Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

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 open spaces of the Genre Hut, we look at ways to nerdtrope the Western, including Ken’s Once Upon a Time in the […]

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 man, as proposed by a recent Birmingham City University study of British hired killers. Tropes face off against cliches as we once […]

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 request of listener Benjamin Blattberg, we essay a hidden gems segment of the Cinema Hut. In Among My Many Hats, Ken quizzes […]

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 anthology. Hat tip to Big Think for its Middle Earth-to-Earth conversion map. Next, Derek Upham Asks Ken and Robin to solve the […]

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 fantasist Jorge Luis Borges, and the beautifully idiosyncratic English Lit class he once taught, courtesy of the newly translated book Professor […]

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, in which we find gaming and story fodder in multispectral palimpsest recovery. In Ken and Robin Talk To Someone Else, we speak together to […]

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 2013, for a segment of Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else featuring James Wallis of […]

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 nerdtropes the alchemical secrets of the JFK airport. Rob performs a parlor trick of his own by telling us a story about danger. And Robin […]

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 into Ken’s gig as a dramaturg for WildClaw Theatre’s stage production of Shadow Over Innsmouth. With the holidays nearing, the Food Hut […]

News that US states are now legalizing Internet gambling within their borders send us to an unusually garishly lit and jingle-jangling Gaming Hut, where we consider hobby gaming twists on playing for cash online. Then Ask Ken and Robin visits the Consulting Occultist on behalf of Steven W. King, who wants to know what to […]

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 Idea Clearinghouse, in which we look at creative ideas we decided not to pursue and why we set […]

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 confines of the Horror Hut to ask if terror and sense of wonder can coexist. In Ask Ken and Robin, Leo […]

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 the Tradecraft Hut we round up such national security concerns as Angela Merkel’s cellphone and the secret Twitter life of dismissed White […]

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. As prompted by George Pletz, Ask Ken and Robin considers the picaresque and floats various techniques for strictly episodic RPGing. In the Genre […]

Gather in the Gaming Hut as we discuss differences of perspective between game players and game designers. In How to Write Good we explore that most ancient of all fiction maxims. What does it mean to write what you know? Erik Otterberg supplies us the subject for Ask Ken and Robin: what if H. P. […]

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 contrast two nerd-relevant new shows—”Sleepy Hollow” and “Marvel’s Agents of Shield.” In Ask Ken and Robin we take on a Jeromy French […]

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 screensavers and geographic information systems to look at the genre possibilities of digital cemetery mapping. In Ask Ken […]

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 we look at the averted strike on Syria and the limits of military intervention. Ask Ken and Robin features a Tim Daly question […]

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 open a historical case file in the Tradecraft Hut, looking at the role spy novelist William Le Queux, abetted by the Daily […]

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 International Film Festival. Listen to Ken wish he had more crossover with the upcoming Chicago Film Festival, or follow along at home. […]

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 about ninja anti-competition efforts, our most hated gaming clichés, and much, much more. Not to mention the toxic […]

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 DragonCon. In How to Write Good we consider discipline, routine, and various techniques to keep the productivity flowing at the keyboard. Then Ken […]

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 over the haul of treasures secured in Toronto for Ken’s Bookshelf. Gangsters, pirates and ancient Americans flood into the Hite Memorial Library as we […]

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 temperature taking, panel highlights, and Indianapolis food tips. Join us in a hearty welcome to our latest sponsor, Gorilla Games, now […]

In the Gaming Hut we power up our universal translators to contemplate the treatment of languages in roleplaying. Then we review our way through the summer blockbuster season in the Cinema Hut. In an Ask Ken and Robin lightning round, we dispatch questions right and left, entertaining queries from the diceless to the non-violent. Then, […]