Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

In Ask Ken and Robin, we field Conrad Kinch’s query about the politics of game design. Do a designer’s political beliefs show up in his work? Then, as you knew we would, we engage in some History Bending in honor of Richard III’s recently-confirmed excavation from a Leicester car park. Our new segment How To […]

In an unprecedented merger of the Gaming Hut with the Politics Hut, we look to political scientist Steven Teles’ theory of government as kludgeocracy to demonstrate why government should hire game designers like Ken and Robin to playtest their legislation for them. Then we take latitudes with the longitudes of the Cartography Hut to examine […]

In the Gaming Hut, we mull the economics of game design. Will the Kickstarter wave usher in a new era of component-driven play? Then it’s off to the History Hut for Ken’s long-anticipated final showdown with the historical legacy of Woodrow Wilson. Was he really America’s worst president? In Ask Ken and Robin, we are […]

After two bits of preamble business, one elegiac and the other bathetic , we issue a Travel Advisory to wring vicarious enjoyment from Ken’s journey to WarpCon in Cork, Ireland. We then step into the Cinema Hut to regale one and all with our top ten picks from the sterling movie year that was 2012. […]

Kicking off with another service-oriented segment of Ask Ken and Robin, we suggest ways to introduce a rich setting to players who are unfamiliar with it. Then we inaugurate the Eliptony Hut, first by explaining what the heck eliptony is, then squeezing adventure and story ideas from the latest in white-hot weirdness, the Martian ground […]

In a special Cartography Hut / Ask Ken and Robin crossover, Troy Holoday invites us to contemplate the vanished D&D roles of mapper and caller. On a serious note we go to the History Hut for a sense of perspective, if not solace, on America’s relationship with the gun. In the Cinema Hut Robin finally […]

Our first episode of the new year begins in the Gaming Hut, where we examine the difference between showing up to be entertained, and showing up to play. Ask Ken and Robin fields Paul Weimer’s question about fudging die rolls—when, if ever, is it acceptable? The Politics Hut takes on the classic modernist curvature of […]

In our final episode of 2012, we issue a Travel Advisory on our recent trip to Dragonmeet in London. A seamless segue then ushers us to the wonder of Ken’s Bookshelf, in which Robin vicariously enjoys the impressive pile of tomes Ken liberated from the British Isles during his journey. With yet another end of […]

Join us for our first episode recorded in front of a live audience, in the council chambers at Kensington Town Hall as part of Dragonmeet 2012. We welcome special guest Simon Rogers for an uber edition of Ask Ken and Robin, which in turn encompasses a panoply of our trademark huts. In the process as […]

This week’s episode  commences with a trip to the Gaming Hut to consider Robin’s dichotomy of rewards versus incentives, which segues into a discussion of the co-designer syndrome in playtest feedback. Ask Ken and Robin fields a question from Brett Evill on how one might bend history to add Ruritania-style postage stamp states back to […]

In Ask Ken and Robin, we examine the popularity, or lack thereof, of the western as a roleplaying genre, and point to models historical and cinematic for the adventuring party in spurs and Stetsons. We venture into a particularly cramped and cluttered iteration of the Cartography Hut to spin a passel of story threads from […]

Inspired by Christian Marclay’s cinechronological video installation The Clock, Gaming Hut examines time and pacing in roleplaying. The Schaudenfreude Institute initiates a new PhD course and Ken plots a bold path forward for his beloved Republican party as we enter the ballot booth-like confines of the Politics Hut to mull the 2012 Presidential Election. In […]

In The Business of Gaming, Robin shares the Kickstarter lessons he learned from the recent bumper crowdfund of his new roleplaying game, Hillfolk. Ken brings the light of his presence to a devastated New Jersey in Travel Advisory, recounting his adventures at Metatopia. Ask Ken and Robin envisions the Dominion of America, the alternate world […]

We kick off with another film festival wrap-up in the Cinema Hut, this time Ken’s visit to the Chicago International Film Festival. Ask Ken and Robin asks us to contemplate the differences between two of Robin’s game engines, DramaSystem and Skulduggery, leading us to contemplate a broader old saw: does system matter? In the Cartography […]

This week’s Ask Ken and Robin asks us to turn a previous thing that Ken always says on its head. When is it better not to base your setting on the real world? Then Robin and Ken square off in the History Hut for their long-planned reenactment of the War of 1812. As in real […]

We kick off with a Gaming Hut segment contemplating the question: is it ever okay to kick someone out of your game group and, if so, when? Jason Breti supplies our Ask Ken and Robin question, leading us to examine Sandy Petersen’s original draft for Call of Cthulhu as compared to the final game we […]

This week’s installment of Ask Ken and Robin prompts us to wax autobiographical and reveal our similar yet opposite secret origins. Then we descend into the Paris catacombs, escaping from what we find there only through the maps snatched from the high cabinets of the Cartography Hut. [From Temples, Tombs and Catacombs, part of Profantasy […]

In Among My Many Hats, Robin discusses Hillfolk, his new game of iron age personal interaction, and its DramaSystem engine, now up for crowdfunding. Ken teases “Moscow Station”, a DramaSystem Series Pitch offered as a campaign stretch goal. Ask Ken and Robin poses a follow-up on the Puritans, who turn out not to be as […]

With a tip of the hat to sponsors Profantasy Software, we fling open the inaugural doors of the Cartography Hut to contemplate maps we have known and loved. In a frenzy of construction, we then throw caution to the wind and cut the ribbon on Politics Hut, in which we look at the current US […]

If there is a mother of all Cinema Huts, it is the Toronto International Film Festival. We kick off the episode with Robin’s picks from the just-completed 37th fest. Then we skulk into the Conspiracy Corner to put the inflammatory impact of Innocence of Muslims in historical context. In Ask Ken and Robin, we compare […]

Travel Advisory whisks us on an aural journey to Worldcon, courtesy of Ken, who brings back knowledge of Chinese SF, steampunk semantics, the best vampire novel of the last 100 years, and the dreaded hallway seminar. Along the way we explore the sub-cultural differences between the literary side of geekery and its gaming cousin. We […]

It’s a bumper installment of Travel Advisory as Ken and Robin look back on the whirlwind that was Gen Con 2012. Amid the fast-flying references: Fantasy Flight’s Spartacus and Netrunner; GURPS Horror, Book of the Smoke, Bookhounds of London, the Coventry Street, Harmonsworth and Highgate Vampires; Charles Fort, Lorefinder, Ashen Stars, 13th Age, Delta Green, […]

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 no invented setting is as interesting as the real world. Ask Ken and Robin invites us to contemplate the mental […]

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 Tales of the Yellow Sign, and its inspiration, the classic King in Yellow cycle of Robert W. Chambers. Since recording […]

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 adventure as we discuss games, movies, history, narrative and sundry concerns of the geekosphere. This week we revisit a perennial […]