Archive | PermalinkWhatever Happened to Ahmir Sektioui?

So, in part two of the Eclipse Phase quickstart demo scenario, Ahmir discovers that his knowledge on Mars - or anywhere other than the Outer Planers, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud - is worth zero.

Ahmir's player - me - discovers that his Gamescience dice is trying to kill him.

Early on, I took these photos of the Tachikoma figure we used to represent Ahmir after he was resleeved following the previous episode's nuke encounter. I forgot to snap more because the encounters were exciting. Action movie exciting.

Also, they were somewhat hilarious thanks to some hilariously bad dice rolls. Kinetic weapons jamming. Beam weapons overheating. Parkour attempts that were... less than stellar.  But there were some spectacular heroic acts as well, such as Zora shooting a bad guy through the neck to destroy his cortical stack embedded at his cervical vertebrae*.

We finished the adventure with a 20-kilometre radius, devastating anti-matter explosion that scooped out a whole lot of dirt - as well as deadly TITAN artifacts and bad guys' corpses - off the Martian landscape.

Thanks to Ivan the GM, Ivan the player, Keh Win and Kai for a great game. And Doug and Adrian for their input and chuckles from the peanut gallery.

* In hindsight, I believe that to shoot a person's C1 "Atlas" vertebra successfully from the front and at a high angle, you have to shoot him through the face with an AP round instead of the neck.

Keywords: rpg

Archive | PermalinkIrfan Meets a Cat

It's not a stray because it seems to be well-fed, not unkempt and has a collar. It's prowling the corridors outside the tenth floor. Naturally, Irfan tries his best to have fun with it, throwing ball and running around the corridors. It sometimes succeeds in bypassing the blockade and zips into the house, causing Irfan to gleefully try to corner it and chase it outside.

At the end of the day, Ain lets Irfan feed it some milk which it lapped up quickly.

If no one claims it, i.e., it doesn't belong to anyone on the tenth floor, then I should stick a notice downstairs.

Keywords: around_the_house,critters,irfan

Archive | PermalinkDo They Sell This Suitcase Anywhere?

This nifty suitcase appears to be pretty cool, and seem to be good to have with you all the time. When you need to use it, all you have to do is activate it at your feet, like so:

Then you wait for it to quickly unfold and show a pair of handgrips. You grab on to the handgrips and twist them, like so:

Keywords: comics,movie

Archive | PermalinkWrath Of Diabolical Water Elementals!

While picking up Irfan from school in the very late afternoon, we were hit by a great, big thunderstorm the size of a big thunderstorm. There was a point where there was no delay between lightning and thunder. Driving to school, the windshield, which thankfully did its job keeping the wind out failed to ensure the rain slid off fast enough so we can see through it. Even the wipers were useless.

On the way back, we had to cross Pandan Indah central to get from the school on the south side to our house on the north side.

We discovered that we couldn't because of flash floods. All the primary, secondary and the secret routes had a foot or so of water.So, we drove went to a mamak restaurant for some roti canai and warm drinks.

Below, we can see some water on this side of the main road into Pandan Indah. This side is jammed up. The other side of the road is flooded - with some cars already immobilized in the water.

Keywords: family_outings,food,irfan,kuala_lumpur

Archive | PermalinkI Rolled an 99 and Lived

Sunday was gaming day with GOKL and this time Ivan ran Eclipse Phase, the science fiction role-playing game with intriguing and extensive post-singularity and transhumanist ideas. Even running through the demo scenario in the free quick-start pdf, a lot of these high concepts shone through to us newbie players of the game, making the game even a more unique experience. (To be fair, I haven't played GURPS Transhuman Space before to make a proper comparison, and the technology application in Eclipse Phase is much more high-concept than Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020.)

Keywords: rpg

Archive | PermalinkIrfan Attends Cik Ja's Engagement

It was Irfan's aunt (or "first cousin once removed" to the rest of the English-speaking world) Cik Ja's engagement ceremony in Ipoh last Saturday. We were in attendance for the mirth which usually accompanies such events. However, I had to pull away from the fun, elbow my way through the crowd to take a picture of Cik Ja and her fiancee Roni.

Keywords: family_outings,irfan,wedding

Archive | PermalinkAllie's 19 Month Birthday

Yet another month has gone by! Allie was 19 months old last Monday, February 22nd. It's quite amazing how quickly time flies!

Keywords: alya,birthday,lily

Archive | PermalinkA Dwarf, An Elf and a Human Walk Into Mage Cafe

This afternoon I had the pleasure of gaming at Mage Cafe with the GOKL gang. Ivan was gamemastering Warhammer Fantasty Role Playing 3rd Edition, using the introductory adventure Fantasy Flight Games put up on their website, A Day Late, A Shilling Short. Here is a close up of the dice we used: red Reckless dice, green Conservative dice, white Fortune dice and black Misfortune dice. The Characteristic dice and the Expertise dice and the Challenge dice (blue, yellow and purple respectively) are located just away from the camera's POV:

You roll the Dice Pool based on your character's stats and tally them up. Some dice cancel other dice out, like Fudge dice. Then you determine the outcome with the remaining dice.

Keywords: rpg

Archive | PermalinkGlossary of Duckpocalypse

I once wrote of my plans for writing a role-playing game.

I've been really writing it, in an attempt to fill it to the brim with the campaign setting, the bestiary, the rules - along with some setting-specific plug-ins and a whole bunch of neat stuff. The editing and artwork are still a long way to go, but would you want to game in a setting world which is coloured by the following glossary?

Keywords: rpg

Archive | PermalinkIrfan Goes To Space

Here we have Irfan sleeping soundly in zero-gee aboard the International Space Station's bunk at Low Earth Orbit after a day's work of repairing the Hubble Space Telescope.

Not really. He did, however, have a fun time at the Planetarium, where there was a presentation at the theatre entitled Passport of the Universe. It was narrated by Colin Hanks' dad.

Keywords: family_outings,irfan,kuala_lumpur

Archive | PermalinkThe Sitiawan Of Old

After 1990 I don't think I can consider myself a citizen of our old, sleepy town of Sitiawan. I was always away most of the time, either to school, or to work. Since then I don't believe I've stayed in Sitiawan for more than a couple of weeks. Usually it's just for a couple of days.

So if you're familiar with Sitiawan as it is now. Picture it in your head: the four-lane roads, shophouses as far as the eye can see from Simpang Empat, road dividers with designated u-turns... That's not the picture I remember if I think of Sitiawan.

Here's a series of photos of the town that Atok Irfan took back in the old days:

Above: The old UMBC building, currently right beside the current new UMBC Sime Bank RHB Bank building.

Above: The interior of the building where Atok Irfan worked.

Keywords: sitiawan

Archive | PermalinkAllie's 18 Month Birthday

It's true! Allie is 18 months old now! She is one and a half years old! (Well at the time that this was written she is 18 months and 10 days old).It happened on January 22nd, also known as Yong's birthday (Happy belated birthday Yong!).

Sorry for the delay, but here it is finally, how Allie spent her half-birthday.

Keywords: alya,birthday,lily