of Vampire: the Masquerade. But that�...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-243-i-do-not-wish-to-be-a-moth-hat/

The Gaming Hut has a thatched roof this time out as we riff a cast of pseudo-medieval villagers for your next F20. In The Business of Gaming we puzzle the mystery of the generic supplement. In th...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-242-brain-out/

In the Gaming Hut we look at premise rejection from a player perspective. How do you catch yourself doing it, and how do you find your way through it? We crawl over to the Cinema Hut to discuss t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-241-new-hampshires-second-most-famous-notch/

Our second consecutive all-request episode kicks off in the Gaming Hut, as Ray Slakinksi asks for tips on running Night’s Black Agents at conventions. In the History Hut Andy Young wants to kno...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-240-bush-bachelor/

Another all-request episode kicks off in the Gaming Hut, as Stewart Robertson asks how to make a BSM (Big Science McGuffin) integral to a game series. The History Hut, takes on a yurt-like config...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-239-mom-hes-touching-my-answer/

The Gaming Hut gets foundational as we discuss the meaning and implications of Gygaxian naturalism. Patreon backer Derrick McMullin meets us in the History Hut to ask for the hidden truth behind ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-238-the-titular-goat-in-this-reenactment/

Get outside your own perspective and inside the Gaming Hut as Ken and Robin envision a gun that triggers out of body experiences. With espionage everywhere in the news, it’s time for that Trade...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-237-you-cant-be-a-martyr-and-have-it-coming/

Get ready to argue logistics as the Gaming Hut considers player planning. When is it prelude to play, and when is it play? The Crime Blotter opens one of the most famous cold cases of all: the Bl...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-236-not-on-the-front-page-of-the-literature/

In the Gaming Hut Patreon backer Joan Guardiet asks us to make a game set in a warrior woman society work for a party of male PCs. Speaking of requests, in Ask Ken and Robin backer Kalin Kadiev s...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-235-he-mans-woman-hating-civilization/

We creep into the Gaming Hut at the command of Patreon backer Alexander Permann, who assigns us the mission of envisioning a Night’s Black Agents spinoff featuring the Kingdom of Asturias. In a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-234-i-barely-killed-anybody/

The Gaming Hut goes abstract as we discuss metagaming. At the behest of Patreon backer Vana Stillwater, the Food Hut hosts a look at culinary crimes and scams. Then we paw through the contents of...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-233-its-peter-framptons-all-the-way-down/

The Gaming Hut may seem friendly and bucolic, but this time it’s full of danger, as we riff a cast of conspiratorial small town NPCs. Take your seat and suppress your coughing as the Culture Hu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-232-cat-hamlet-half-elf-robot/

The Hoary Hosts of Patreon backer Elias Helfer command the opening of the Gaming Hut! Therein we shall describe ways to portray weird and magnficent landscapes like those seen in the Doctor Stran...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-231-please-compensate-for-our-brutal-incompetence/

Know us by our funny voices and exaggerated mannerisms as we meet in the Gaming Hut to discuss what makes a Game Master character easy to play. Grab a mojito and light a fine cigar as Ken supplie...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-230-not-the-helsinki-mojitos/

The Gaming Hut stands at the service of Patreon backer Vince Arebalo’s son Dax, who asks for tips on getting comfortable around unfamiliar fellow players. The CIA has finally put its trove of d...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-229-your-perspective-on-trees-and-badgers/

In the Gaming Hut we ask ourselves how far rules and GM influence should go to prevent the players from idiot plotting their own characters. Speaking of gaming the system, esteemed Patreon backer...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-228-i-assume-someone-has-blood-typed-all-the-monkeys/

Another all-request episode starts in the Gaming Hut, where Patreon backer Gerald Sear wants us to consider the Mythos implications of the Disney corporation. Then assemble your miniature greenho...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-227-other-buopoths-do/

A surrealist sandbox and a structured mystery make a date in the Gaming Hut, as Josh Rose asks how to run Dreamhounds of Paris as a GUMSHOE One-2-One setting. Given that the world has turned into...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-226-yig-is-more-of-a-moundsville-ohio-guy/

Patreon backer Zachary Joyner poses some Gaming Hut questions about improvising a GUMSHOE game. How quickly do you give out clues? How do you maintain pace without leading the players? Though our...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-225-just-make-up-a-bunch-of-dwarves/

Gather in the Gaming Hut as we ask ourselves when one should take historical license when running or designing a game set in the real past. Spoiler: we also answer ourselves. In the Book Hut, Pat...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-224-without-checking-because-that-spoils-the-fun/

The contents of this podcast become too horrible to correlate as we slip into the Gaming Hut to answer a question from Patreon backer Laurel Halbany about handling secret mythos knowledge in an a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-223-theres-no-blood-in-a-jpeg/

Finally, after ceding all recent chapeaus to Ken, Robin seizes control of Among My Many Hats to talk about Cthulhu Confidential and the design of the GUMSHOE One-2-One system. Because it’s fina...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-222/

If it’s December, Ken and Robin must be coming to you live from Dragonmeet, the little London convention that isn’t so little any more. Join us as Ken emerges triumphant from a draw of the ne...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-221-live-at-dragonmeet-2016/

In the Gaming Hut, urged on by Patreon backer Fred Kiesche, Ken takes us under the hood of his Rex of the Old 97 campaign. What does he do behind that Peter Frampton GM screen, and how does he do...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-220-bear-with-us-everyone-else/

Dirk the Dice rolls into the Gaming Hut to ask us how to make sword and sorcery monster encounters exciting. Don’t believe a word you hear in the Conspiracy Corner, as we look at the history an...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-219-argue-with-ceramics/

Patreon backer Michael Kotschi pops a moony question over the Ask Ken and Robin transom, prompting us to look at 70s NASA from a Moon Dust Men perspective. The Politics Hut still has a hangover, ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-218-this-podcast-still-hates-nazis/

Patreon backer Ethan Cordray rises from the Pacific waves of Ask Ken and Robin to pose a stumper: how to make Cthulhu scary again. Ken is back from an extended sequester in the Cinema Hut to talk...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-217-home-movies-you-didnt-take/

This week the Gaming Hut holds a special surprise: it’s not just a segment, but a free game in and of itself, as Robin teaches you how to run Death Spiral. In Ask Ken and Robin, Reiner Dobbelma...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-216-some-old-schlubby-wine-god/

Among My Many Hats blows the lid off of Ken’s upcoming Kickstarter for a revised, revamped, and reanimated Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales. Are the results of this podcast rigged? Find out as the ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-215-not-an-impaleologist/

The Gaming Hut looks at top temporal locations for TimeWatch scenarios. Pelgrane Press celebrates our segment by offering you, the listener, a voucher code to order from its online store. Plunk i...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-214-the-puppet-below/

A fork in the road leads to either the Gaming Hut, or the Gaming Hut, as we look at those times when giving players choice and control in a scenario leads to a less interesting outcome. The Histo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-213-i-would-have-been-on-the-other-side-of-that/

We kick off another episode inspired entirely by Patreon backer requests with John Corey, who asks Ken to expand on real history as the best setting for gaming and the challenges of reskinning it...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-212-i-was-scheduled-for-one-anyway/

Unfurl your flags as we gather in the Gaming Hut to envision an F20 game in which nationalities take the place of alignments. In Ask Ken and Robin, Patreon backer Jason Breti asks us to talk abou...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-211-its-called-salvage/

Much tabletop roleplaying advice, ours included, helps GMs to keep players entertained. But what about the other way around? Thanks to Patreon backer Jesse Morgan, we head into the Gaming Hut to ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-210-tell-jimbo-that-youve-moved-house/

Take a reality check before you dare to enter the Gaming Hut, as we answer Patreon backer Bryan’s request to devise a campaign based on flawed perceptions. Time for another intro course in the ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-209-there-is-mooching-to-be-done/

Robin is away at the Toronto International Film festival, and longtime listeners know what that means: it’s time to cover his absence from the podcast mic to drop the live episode we released a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-208-live-from-gen-con-2016/

Our 207th installment starts on a tripartite note as Patreon backer Andrew Young pops his head into the Gaming Hut to ask about the pertinence of three-act structure in roleplaying scenarios. Spe...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-207-its-pronounced-executive/

Rules get hybridized in the Gaming Hut, at the behest of Patreon backer Jason Carter, who wants to fuse GUMSHOE’s investigative rules with the combat systems of other games, say for example Fen...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-206-they-had-hyenas-in-inventory/

Get your dice and character sheets together and head on into the Gaming Hut as we field Patreon backer Gnoll Warford’s question about preparing as a first-time convention GM. In How To Write Go...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-205-the-complaining-hut/

Voices weary and graveled, but with spirits lifted by ENnies Gold and Silver, Ken and Robin return from Gen Con to regale you with this year’s round-up of the Best Four Days in Gaming. As is ou...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-204-gen-con-2016/

In a special live from our hotel room episode, we inflate a portable Gaming Hut to field a question from Frent about catastrophe pile-ups in popular continuities. The Tradecraft Hut looks at the ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-203-pull-the-damn-trigger-you-coward/

Another all-Patreon backer request episode kicks off in the Gaming Hut as Tom Abella asks what Brexit will do to spycraft in our world and that of Night’s Black Agents. In The Business of Gamin...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-202-while-were-on-the-surface-of-the-freezing-sun/

Pokemon fever is back and more feverish than ever. As Pokemon Go breaks loose of the Gaming Hut, forcing players onto the actual streets, is there anything we can riff about it that reality hasn�...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-201-you-dont-need-to-drag-pokemon-into-it/

Let the bells ring out and the banners fly! We can remember starting this occasionally humble podcast like it was yesterday, but here we are with our 200th episode. And you know what that means: ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-200-lightning-round-2016/

In Ask Ken and Robin, Patreon backer Conrad Kinch asks what the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan might be up to in 5000 AD. The answer might surprise him! Now that you’ve worked your way through the f...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-199-not-that-thats-what-time-travelers-say/

Matters come to a head in the Gaming Hut, where we talk about writing scenario climaxes. In Ask Ken and Robin, Patreon backer Eric Jeppesen asks Ken and Robin to help weave a campaign around 16th...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-198-stab-them-in-the-peninsula/

Ever-prolific Ken dons a knit cap like all the youngsters wear to bring us the scoop on Bubblegumshoe in Among My Many Hats. In the Gaming Hut, we satisfy Patreon backer Sean McAuliff’s request...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-197-obviously-she-fought-radium-ghosts/

In Ask Ken and Robin, Patreon backer Philip asks for ways to incorporate the beat cycle from Robin’s book Hamlet’s Hit Points into game systems that don’t already support it. The Tradecraft...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-196-conspicuously-non-assassinated/

Patreon backer Trung Bui asks us to assemble in the Gaming Hut to tell him who the murderer is, and also to discuss the challenges of investigative scenario construction. The gore runs thick but ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-195-all-its-guns-in-norman-rockwell/

The Gaming Hut becomes a boat we might just die in as Patreon backer Luke Wassink asks us to make environmental obstacles suspenseful and compelling. In Among My Many Hats, Ken tells us about his...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-194-knocking-off-early-for-gin-and-lemonade/

In Ask Ken and Robin, Patreon backer Andrew Jones asks about working with Greg Stafford. The History Hut looks at the post-WWI occupation of Istanbul, as requested by Alexander Perman. How to Wri...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-193-bonaparte-eyes/

In the Gaming Hut we ponder a meta-terminology games designers might use to describe the purpose and function of the various sub-systems they build into roleplaying rules sets. Now that Donald Tr...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-192-emulating-a-genre-that-doesnt-exist/

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-consume-media-ghost-transit-noir-identities-and-a-murderous-jigsaw-puzzle/

Patreon supporter Tim Brandis kicks us off with an Ask Ken and Robin question about which of our core design beliefs might have evolved over time. In the Tradecraft Hut we reach way back to that ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-191-in-case-i-trip-over-a-sand-dune/

Patreon backer Graham Wills starts us off in the Gaming Hut by asking how to balance conspiratorial genres, like the spy thriller, with group trust. Among My Many Hats finds Ken laying down some ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-190-boy-meets-manifestation/

Patreon backer Kevin J. Maroney gets us started with an Ask Ken and Robin question about other designers’ mechanics we consider to be under-stolen. The Tradecraft Hut takes on a recent story cl...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-189-it-wont-fix-me-but-it-will-fix-that/

In the Gaming Hut, Patreon backer Bill Sundwall wants Ken to mash up two of his projects, The Madness Dossier and Night’s Black Agents, into one. The Business of Gaming looks for the best ways ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-188-he-drinks-tables-under-the-table/

The Gaming Hut gets organized as we answer Patreon backer Samwise Crider’s question about tracking clues in GUMSHOE and other investigative games. Backer Adam McDonald enters the Politics Hut f...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-187-honest-and-dishonest-graft/

Ask Ken and Robin gets especially educational as Patreon supporter Brent Brown asks us for tips for using RPGs to teach history, home school style. Tradecraft Hut peers into the espionage scene i...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-186-you-need-canapes-to-have-a-secret-society/

Among My Many Hats is an Egyptian headdress with a distinctly feline aspect, as Ken talks about his installment of Ken Writes About Stuff devoted to Bast. The Gaming Hut looks at ways to write sc...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-185-i-dont-think-i-prefer-that-at-all/

We start with Ask Ken and Robin, as Patreon supporter Ross Ireland asks us to tell our best crazy game stories. Then it’s off to the History Hut to consider the troubled Presidency of a guy who...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-184-snorting-the-hand-of-vecna/

Pull your swords out of your stones and step into the Gaming Hut for a consideration of the Chosen One trope. How to Write Good explores a phenomenon Robin calls Nigeling, when you make one chara...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-183-eaten-by-a-ghost/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-182-much-like-the-person-in-it/

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 Harr...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-181-taking-latitudes-with-longitude/

Sneak up on us very carefully as Ask Ken and Robin responds to a Josh Kroger question regarding stealth systems in RPGs. Recent events force us to reconsider past Politics Hut pronouncements as, ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-180-nordic-tamborine-cult/

Let’s schmooze a while in the Gaming Hut as we spitball a game based on social experience points. Get in touch with your inner cave dweller as the Conspiracy Corner checks out Neanderthal consp...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-179/

Long have we teased it! Now it’s finally here, for your keeping-the-show-alive convenience: our Patreon campaign. In this special mini-episode we talk the whys, the wherefores, and the long-cov...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/special-minisode-our-patreon-launches/

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 Hu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-178-whoops-democracy/

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 leg...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-177-youve-got-your-chainsaw-working/

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 ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-176-shut-up-fungus/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-175-and-then-everyone-gets-indicted/

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 t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-174-metaphor-drift-metaphor-drift/

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. As teased last episode, the History Hut looks at...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-173-the-unknown-quadruped/

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 lo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-172-notallastrologers/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-171-live-from-dragonmeet-2015/

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 d...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-170-deprived-of-moss/

We start amid the familiar shag carpet of the Gaming Hut to look at the question of making the mechanics serve the story and not the other way around. The History Hut delves into the best-named m...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-169-if-you-dibs-an-entire-hemisphere/

The New York Public Library online map collection provides a feast of gameable treasures. We gather in the Cartography Hut to pick our favorites and riff on ways to put them to use. Ken’s first...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/repost-episode-168-real-made-up-history/

The New York Public Library online map collection provides a feast of gameable treasures. We gather in the Cartography Hut to pick our favorites and riff on ways to put them to use. Ken’s first...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-168-real-made-up-history/

We kick off with Ask Ken and Robin, as Reinier Dobbelmann question about power-gaming, relevant to six-year olds literal and metaphorical. Smell the flavor volatiles as Food Hut looks at the scie...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-167-fred-williamson-syndrome/

We predicted that Ask Ken and Robin would feature a Manfred Gabriel question about incorporating prophecy into roleplaying sessions, and we were right! Dracula tried to thwart him, but Ken still ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-166-no-ice-cream-trucks-anywhere/

When Deep Ones suddenly display their powers of teleportation, are they being uncool? Step into the Gaming Hut for a look at situations where you want to keep the abilities of your monsters consi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-165-if-you-violate-a-ghosts-trade-policy/

We kick off an episode devoted to Halloween in the Mythology Hut, where we survey the holiday’s history, mutations over time, and cultural diffusion. Ken suspects that 1933’s so-called Black ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-164-another-excuse-to-drink-in-the-street/

Find the enigma within the enigma as the Gaming Hut hosts a look at existential mysteries. In Ask Ken and Robin we find the key to a Gerald Sears question about Parisian official’s bid to remov...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-163-building-things-out-of-zebras/

The Gaming Hut turns over the hourglass as we discuss villain clocks. Ken issues a Travel Advisory on the latest installment of the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival. In Ask Ken and Robin we field a ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-162-of-the-massachusetts-necrotors/

The Gaming Hut features an ill-advised open bar as we mull campaigns in which player characters have to be married. Ask Ken and Robin tackles a question posed to us by approximately 75% of listen...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-161-the-horse-had-it-coming/

The Cinema Hut heralds the androids, fish men and yakuza vampires coming to a movie consumption venue near you as Robin regales you with the hottest tips from this year’s Toronto International ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-160-or-his-solid-ghost/

The Gaming Hut finds us in an under-the-hood mood as we turn over Robin’s assertion that a full adventure written as early in the process as possible can illuminate your RPG game design process...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-159-i-was-a-10-year-old-nihilist/

Our recording chambers may be hot but our subject matter gets cold, cold, cold, as Among My Many Hats takes a look at the Wendigo. In How To Write Good, the dialogue turns to dialogue tags, he sa...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-158-englishman-is-not-actually-valued-for-its-own-flavor/

A skepticism of all things pseudopod suffuses the question Thomas Deeny poses in Ask Ken and Robin. “Why Cthulhu? By that, I mean, why do gamers love Cthulhu games? Boardgames, RPGs — it seem...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-157-i-have-points-in-both-simon/

In the dog days before Labor Day, Ask Ken and Robin happily accepts a softball from Cam Banks (a ringer name if ever we heard one.) “Why is “fantasy” supposedly a genre in RPGs but people m...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-156-crazily-pork-bellied/

Genetic enhancements meet tradecraft as Among My Many Hats looks under the hood of Ken’s new Mutant City Blues campaign frame, “Mutant City Spies.” The Food Hut returns in what might be the...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-155-semi-facing-into-the-abyss/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-154-orange-and-tufty-from-the-primordial-swamp/

As the action opens in the Gaming Hut, we find Ken and Robin just one day back from Gen Con, punchy but unbowed. Hear them talk Diana Jones Awards, the new regime at Chaosium, and the great D&D r...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-153-gen-con-2015-in-review/

Buckle up your extra special rapier for a jaunt into the Gaming Hut to consider the connection between gear and status. Take extra reindeer with you, for your predecessor lost all of his when he ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-152-x-acto-athame/

Robin gets a head start on his Dracula Dossier homework as the Gaming Hut lays out the whys and hows of campaign frames. The titular chapeau takes on a conical shape as Ken talks Yithians in Amon...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-151-draculas-competing-to-be-the-dracula/

Stuff we’re here to talk about in this milestone episode might include Ben Franklin, the Flash, Zeus, Tom Fury, Phar Lap, keraunomedicine, the Lockheed P-38,  Mjolnir, the blitzkrieg, Final Fa...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-150-anniversary-lightning-round-extravaganza-iii/

Line up your polyhedrals in order of social preference as we enter the Gaming Hut to examine caste and class in worldbuilding. The History Hut provides a footnote to a somber event with details o...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-149-contemptible-people-tavern/

The Gaming Hut acquires extra filigrees and an extended backstory as we examine the cognitive investments gamers make when they learn to love detail. The Food Hut takes a turn for the imaginary i...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-148-the-truffles-of-the-fiend-folio/

Spruce up your decor as the Gaming Hut reveals the secrets of room description. Ken does the bulk of the replying in an eliptonic Ask Ken and Robin, as RogerBW seeks a disentanglement of convex a...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-147-the-worst-doppelganger/

Guns blaze and mystic swords clash as Among My Many Hats goes under the hood on Blowing Up the Movies, Robin’s new book of essays combing the action movie classics for gameable nuggets. In Ask ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-146-the-most-punished-well-actually-ever/

Alex Guerrero has played before but never GMed. He wants to introduce a trio of interested neophytes/family members to roleplaying through a session of Fear Itself. He’s here to Ask Ken and Rob...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-145-ill-bet-its-a-bad-star/

Abandon your neutrality as we enter the Gaming Hut to talk about alignment in D&D. Find out if we’ve been digging what you’ve been digging about the recent crop of shows in the Television Hut...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-144-chaotic-prolix/

Using the conveniently public domain 1972 film Horror Express as a baseline, we demonstrate how to adapt a movie into a scenario worthy of the Gaming Hut. In a flood-threatened Travel Advisory, K...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-143-you-cant-just-set-it-on-fire/

In the Gaming Hut we ask how much work game design should do to constrain problem players. Be careful in the History Hut not to sit in the sledgehammerin’ seat as we tell the tale of the Bloody...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-142-the-scots-cannibal-registry/

In Ask Ken and Robin your intrepid hosts field an Eion Dornan question about helping players take on the role of real historical figures. The story of a Nigerian juju practitioner handed a length...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-141-larger-and-larger-cups/

Crack open your Chaotic Neutral dictionary as Ken and Robin venture into the Gaming Hut to spitball a fantasy world extrapolated from the existence of alignment languages. In Ken and/or Robin Tal...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-140-more-like-winter-derleth/

Screaming to you from the abyssal depths of the downtown Portland Oregon Crowne Plaza, comes our latest live episode. Join us as we talk Dracula vs. Gala, Muhammad Ali vs. Nyarlathotep, Nollywood...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-139-live-from-cthulhucon/

Make sure you have your magic translation earbuds on as we enter the Gaming Hut to talk about secret and magical languages. In Ask Ken and Robin, Ruth Tillman John Burgess asks us to reveal our r...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-138-all-the-characterization-youre-gonna-require/

This article on the programmable variability of claw machines springboards us into the Gaming Hut for an examination of pass/fail cycles. A corpse with the distinctive dagger of medieval Teutonic...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-137-clown-moistening-skills/

Robin hijacks an Ask Ken and Robin question about running an Armitage Files-style campaign set after Sherlock Holmes’ plunge over Reichenbach to ask: do the master detective and the Mythos go t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-136-it-says-necropolis-right-in-the-name/

When the Gaming Hut asks you to mind your tone, we’re talking about ways to instil it during roleplaying sessions. In Ask Ken and Robin, Roger Bell West draws us into the Eliptony Hut with by r...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-135-so-bad-the-quakers-riot/

It’s raining drama tokens in the Gaming Hut as Robin shares his DramaSystem GMing tips. The clash of arms resounds in the History Hut as Ken gives us the lowdown on legendary Indian empire-buil...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-134-glam-baby/

Cough into your elbow as we duck into the Gaming Hut to think up explanations imaginary cultures might give for the origin of diseases. The Cinema Hut unspools Robin’s top five recommended film...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-133-wielding-fennel-without-proper-church-authority/

In Ask Ken and Robin, Jonas Beardsley points us to this Wired article about advances in astrophysics brought about by the computer effects used in the movie Interstellar. We then make good on his...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-132-underground-subterranean-fort/

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 perspec...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-131/

Yohann Delalande kicks us off with an Ask Ken and Robin question about portraying current real-world horrors in RPGs without lapsing into insensitivity. We fulfill this podcast’s Canadian conte...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-130-regional-resentments-of-canadian-mollusks/

We start with an Ask Ken and Robin question from Ethan Cordray, who wants to know how a GM and player might collaborate in creating scenarios. Inspired by this Malcolm Gladwell piece, the Crime B...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-129-how-to-alert-the-occult-police/

Weighty personages surrounded by bullet-proof genre expectations surround us in the Gaming Hut as we examine script immunity in historical gaming. The Mythology Hut finds us riffing a kid-friendl...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-128-the-heavy-hand-of-the-fourth-wall/

We begin with endings as the Gaming Hut enumerates ways to build your roleplaying series to the biggest of finishes. Among My Many Hats has Ken telling us about Vendetta Run, the latest installme...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-127-blah-blah-zombies-blah-blah/

A pithy remark from LEGO Batman inspires our latest excursion into the Gaming Hut, as we ponder the question of narratively acceptable character demises. In the Tradecraft Hut we look at bone mus...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-126-rhode-island-jones/

Ken and Robin remember a 90% scale replica of the façade of the Alamo in this episode themed around their recent sojourn in Austin, TX. In the Gaming Hut we recapitulate a Chupacabracon panel wi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-125-just-get-two-corpses-people/

Join Ken and Robin for this live episode recorded at Chupacabracon in beautiful Austin, TX. The best audience ever, per capita, punch above their weight to keep us supplied with incisive question...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-124-live-from-chupacabracon-in-austin-tx/

Verily and anon, adopt the cloak of darkness as Ken ducks into the Elizabethan tavern that is the Gaming Hut to discuss his School of Night GUMSHOE setting. Violence and mayhem disrupt the tranqu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-123-freemium-democratic-regime/

The Magicians’ Guild turns out to be rife with factions and competing interests as the Gaming Hut looks at ways to add realistic messiness to your game’s imaginary institutions. In Ken and/or...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-122-accelerated-gameable-force/

Our voices are as froggy as London used to be foggy in our first episode back after our UK sojourn. Inspired by the Museum of London’s current Sherlock Holmes exhibit, we usher a certain consul...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-121-handy-scrying-mirror-carrying-case/

Just like sugar plums and figgy pudding, the annual live podcast from London’s Dragonmeet is here to warn us that December holds us in its thrall. Ken nerdtropes Genghis Khan and alien artefact...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-120-live-from-dragonmeet-2014/

In Ask Ken and Robin, we answer an Ian Porell question about how much writing should go into a GUMSHOE NPC, and move on from there to supply other tips on creating supporting players for investig...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-119-sex-argentina/

In Ask Ken and Robin, Jeff Jones seeks advice on running an anti-Nazi campaign set in 30s America. We oblige in both pulp and occult genre modes. Become conscious of an enticing aroma in the Gami...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-118-theres-nothing-in-it-for-owls/

In Ask Ken and Robin, Stephanie asks Ken and Robin to find gaming ideas in the disappearance, and much later resurfacing, of Henry IV’s long-dead head. The Gaming Hut has us looking at moments ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-117-covered-in-cats-and-croissant-crumbs/

The Tradecraft Hut takes an unusual lead slot as Ken answers an FMGuru request for the tale of WWII Soviet spy Richard Sorge. Horatio stands to our right and Laertes to our right as the Gaming Hu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-116-okay-ill-go-get-your-leg/

The hats in Among My Many Hats are bowlers, and green apples obscure our faces, because we’re talking about Dreamhounds of Paris, now available for preorder, and its companion volume, The Book ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-115-anopheles-mosquito-stagnant-pond/

Gallop into the Gaming Hut as we discuss a term from documentary filmmaking, chasing story, and how it might relate to roleplaying games. Take a seat in the Cinema Hut as Ken discusses his top pi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-114-dont-read-books/

In the Gaming Hut we consider the dividing line between fun character customization and tiresome homework, and whether it’s moving lately. Still in a Draculanean mood, Ken enters the Book Hut f...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-113-and-the-heads-of-a-whole-bunch-of-people/

In the Gaming Hut we look at ways to add nuance to your setting’s faiths by considering the split between official and popular religion. Ken spills blood-red beans on the coming Dracula Dossier...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-112-someone-will-break-out-into-recipes/

We kick off with a Gaming Hut riffed adventure premise, as heavily armed lords come from miles around to claim their share of a holy man’s ashes. How to Write Good stacks its deck in favor of t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-111-a-rat-eats-it-and-it-explodes/

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, ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-110-eat-my-orange-slices-peons/

Ask Ken and Robin starts us in a murderous frame of mind as Dreaming Johnny wonders about settings and play styles for games where you play assassins. In The Business of Gaming we helpfully colla...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-109-put-a-pointy-wizard-hat-on-it/

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 sol...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-108-too-many-cyber-monkeys/

Join us for another Ken and Robin live episode, this time from beautiful and now slightly better smelling Indianapolis, Indiana. We nerdtrope magical slave revolts, fit the Fords into the Cthulhu...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-107-live-from-gen-con-2014/

Questions of pacing kick us into fall, as Ask Ken and Robin tackle a query from listener Michael Bowman. In Crime Blotter we hunker down in our tarmac-damaging humvee to consider the trend of pol...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-106-no-ones-gonna-get-an-orange/

In Ask Ken and Robin, we field a Tuukka Heimola question about running great one-shots and convention games. The History Hut reveals itself to be a series of rapidly constructed forts as we look ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-105-does-this-look-like-a-railroad-to-you/

It’s Gen Con, Gen Con and more Gen Con as we issue our usual bumper Travel Advisory in the wake of the big show.  Robin comes home wreathed in Hillfolk glory, Ken and Robin snag gold, Ken make...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-104-stabby-detective-stories/

Ken slaps down suggestions of a Gaming Hut renovation, but that poses little impediment to Robin as he sets out the four key components that make for an engaging obstacle. For more, see Robin’s...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-103-francis-peameal-bacon/

Ask Ken and Robin tackles a Tim Isakson question on ways to handle tone as a GM. Among My Many Hats tips its pith helmet to Ken’s new GURPS Horror book, The Madness Dossier. How to Write Good s...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-102-nonsense-is-on-the-march/

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 segme...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-101-its-like-football-camp/

Let the bells ring out and the banners fly. It’s the landmark 100th episode of our humble podcast! To celebrate, we’ve collected from listeners across the social media landscape a cornucopia ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-100-special-anniversary-all-lightning-edition/

We are honored and delighted to say that Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff has been nominated for a 2o14 ENnie Award for Best Podcast. If you are seeing this before Aug 1st, and want us bounding up ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-99-methane-planet-of-the-rakshasas/

Often in the Gaming Hut (and other huts arrayed around it) we riff a ton of quick ideas in Gatling gun fashion. This time out we take one of those riffed ideas, that of the city of underwater dea...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-98-why-are-we-conquering-this/

All hail the audio majesty of editor Rob Borges, who rescued this and last week’s episodes from the scourge of electronic interference, leaving only a touch of distortion in Robin’s sibilants...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-97-hamsterface/

All hail the audio majesty of editor Rob Borges, who rescued this and next week’s episodes from the scourge of electronic interference, leaving only a touch of distortion in Robin’s sibilants...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-96-yardarm-shortage/

Turn your head and sarcophagus as Ask Ken and Robin raises the lid on a @CrazyDogSpirit question on making the most of mummies. Then it’s time for another Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else,...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-95-a-big-can-of-time-worms/

A fog-shrouded Travel Advisory sees Robin reporting on his trip to historic (and Fortean) St. John’s, Newfoundland. In Ask Ken and Robin, donor Brendan Power asks about handling spotty game nig...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-94-the-simpering-bridegroom/

We start in a submersible as the Cartography Hut takes you under the sea to riff on campaign and adventure possibilities arising from the mapping of sunken Dunwich. In Ask Ken and Robin, Yohann D...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-93-a-damp-1968/

We kick off with Ask Ken and Robin and a Sean Phelan question about asynchronous information dissemination in roleplaying games. Dire rumors swirl as the Tradecraft Hut looks at disinformation an...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-92-the-werepig-demographic/

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 ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-91-the-envy-must-flow-through-me/

In the Gaming Hut we demonstrate scenario construction by brainstorming a Fear Itself adventure featuring the fearsome Crate Man. Duck furtively into the Cartography Hut as we look at maps as sec...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-90-nine-yards-of-crazy/

The Gaming Hut reverberates with spectral dread as we find ways to make ghosts and hauntings scary in roleplaying. Fun with Science looks for story and gaming grist in the increasingly respected,...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-89-the-elvis-of-the-european-occult-underground/

In the Gaming Hut, Robin asks Ken to specify a suitable period of occult ferment and together they riff it into a DramaSystem Series Pitch. We unseal the stone door of the Mythology Hut to give L...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-88-script-justification-technology/

Ken’s return from Portland’s HP Lovecraft Film Festival and its sister event Conthulhu prompts the issuance of an especially eldritch Travel Advisory. Listener Greg Gray gets an unprecedented...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-87-the-whacking-shovel/

Pull up an extra special chair in the Gaming Hut as we look at ways to put guest players to good use. In the Tradecraft Hut, Ken helps listener Rick Jonzz start a beginner’s tradecraft bookshel...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-86-al-qaeda-doesnt-read-their-comments/

In Ask Ken and Robin, Kevin Maroney asks us to expand on an earlier Ken comment questioning the suitability of the d20 structure for Cthulhu gaming. The History Hut flies the Jolly Roger to exami...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-85-history-is-replete-with-idiots/

The Gaming Hut rings with the sound of accents and impressions as we examine the role of voice work in GMing. The Crime Blotter finds a surprising nexus of grift, elephant materialization and the...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-84-those-punk-magicians-killed-my-elephant/

Is that a displacer beast in your pocket, or are you just glad to listen to us? Convene in the Gaming Hut as we discuss monster abilities and to what extent they enter into player awareness. The ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-83-chekovs-squid-throwing/

In the Gaming Hut we again lift the RPG design hood to tinker with PC/NPC asymmetry. Eerie Horror Hut riffing ensues as we sift the story possibilities of 3D-Printed Clone Dolls. Ask Ken and Robi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-82-ken-and-robins-tiny-dolls-talk-about-stuff/

In the Cartography Hut we set out techniques to add a dose of psychogeography to the map of your imaginary city. The Gaming Hut looks at the elasticity of vampire mythology, as inspired by Ken’...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-81-if-i-were-an-otter/

Gaming Hut starts on a somber note as we remember the roleplaying innovations of Aaron Allston (1960-2014.) We go on to discuss one of the key themes of his work, genre emulation at the tabletop....

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-80-vulnerable-to-attack-by-panzer-leaders/

Grab your retrospective popcorn and hunker down in the Cinema Hut as Ken and Robin review their movie top tens for 2013. Responding to popular demand, the Consulting Occultist assesses competing ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-79-take-that-entertainment/

Find new reason to plunge into the dungeon as the Gaming Hut tackles ways of giving narrative meaning to F20 combat encounters. Look at Fluffy in a new light as the Tradecraft Hut examines th...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-78-elves-dont-listen-to-podcasts-2/

They said it couldn’t strike twice, but the Ask Ken and Robin lightning round is back, tackling game designer payment, Day After Ragnarok, book hunting, and a Rob Ford mini-update. In the wide ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-77-all-the-john-waynes/

We start this episode in the Gaming Hut, where we bat around ways to activate your player character’s character hook. In our new segment, Crime Blotter, we examine the four categories of hit ma...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-76-hunker-in-the-bunker/

A curious case study, in which a regrettable glacier incident leads listener Joe Tyne to a Call of Cthulhu stumbling block, warrants treatment from the experts in Ask Ken and Robin. At the reques...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-75-the-don-cheadle-of-creepy-tunnels/

Keep your silver dagger ready in the Gaming Hut as we look at campaign setting creation through the example of Ken’s Werewolves of Dacia, which will appear in the upcoming Best of Fenix antholo...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-74-they-failed-to-organize-italy/

Ask Ken and Robin dispenses advice on running SF and space opera games, in response to a query from Ed Hirsch. In a curiously hexagonal Book Hut, we examine the seminal work of Argentinean fantas...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-73-guff-about-other-planets/

Seize the narrative steering wheel as a player in the Gaming Hut, where we discuss techniques to productively exercise character agency. Uncover the layers beneath the layers of the History Hut, ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-72-suckytown-was-already-taken/

We ring in 2014 with an Ask Ken and Robin from Ross Ireland, who wants to switch to a more serious horror tone after years of loosey-goosey play. Then we zoom back in time to the dying embers of ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-71-oh-tentacle-bob/

Special guest Rob Heinsoo joins Ken and Robin for a very special episode recorded live at Dragonmeet, from the municipal splendor of Kensington Town Hall in beautiful downtown London. Ken nerdtro...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-70-live-from-dragonmeet-2013/

Ken and Robin open the Gaming Hut to air evolving differences in gamer expectations, with Feng Shui player feedback offering a time portal between the mid-90s and now. Among My Many Hats looks in...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-69-you-already-met-the-first-tiger/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-68-why-you-shouldnt-ask-us-to-destroy-civilization/

Take a moment to study the menu in the Gaming Hut, as we contrast the operations of prix fixe and a la carte character improvement RPG designs. Watch us cut the ribbon on our brand new Abandoned ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-67-you-suck-as-a-depicter-of-matriarchies/

We place a horseshoe over the mantle of the Gaming Hut to consider luck’s role as a branch point in roleplaying. Then, at the behest of lead sponsor Stephen Jankiewicz, we enter the cobwebbed c...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-66-the-random-piggly-wiggly-table/

We put down our catalogues of iron rations and guaranteed unpossessed cats to venture into the Gaming Hut and discuss the allure of shopping and gear in roleplaying games. Inside the perimeter of...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-65-cherubs-who-have-aged-out/

Ken has returned from the Chicago Film Festival to regale the Cinema Hut with demonic pacts, ghost possession, a Kurdish western, and an unusually sympathetic take on the new Dario Argento flick....

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-64-the-gypsy-was-doing-us-a-solid/

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 me...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-63-pretending-to-be-regular-daves/

Feel all leafy-like as Ken issues an autumnal Travel Advisory for his recent road trip to Lovecraft’s Vermont and Marblehead. Bathe in the cathode rays of the Television Hut as we compare and c...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-62-watch-out-boys-he-has-the-power-of-transcendentalism/

To what extent should an adventure tell a story to the GM who is about to read it? Journey with us into the Gaming Hut to find out. Then fire up your laptops with their Cartography Hut screensave...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-61-next-to-the-opposite-hex-youll-be-like-a-ferret-in-heat/

With the smoke from our burning village billowing behind us, we take momentary refuge in the Gaming Hut to discuss great migration campaign frames. Under the war-room glare of the Geopolitics Hut...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-60-problems-with-sabertooth-tigers/

Gather your Hegelian war band around the speakers to listen to our opening Gaming Hut segment, in which we look at ways to transform groups of murder hoboes into ensemble procedural casts. We ope...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-59-thwarted-by-trees/

If it’s late September, it must be time for Robin to exit bleary-eyed from the Lightbox theater and stumble into the Cinema Hut to regale us with his findings from the 2013 Toronto Internationa...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-58-you-or-shub-niggurath-walk-out-of-the-room/

Join us for a very special live episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, live from FanExpo Canada. Hop in our time machine and journey back to Toronto on the weekend before Labor Day to hear ab...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-57-live-from-fanexpo-canada/

Having survived his epic three weekends, three conventions journey into the heart of geekdom, Ken returns to issue a Travel Advisory on his final leg, which took him to the newly de-asterisked Dr...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-56-oh-my-pancreas/

After a prefatory Travel Advisory on their activities at FanExpo Canada and a Food Hut trawl through the gustatory delight’s of Robin’s neighborhood, Ken and Robin take a nostalgic look back ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-55-endemic-clan-warfare-and-beautiful-lakes/

Somewhat rested but still with a fog upon their vocal chords, Ken and Robin issue a joint Travel Advisory for Gen Con 2013. Come for the shameless bragging, stay for the awards analysis, industry...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-54-gen-con-2013-or-should-i-have-shaved-my-head/

You demanded; we complied, adding a donate button to help you help us keep the show going. You’ll find it, and through it our eternal gratitude, at the right-hand side of the blog masthead.

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/now-with-donate-button/

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. I...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-53-my-feelings-about-hatchets-have-completely-changed/

FanExpo Canada rolls out this weekend at the Metro Toronto Convention Center. Its many geekish splendors include a special live episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. Gather up your questions...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-robin-talk-live-this-weekend-in-toronto/

Join hands and sing fhtagn fhtagn as we self-congratulate ourselves on an epic year of podcasting. Then sidle past the mutual back-patting into the Gaming Hut, where we consider the export potent...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-52-the-delightful-burning-sensation-you-alluded-to-earlier/

In Ask Ken and Robin, Jacob Ansari asks about playing Night’s Black Agents in previous time periods. The Tradecraft Hut hosts a look at Jasper Maskelyne, the so-called War Magician. In The Busi...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-51-a-tank-wearing-a-truck-hat/

Our present roster of fine sponsors pays for hosting and audio production of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. But to keep doing it, our titular hosts need to offset the time they devote to the sho...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/advertise-on-ken-and-robin-talk-about-stuff/

We flip through some pages in the Gaming Hut as we discuss the evolution of roleplaying game graphic design, from aesthetics to utility. Then we slip into the plush seats of the Cinema Hut to rev...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-50-lasers-and-moog-synthesizers/

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 connec...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-49-no-one-likes-a-blood-frenzy/

Events in Egypt have us taking shelter in the Gaming Hut to suggest approaches to uprisings and revolutions in roleplaying narrative. Then Robin beckons you to the Cinema Hut for a quick intro to...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-48-except-for-all-the-cannibalism/

We start in the Gaming Hut by contemplating the massive Call of Cthulhu campaign. What drives the love for this classic cornerstone of roleplaying obsession? In Ask Ken and Robin, Leó Páll Hraf...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-47-an-occasional-underused-wendigo/

We shuttle over to the Gaming Hut to continue our discussion of omnipresent surveillance, this time in the context of your roleplaying group’s tendency to turtle up. The unveiling of the Word H...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-46-an-indictment-of-your-pudding/

Summer convention season kicks off with a Travel Advisory on Ken’s trip to Origins. Robin beckons you into the Cinema Hut to share his rare chance to see the first Wong Fei-Hung film, 1949’s ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-45-a-blatant-vowel-swap/

Meet us in the Gaming Hut for techniques to make your characters’ backstories shine during RPG play. In Ask Ken and Robin we (meaning mostly Ken) address a question from friend of the site Jero...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-44-the-marshy-aunt/

This week’s Travel Advisory takes us to unfamiliar territory—not just the capital of Robin’s beloved Canada, but the On Words Conference held by the Writers’ Union of Canada. Come for com...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-43-in-a-non-necromantic-context/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-42-a-faith-demand-moment/

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 t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-41-the-kind-of-scary-energy-that-doesnt-exist/

Ken and Robin enter the Gaming Hut to catch you up on what they’re playing right now, from xenoarcheaological exploration to carnies caught between the devil and alien invaders. In Ask Ken and ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ep-40-forces-of-the-tomkitten/

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 ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-39-the-book-of-not-at-all-sinister-church-names/

We start with a visit to the Gaming Hut to discuss the play utility of illustrations. In the Food Hut we explore the legends and lore of packaged goods, including the secret origins of Cool Whip,...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-38-driving-bananas-around/

The undertones of jet lag in Robin’s voice indicate the issuance of another Travel Advisory, in this case concerning his lovely trip to Germany’s Hannover Spielt. Beers mentioned include: Her...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-37-ghost-kissed-pilsner/

Ken and Robin hit a bare and blackened stage to bring the improv concept of “yes anding” to the Gaming Hut. In Ask Ken and Robin, they answer Kevin J. Maroney’s question about picking a gam...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-36-a-scuba-diver-walks-into-an-ice-cream-shop/

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 ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-35-the-most-english-story-ever-told/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-34-easily-approached-by-my-techniques/

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 ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-33-bring-your-own-goat/

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 t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-32-cash-in-your-magic-swords/

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 ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-31-love-gerald-ford/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-30-ring-tailed-and-fructivorous/

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 impac...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-29-because-hey-benzedrine/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-28-possibly-an-anagnorisis/

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 His...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-27-league-of-extraordinary-skeletons/

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 g...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-26-passing-the-legislation-to-see-whats-in-it/

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 fin...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-25-finally-the-woodrow-wilson-throwdown/

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 in...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-24-conan-gets-a-fish/

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, fir...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-23-within-the-eliptonic-radius/

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 se...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-22-her-agile-ventriloquistic-foot/

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 ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-21-a-thin-sludge-along-the-sidewalks/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-20-twentieth-century-eccentrics/

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 e...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-19-live-from-dragonmeet-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 playtes...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-18-conspiracy-to-commit-ophthalmology/

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 Stetso...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-17-a-gorgeous-work-of-rosicrucian-monomania/

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 K...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-16-as-kenya-is-to-running/

Many thanks to all who voted or influenced the voters for the Golden Geek Awards! Your hard work or subtle noodges have paid off, as Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff has won the 2012 Golden Geek Aw...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/truly-we-are-golden-geeks/

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 devast...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-15-a-mere-frustum/

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 betw...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-14-undetectable-notes-of-irony/

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 t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-13-that-time-we-burned-down-the-white-house/

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, lea...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-12-4-damage-from-boat/

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 ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-11-when-angels-tell-you-to-wife-swap/

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...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-10-brand-confusion/

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 t...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-9-riesling-and-dirigibles/

Wow! After a mere nine episodes, our humble audio adventure has garnered a Golden Geek Award nomination as Best Podcast from the good folks at RPGGeek. It’s a worthy crop of nominees and we’r...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/golden-geek-award-nomination/

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 Cons...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-8-cruller-infested-demi-paradise/

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 dre...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-7-lindberghs-mummy/

This week’s stuff-talking kicks off with another Among My Many Hats. Here Robin unravels the circuitous design history of  his Dying Earth Revivification Folio, as Ken orders his sandestin to ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-6-the-mystic-power-of-indexing/

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; GURP...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-5-gen-con-12/

Stuff talked about on this week’s episode include: The debut of our segment That Thing I Always Say, in which we catch you up on Ken and Robin fundaments. We start with Ken’s contention that ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-4-purely-medicinal/

Stuff talked about in the third episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff include: Among My Many Hats brings back the overt pluggery with a discussion of Robin’s new book of short stories, New ...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-3-the-audacity-of-cupcakes/

You demanded, we complied: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff is now available on iTunes.

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/our-itunes-feed-is-now-up/

We did it once, and now we’re doing it again. It’s Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, the new podcast from game designers and authors Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws. Join our thrilling audio adv...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-2-its-a-wonderful-life-batman/

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, the new podcast from game designers and authors Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws. Join our thrilling audio adventure as we discus...

https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-1-vampires-are-a-holes/