Dice For Brains is an amazing Star Wars RPG actual play podcast, gamemastered by Ross Rockafellow using Fantasy Flight Games’ Force and Destiny rules. What makes the podcast stand out from other actual play podcasts is threefold: it is recorded well, crisp and clear voices of the players with hardly any disruptive external noises. Secondly, it sounds like the games have been edited professionally which presents the action very clearly to the listeners. Finally, the gameplay is extremely story-oriented whereby plot points AND dice result interpretations are sometimes repeated to ensure listeners do not get lost in the story. The players, like the professional actors they are, annunciate very clearly and speak out loud the action they are about to do and periodically what their player characters think of. This makes for an extremely dramatic actual play record of the game sessions being played, which are also enhanced by original music […]
Continue readingMonthly Archives: September 2017
Nia Takes Leave
Nia spent several days with us. Her sense of fun and humour kept us amused for the whole time. She played with Ain. She watched movies (well, just the one, mostly) with Irfan. Soon it was time for the Seri Kembangan crew to leave. Ayah Cik Farid, Cik Ma, Cik Su and Nia Nia packed up and prepared to leave. Nia wept sadly. Not because she had to leave us, mind you, but because Cik Su pretended she was not going back to Seri Kembangan with her. See you later, guys.
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Nia and the Beach Cats
We went for an early dinner at Kuala Perlis with Ayah Cik, Cik Ma, Cik Su and young Nia Nia. The restaurant was by the promenade, right by the sea. Irfan knew exactly what would float Nia’s boat: Cats. So he introduced her to a stray cat by the beach. At first Nia more fascinated by the giant stone balls scattered all over the promenade. Then it struck her: Perhaps this can will not merely be a bystander or a passer-by. Perhaps she could make friends with this cat. She became even more excited when the number of cats who showed up increased to more than one. This cat knows where it’s at. The cat decided to move, turn and booped Nia on the nose with a fuzzy tail. Needless to say, Nia was beside herself with joy at being booped on the nose by a fuzzy tail. After dinner, […]
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15th Birthday Plus One Nia
In a blink of an eye, Irfan is now 15 years of age. He is more or less an adult, as I myself do not remember 15 being any different than 25 besides more experience by dint of being the latter. Even when he was much younger, I tried listening and talking to him as though he was an older teen. These days we are able to converse with each other in a multitude of subjects maturely – even if Irfan, Ain and I are prone to sudden infantile jokes and giggling like babies. It so happened that on the day of Irfan’s birthday, Nia, Cikma and Ayah Cik Farid came a-visiting and it was a far better day with their presence. Nia even wore a cap! The last time Nia was here she saw a cat. She awaited for the appearance of Abang the Cat from next door at […]
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Mini Six: A Day By The Sea
Mini Six: Doom Agents 01 A Day by the Sea For the third time I ran a tabletop RPG session for my class using the Mini Six system, and this time I have integrated it with the English curriculum we had. The week’s lesson theme was Natural Disaster and I also had to teach them about Descriptive Essays. The RPG became a teaching tool in this situation, because students were able to interact verbally with each other in the context of the narrative. I did some research on the seaside towns in Fukushima, Japan to prepare for the session. During the game they also had to roll dice to determine that the action they declared succeeded or failed. And then had to write their game experiences as in-universe stories for homework using a structured set of questions I sent them via Google Forms. Dramatis Personae Sabrina as Berry, the scientist Athirah […]
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Irfan’s Jaunt into Robotics
Some time last month I received an email notification of an Introduction to micro:bit Workshop for schoolchildren to be held at the Mechatronic school at the university, and so we enrolled Irfan. It was a full day’s programme. Ain and I decided to save our transport fuel by hanging around at the expansive computer lab. Because of that I got to play around with micro:bit as well. To my surprise all the desktop computers in the lab were installed with Linux Mint. The micro:bit is a small but multi-functional system with a processor, sensors, output jacks, LEDs and USB port. It can be used in conjunction with other hardware to create amazing tools. It can be programmed using a Javascript Blocks Editor online. The online editor has a handy virtual micro:bit for you to test out your program live. You can experiment with the micro:bit code yourself here. And then […]
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A Sad Raya Haji in Sitiawan
Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Adha from the whole lot of us in Sitiawan… …or something. It was Eid and it was Sitiawan’s turn this year. The trip to Sitiawan was not stressful for traffic was more than manageable. After nearly three years, I am still getting used to raya traffic being bad in the opposite direction. Irfan and I performed solat Aidiladha at the temporary masjid in town as a new one was under construction at the site of the old. Before long it was time to head home. A sad footnote:The day we before we travelled to Sitiawan I had heard that an old family friend – my parents’ good friend and my former classmates’ dad – had been hospitalised. We visited him the next day and were met by his entire family, people I have known since I could remember and rarely meet these days. Sadly the next […]
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