Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff

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 Hut looks at the career of SF, fantasy and crime writer Avram Davidson, in the centenary of his birth. […]

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 product that traveled from Germany to the Eastern Bloc and finally morphed into a war-fighting or party drug with a geopolitical reach throughout the Middle […]

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 look at gum arabic, a ubiquitous ingredient in processed food and other products whose worldwide supply is now threatened as […]

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 Ken on his recent trip to the Diversão Offline game convention in São Paulo, Brazil. The Cinema Hut Science Fiction Essentials Series […]

The Gaming Hut looks at collaborative worldbuilding. Our Cinema Hut Science Fiction Cinema Essentials series reaches the late 90s. In Ask Ken and Robin, beloved Patreon backer Kevin Greenlee asks how to fit DramaSystem into other games. Finally the Consulting Occultist tells the tale of a magical assassination plot aimed at Edward II. Want to […]

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 von Stosch. Installment 22 of the Cinema Hut Science Fiction Essentials series finds us in the mid 90s. Finally beloved […]

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 Somebody Else, Ken talks to Improv for Gamers author Karen Twelves. The Cinema Hut Science Fiction Cinema Essentials series makes the turn from the […]

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 course “H.P. Lovecraft: Maker of Modern Horror,” available Thursdays in July through Signum University. The Cinema Hut Science Fiction Essentials series reaches […]

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 Else finds Ken talking to tabletop roleplaying pioneer Jennell Jacquays. Part eighteen of our increasingly epic Cinema Hut Science Fiction Film Essentials series brings us […]

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 ROUND!!! questions as posed by our beloved Patreon backers. In rapid fashion we address queries about overrated foods, stingy players, satellite imagery, and so much […]

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 Series, we reach installment 17, which might not get us all the way through that most speculative year, 1984. Then our bibliomaniacal hero regales […]

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 gets a little too online as we look at the tabletop implications of the Jack Teixeira spy secrets leak case. We […]

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 into the Book Hut for a look at an arsenic-infused volume of 19th century silhouette portraits by peripatetic artist William Bache. Installment […]

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 mysteries, the Food Hut tackles the terrifying possibility that ice cream might be good for you. In the Cinema Hut our Science […]

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 discussion of the Charge of the Savoia Cavalleria at Izbushensky, and whether it was in fact history’s last significant cavalry charge. The lucky thirteenth chapter […]

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 gives way to corrupt hedonism as the Cinema Hut science fiction essentials series reaches the mid 70s. In The Business of […]

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 science fiction essentials series takes us to the malaise of the early seventies. In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone […]

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 tabletop roleplaying. The Cinema Hut takes place in the shadow of a certain monolith as installment ten of our Science Fiction Cinema Essentials reaches […]

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 Glendora CA home winds up in the Cartography Hut at the behest of beloved backer Monster Talk, who has […]

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 the Headlines finds the gaming potential in recent animal thefts at the Dallas Zoo. In the Cinema Hut, part eight of our Science […]