The other RPG campaign I played in more-or-less regularly with the Gamers of Kuala Lumpur crew is Night’s Black Agents where we played an group of international freelance agents with contacts with various countries’ espionage network who were embroiled in a plot to take over the world. With dogs. Who might be sentient vampires. Also, an infectious hemovirus pathogen. Here are all the drawings I made for various actual play reports I wrote for the campaign on this blog.
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All Eclipse Phase Artwork on the Blog
Over the years I drew pictures for the actual play reports of Eclipse Phase that I played with the GOKL crew, I have never collected all the artwork in a single post… until now. Click on the images to expand them. So many other occurrences that I did not during various earlier GMing sessions before I started writing the play reports, such as… Cable tumbling down Olympus Mons for two sessions — at least the team breaking Hokusai out of a sushi bar driving with neo-chimpanzee trucker BJ the Bear that time Bishop was sleeved in the neo-corvid morph (a.k.a the “chicken suit”) for a reconnaissance mission at the 2309 Mr. Spock asteroid habitat in the Belt which turned into a one-man battle scenario while the others watched remotely from their ship and that one time the team travelled to a protected section at the centre of Mars, discovered […]
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Luminous Shades of Blue
I haven’t had the opportunity to draw and paint anything for myself in the last several months. Maybe longer. It ends today with this speedpainting I cooked up between various work-to-be-done-before-Monday.
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Local Freelancing is a Pain
When I started out freelancing – illustration freelancing – I had a mix of local and foreign customers. It would not be long before I decided to drop all local customers except one. Local businesses, it seems to me, disregard freelancing work as non-serious work. One works at home at one’s own time, I suppose, so why would we want take you seriously. If one was serious with work, then one should have studied to become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer… they probably figure. The problem here is that whatever the case businesses need freelancers to work for them. But because of they regard freelance work, it would take many phone calls and many weeks to get paid after the job is done. The usual excuse would be because of company procedures and bureaucracy. So many years have passed since I stopped taking local freelance commissions. Until […]
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A Homemade Gamemaster’s Notebook
Irfan has now taken up bookbinding as a hobby so I thought I would commission from him a small gamemaster’s notebook for me. I printed out the cover design at the print shop on blue paper and gave it to him. The cover was designed quickly using Inkscape and saved as a pdf. Irfan stacked and folded some blank A4-sized papers for the interior pages. He carefully measured where the staples were supposed to go on the spines. Then he stapled the spine of the folded papers together carefully onto an eraser and bent the staple legs inward manually. Here is the notebook almost done. All that is needed to be done is to slice the extra piece of paper away for a flat edge. The notebook is now ready for me to write in to continue our Time is the Hunter Star Wars RPG campaign that I am gamemastering. […]
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Bahasa Melayu X-Wing Connection
In West End Games’ The Star Wars Sourcebook (1987) written by Bill Slavicsek there is a four-page technical write-up on the X-wing fighter. The text is an order of magnitude more detailed than any other write-up on the Incom T-65 X-wing ever written and filled with an abundance of elements that can be adapted and used by gamemasters for any Star Wars RPG scenario. What has been vexing me for a quarter of a century are several “Star Wars-esque” non-English words used in the book for names of equipment make and manufacturers. Even if the spelling does not reflect it, when they appear to be transliterated words from my own native Malay language. Tana Ire and Melihat are both flight sensor manufacturers who have developed sensory equipment for the X-wing fighter. Malay: Tanah Air, (IPA:/tanah air/) literally “soil and water”, meaning “motherland”. The Tana Ire electro photoreceptor needs to scans […]
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Kangar Street Art Photos
I was busy all through to the end of 2016 that I was oblivious to stuff happening in Kangar. For example, I recently discovered an alley near the centre of town which had been adorned by colourful street art apparently painted by schoolchildren from all over Malaysia. I thought I would take a couple of photos for documentation’s sake, because this must have been a really fun event for the attendees.
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Patreon: Intrepid Mechanoids
Here is the 14th batch of RPG paper miniatures I created and released at my Patreon page. Call them mechanoids, drones, droids, bots, synths… they are useable for any science fiction RPG campaigns with droids. There are mechs than walk, waddle, roll and climb which can be used as player characters or non-player characters at your gaming table. There is space to write their character names too. Click here to go to Patreon and download the free Pioneer-class release. The Mariner-class release with enhanced colouring (like the ones in the photos above), and the Voyager-class release which also includes six full-sized printable character artwork, have also been released for patrons. Thanks to my Patrons for the opportunity to make these paperminis!
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Deep Dive into WEG Lore: Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide
After receiving it as an early birthday present from Ivan earlier, this month I discovered that DK Publishing’s Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide (UVG) by Pablo Hidalgo which fills the Star Wars universe as seen in Rogue One with a multitude of world-building details, was also a treasure trove of lore which originated from West End Games. West End Games (WEG) published the Star Wars roleplaying game series of books from 1987 until 1998 or thereabouts after which the licence went to Wizards of the Coast. In that decade or so, the game company had created and populated the Star Wars universe with hundreds (if not thousands) of worldbuilding details enough for gamemasters and players to play in the setting without having to create, for example, the Imperial DMV. Similarly, species, location and technology (and corporations that made these technologies) were named and fleshed out. Which brings us to the […]
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A Vacation of Some Sort
And So It Begins The vacation began when Ivan came a-visiting from Petaling Jaya via the ERL. I picked him up at the Arau station and he gave me an early birthday present: the Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide, which will eventually be its own blog post. Because of work, I had to spend the first day of vacation grading papers. But we did take Ivan out by the sea where we had some grilled lok ching and laksa. Gua Kelam With me on call for the grading work, we managed to take a trip to Gua Kelam. It was a work day so there were not many people at the park. Here are Ain and Irfan at the mouth into the dark tunnel of the shadowy realm. Once we got to the park grounds on the far side of the cave, Ain identified the spot where Irfan, Ayah Cik, […]
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Patreon: The Uplifts of Space
Returning to the themes of transhumanism for the Hishgraphics paper miniature releases on Patreon, here are some uplifted animals to be used in your campaign. There are two designs each of crow uplifts, octopus uplifts and chimp uplifts perfect for your science fiction campaign. Genetic modifications in the future allow for some animals to possess human-level thoughts and consciousness. Click here to download the free Uplifts of Space PDF file on Patreon.
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The General
I drew the General a couple of days ago with a pencil. Then I took a photo of it. Later, General.
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Postcards Beyond The Edge
“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it, and eventually the confidence will follow.” – Carrie Fisher Carrie Fisher died earlier today. She was 60. I did not think it would, but it did hit me harder than I ever thought it could. Because I am unsure why because I did not believe she affected me much as a child despite my being a Star Wars fan. For me it was always about the universe first. The characters, who had their own great story in that universe, came second. So what did she imprint onto me at that pubescent age when I first saw Star Wars? It was probably something like this: if there was an older girl playing on the playground, I would want her to be like Princess Leia. If the boys run out […]
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EOTE: Problem Child
Edge of the Empire: Problem Child Dramatis Personae: Amri as Grabow, male Wookiee doctor Ijam as Matwe, male human smuggler pilot Fazrie as Lumpy, male Wookiee mercenary soldier Just as it was more than 20 years ago in Sitiawan when a bunch of unfamiliar people asked if I could run Star Wars RPG for them, here I am in the same situation in Sitiawan where online friends I have never met before asked me to run a Star Wars RPG session for them! No big deal to me: it is a great way to make lasting friends! Unfamiliar with any form of Star Wars RPG, I brought the Edge of the Empire and Force and Destiny rulebooks along with some sourcebooks, the FFG narrative dice set, Force tokens and my trusty homemade paperminis. I forgot to bring the percentile dice so I used the phone dice roller app. I thought […]
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A Hometown of Sorts
…Sitiawan! We drove from Pasir Mas to where I grew up and where nothing now looks familiar, except for the old house. Because I was not able to go to Kuala Lumpur for vacation earlier, I figured we should visit Atok and Opah in Sitiawan during Maulud Nabi. Of course Irfan was glued to his grandparents desktop computer for hours, even late into the night. So he was pretty tired in the mornings. It was a chore to wake him up in my old bedroom. We mostly chilled out and relaxed in Sitiawan. We wanted to visit my cousin, but they were not in town. Irfan’s Atok and Opah also took us to dinner, before I went to GM a Star Wars RPG session. Wait what? The pasembor and rojak place under the rubber trees had quite tasty food, even if there was a swarm of flies in the area. […]
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A Send Off to Mekah
For the first time ever, Tok Bah and Tok Ma in Pasir Mas got the opportunity to go on an Umrah pilgrimage in Mecca. We drove to Kelantan to see them off. En route, we got to see a herd of elephants, pale and monolithic, at about three a.m. along the Grik-Jeli highway over the mountains. They must have just crossed the road as their butts were to us. No, we did not stop the car to take photos. Tok Bah and Tok Ma would join a group of pilgrims from Terengganu and be escorted by Ain’s cousin and her husband in their journey. Many came from Pondok Lubuk Tapah and other places to see them off at the Kota Bharu airport. Yes, Ain shed tears at the airport. Irfan should get to know his cousins a bit more. Though I think his extraordinary height (and his somewhat introverted demeanour […]
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