Strike Force 7 Spot Illustrations

28 May 2010 | Hisham | | Artwork, Role Playing Games
 

Recently I was given the task to come up with some spot illustrations for Strike Force 7 - Savaged! from Super Genius Games, the role-playing game that uses the Savage Worlds system. It's currently available for sale as a pdf on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG, but Super Genius Games will soon be releasing a print edition.

Strike Force 7 is basically America's daring special missions force, with a special purpose to defeat "Skorpion", a ruthless terrorist organisation determined to take over the world. These are just minor black and white spot illustrations, so these aren't the best or the biggest ilustrations on the book. I can't wait to see the final copy which must be filled with a host of great images.

Eagle insignia

Insiginia

 

Allie's 22 Month Birthday

24 May 2010 | sila | | Family Pics
 

So Allie turned 22 months old on the 22nd (yesterday)! Since it fell on a Saturday and I didn't have to work, Vin and I had a fun day planned out for the girl. And I apologize way in advance for the sheer number of pictures in this entry.

Hey look, I'm in my entertainment center!

(Allie wanted to try her old entertainment center again - she was much too tall for it but she had fun pretending to be half her age!)

 

Five Years Already?

20 May 2010 | Hisham | | Family Pics, Recent News
 
Five years ago...

Exactly five years ago Vin and Sila got married.

Happy fifth anniversary, you guys! May you guys be blessed with another hundred thousand centuries of happiness, and then some.

 

A Penny Dreadful

18 May 2010 | Hisham | | Artwork, Role Playing Games
 

... is a penny earned. Or something.

Here is an image of a penny dreadful cover I made based on the three characters in the previous entry's Doctor Who RPG game that chose to stay in the alternate timeline of Victorian London filled with strange alien refugees and hybridised alien technology from the future.

Costs only one penny!

Click here to view a larger version of the illustration at DeviantArt.

 

Adventures In Time, Space and Victorian London

16 May 2010 | Hisham | | GOKL Actual Play, RPG Actual Play, Role Playing Games
 

Player sheet and sketch
On Sunday I played in Cubicle 7's Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space role-playing game. Usually Doug GMs, but Kai guest-GMed the game I was in.

Kai deliberately GMed the session rules lite and with a more freeform style which allowed for cinematic fast play.

You have Attributes and Skills which allow you to do pretty much everything with an allocated number from 0-5 or above, 5 being a something you're exceptionaly good at. To perform a task, a player rolls 2d6 + the appropriate Attribute + the appropriate Skill. You roll against a target number. The harder the task, the higher the target number.

You also have Traits, giving you some special abilities or bonuses to your rolls. Traits can be good or bad, with names that range from the simple Attractive, Brave and Charming to the more esoteric Time Traveller and Run for your Life!

If you opt to take Bad Traits, such as Clumsy, Cowardly and Phobia, you gain extra points to put into more Good Traits or into your Attributes and Skills.

Those are the basic rules.

 

Edumacation. Make it Happen.

15 May 2010 | Hisham | | Recent News
 

One thing about looking for rezeki in Malaysia at my age, it's difficult to do so without at least an undergraduate degree or a diploma, and I have neither. Although I have experience in some fields, I don't have any official certificate telling potential employers that it's worth paying me whatever amount of money a month to do whatever job. I've had potential employers tell me during job interviews that I have the skills they need but they're unable to hire me because I had no degree. Some HR requirement standards or some such.

I have tried to obtain one before, but it was in a field that I should have taken when I was younger and had no work and family commitments to think about. So I'm back in the game, pursuing another type of degree. One which I believe is better suited for me at my age, which is Bachelor in English Studies.

And I think I look forward to the assignments they give with this degree.

 

Irfan's Player Character Saves The Day

01 May 2010 | Hisham | | Family Pics, Role Playing Games, RPG Actual Play, RPG Irfan Plays, Star Wars
 

Irfan played his first complete Star Wars Role-Playing Game adventure today, as everyone's favourite intrepid astromech droid Artoo-Detoo. He was awesome at figuring out solutions to simple problems that were presented in the scenario that I cooked up. He even role-played Artoo well by having in-character conversations in regular robotic beeps. 

We played on the living room carpet and I used the gamemaster (GM) screen for the first time ever, with the D6 rules and stats inserts I made. My coterie of white D6 were arrayed on the floor, while the singe red D6 served as a Wild Die. 

The scenario was designed to be short and with minimal story twists.

Shortly after the Battle of Hypori that, Artoo-Detoo, the lone player character (PC), was sent by Clone Commander Cody for a mission. Orbiting the planet, say for story's sake, Eiattu 6, Artoo's task was to be flown from the Venator-class Star Destroyer Resolute to the surface of Eiattu.

There, Artoo will need to sneak into a Separatist safehouse containing a redundant tactical computer databank and hack into it to determine the position of Count Dooku and his fleet.

Artoo faces off a B1 battle  droid

Artoo was supposed to be flown within a short distance of the safehouse in the hills, but the LAAT gunship he was in was shot by a ground-based missile. Before the gunship smashed into the landscape, I thought Irfan was going to get Artoo to attempt a controlled landing, but instead he did something I didn't count on. He jumped.

However, he failed his rocket operations roll and slammed down hard into a sand dune. Thankfully his Strength roll's Wild Die came up 6 twice! So Artoo shrugged off the damage which I attributed to sand absorbing the impact. 

Using his sensors, he tried to get a fix on the location of the hill and the safehouse. But this time his Wild Die turned up a 1. I ruled that he knows the direction of the safehouse - which is south - but he doesn't know how far it is. And it's all desert as far as he can see.