As you travel deep into the South East Asian tropical jungle to where remote kampungs stand, you realise that this is no walk in the woods. The tropical jungle is thick. Thicker than you thought possible. Huge trees larger than life, themselves teeming with additional lives, block your path. Between them were the tropical undergrowth. Dozens of types with dozens of sizes. Thorns. Toxins. They hide deadly – or at the very least somewhat disagreeable – fauna from your sight while they are within arm’s reach. You travel across a river, wading into the waist-high water. The cool water should be a relief. But you know that it hides even more perils. One unfortunate misstep and you might find yourself bleeding to death. Kampung Terrain Random Encounter Table Here are two Random Encounter Tables for you if your character is travelling to a remote kampung. The first table gives you […]
Continue readingMonthly Archives: November 2018
The Laundry: The New Normal
Episode 1 The New Normal Two weeks ago, my colleagues from the Centre for International Languages and I started with a session zero. Today, we played our first actual The Laundry RPG session. A group of language teachers attempted to play as a group of ultra-secret government intelligence agents trying to – ultimately – stop the end of the world. From the Capital Laundry Services (M) Sdn Bhd Employee Handbook Ver 34.2: The Laundry (Malaysia) is a unit in the Malaysian Ministry of Education. After a 6 years being an independent British agency after the independence of Malaya, the Laundry (Malaysia) was gazetted and absorbed into the new Malaysian Federal government in 1963 in a Top Secret ceremony with the blessings of the Majlis Raja-Raja. The Laundry was integrated into the Ministry of Education using high level computational sorcery and magic. In 1997, the Laundry (Malaysia) was attached as a […]
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Patreon: More Enigma Corps
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) on Oct 28, 2018 at 7:00pm PDT Edward MacGregor has been commissioning more paper miniatures over the months. The paperminis are for his uchronic South East Asian early-20th century setting where Western colonialisation did not occur and local culture has evolved into a dieselpunk society. Entitled Enigma Corps, the setting is written for the FATE ruleset. Here are three more batches for characters paperminis! They are all now live at my Hishgraphics Patreon page. Check out the photos below. Batch 6 features a bunch of street toughs and maidens who do not dabble in the dieselpunk technology of the era. Click here to download Enigma Corps 06 at my Patreon page. Batch 7 comprise of dieselpunk bikers and their mechanics. For the first time ever, we have a papermini of a bike. Click here to download Enigma […]
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Interview at Asians Represent!
Late last month, I did an interview with Agatha Cheng and Daniel Kwan. It was for their podcast, Asians Represent! over at One Shot Podcast. The episode was released a couple of weeks ago. In the show, I talk about the benefits of using tabletop RPGs to teach students English here in Malaysia. Also, how RPGs can be indirectly used to inspire learning of history and culture. I also talk a bit about my artwork and Patreon. I finally listened to the whole episode during work commute a few days ago. If you thought I sounded sick on the show, it is because I was. I was suffering a bad sinus infection during the recording, but at the time I did not think anything of it. Listeners have been kind, telling me I was good in it. But, wow, I could definitely hear myself being woozy and not very coherent […]
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Students Comparing and Contrasting
For this entire week I had to teach the students compare and contrast essay. Additionally, the theme for the week was “Social Issues”. How should I get them to understand the structure of the essay and the framing for each body paragraph? Firstly, I got each class to list out the social issues that they knew about. (I highlighted the fact that a social issue in one culture might not be in another, and vice versa.) After some coaxing and jolting of memories, ideas flowed freely. After that, I lectured them on the structure of the compare and contrast essay. I also told them what the essay writer’s intention should be when writing such an essay. Then, each class chose two out of various social issues they listed. From each issue, they had to list out a number of aspects that both issues had in common. For example, the aspects […]
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Grad Student Association Meeting
I was invited to the Graduate Student Association annual general meeting for our university. I have never been to one of these things before. This is because I never thought I would be an academic until three years ago. Also, I never thought that I would even have a Bachelor’s degree eight years ago or so. I was almost appointed the President, but being a part-time student I do not believe I would be able to handle the work. This would be unfair on the other members. Instead, I was appointed to the Academic Bureau Committee in the association. A lesser position, I should think. I have no idea what the job entails, so I should ask them the next time we meet.
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Research Method Presentation
My first semester as a postgraduate student ends with a presentation of my research proposal. The presentation was given during the final Research Method class that I have been attending every Saturday morning. During my studies, I discovered that reading for the literature review is difficult. This is because lack of time thanks to teaching and work duties that I have to complete. I believe the only solution is to set aside an hour or two for reading every night. How else can I absorb and collate enough information to write a proper research proposal, and subsequently a thesis?
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The Laundry: CIL Campaign Session Zero
So it came to pass that Fridays every fortnight from this morning on, there will be a role-playing game group at CIL, my workplace. Thanks to Bazli, we have official permission from the university to use RPGs as a training and character-building tool for the group. The game the group has chosen: The Laundry by Cubicle, based on Charles Stross’ The Laundry Files novels. Over the session, I explained to them the concept of RPGs, the setting of the Laundry and the basic rules of the game, including the dice rolling mechanics. I even created LibreOffice Impress slides for the session. After that, I switched to another set of slides I made for character generation purposes. Character generation took most of 90 minutes. In the end, everyone had stats for their characters. The Laundry setting I devised will be located in Malaysia. Malaysia, being once a British colony, has its […]
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Book: Creatures of Near Kingdoms
Wait for the arrival of an envelope. Steal a peek or two a day at your mail slot at work. You will wait a longer than usually needed. When it arrives you are surprised, as if it knows when to spring its existence upon you. It is tightly wrapped in clear plastic. It heaves a sigh of relief as you tear it out of its swaddle. It opens up and reveals its treasure to you. Its treasure are ideas tightly packs in words. It is the CREATURES OF NEAR KINGDOMS book. Clearly, it has evolved into an expert in camouflaging itself in the wild. Its publisher has categorised it as a comic. But it does not look like a comic. Neither does it smell like a novel. To say it tastes like a gaming sourcebook would be unfair to it. When it speaks, it identifies itself. Still its self identification […]
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