Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

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 credibility to something Anton LaVey made up. Specifically that King in Yellow author Robert W. Chambers discovered the actual play while […]

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 Cinema Hut Horror Essentials series, we reach the late 70s, and the rise of the horror auteurs. Ripped from the Headlines gives […]

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 the Watergate era in the latest installment of the Cinema Hut’s horror essentials series. You wouldn’t think that familiarity with paranormal lore […]

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 apocalyptic turn amid the turmoil of the late 60s and early 70s. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes arise from following bad instructions. […]

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 Cinema Hut horror essentials series continues the 60s gothic resurgence, and we assure you this segment wouldn’t hurt a fly. Plangent notes […]

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 The Morning of the Magicians into THE FALL OF DELTA GREEN. Our Cinema Hut Horror Essentials series hits a turning point in screen shock history, as the […]

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 the phoenix on yourself, or around your morning coffee, by saying Oh No, Not This Again at the Ken and Robin merch […]

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. Then we take Interstate 71 to the Architecture Hut, where esteemed Patreon backer Tom Abella wants to know what the deal is […]

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 Ages into an investigative game. In the Tradecraft Hut we examine the mid-2000s Pentagon-sponsored first-person shooter Iraqi Hero, and the use Dracula […]

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 convenes a session of Ask Ken and Robin to inquire into the cosmology of his Hellenistika project. In the Cinema Hut we kick off […]

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 Gray St. Quintin asks for the real story behind Carpathian tree poaching. We talk for a while and then get abruptly canceled in the Television […]

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 especially osseous Archaeology Hut to contemplate the mammoth bone temple of Kostenki. In Ask Ken and Robin, esteemed backer Craig […]

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 topographical collection has gone online, prompting a Cartography Hut focused on one of its treasures—a very RPG-looking map of the fort and barracks at […]

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 are willing to risk the wrath of our ten day lead time and reopen the dusty Politics Hut to chew over the results […]

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 virtual edition of the Chicago Film Festival. Ask Ken and Robin features a request from flinty Patreon backer to find the […]

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 attacks story, which we covered three years ago, has revealed itself into a campaign of FSB attacks against American spies and diplomats worldwide. […]

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 McAveney calls upon the Crime Blotter for the scoop on the Potosi Mint Fraud. Ironically, among many other things, it has indeed […]

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 composition Mysterium. Thanks to discerning Patreon backer Daniel Gill, we find the Tradecraft Hut knee-deep in documents as we try to find the interesting side of the boring […]

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 Mikey Hamm beckons us into an especially resplendent version of the History Hut to hear about the Amber Room and the […]

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 into the Archaeology Hut, where Jake B wants to know about a maker of Minoan seals from the town of […]

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 slate and discusses the future of film festivals here in the Covidverse. Speaking of stuff you’d only do during a plague, Ken […]

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 Headlines we pick off some low-hanging fruit by asking what seems weird and sinister about Elon Musk’s recent pig […]

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 sticking in a ringer. Robin’s Internet was spotty, but that didn’t stop Ken from vamping in his absence. Robin’s mic had to […]

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 Agents. In the Cinema Hut we each nominate someone as moviedom’s least likely major star. The Food Hut turns some pages as we […]

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 a barrel in the latest installment of that most mercantile of huts, the T-Shirt Justification Hut. […]