The Tenth Doctor

Adventures In Time, Space and Victorian London

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 free-form 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 exceptionally 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 […]

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Artoo faces off a B1 battle droid

Irfan’s Player Character Saves The Day

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 […]

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Hokusai Tarnungshaut grayscale

In My Garden, In The Shade

My player character in Eclipse Phase is named Hokusai Tarnungshaut. He is an octopus. Specifically, he is a North Pacific Giant Octopus with an uplifted human-like intelligence. He comes with the regular eight arm, a beak and a camouflage skin. He was uplifted by a scientist in a hypercorp during the fall. The hypercorp was destroyed but Doctor Kyle Hoo the scientist took Hokusai away and taught him about the world. The scientist also used his resources to fit a whole bunch of cyberware – including a basic mesh insert, deadly cyberclaws and a cortical stack – in Hokusai. Because the body of the octopus lives only as long as two years, the scientist have been cloning his body and resleeving him in a fresh cloned body every couple of years. Over the years, he’s come to appreciate the arts, specifically drawing and painting. One day, he was invited to […]

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Bonus: Blasters for the player side screen

This Is What A DL-18 Blaster Look Like

So the other day I made three pages of rules and stats for a SWRPG GM screen. Those face inward, to the gamemaster who has to refer to rules and tables and some stats at a moment’s notice during a game session. What about the other side? you may ask. What do the players see? So people print out photos and artwork of scenes of whatever game they use. There are hundreds of official and fan artwork of Star Wars in the internet wilds. If you download the Pirates of the Spanish Main GM screen inserts for Savage Worlds, they also come with inserts for the player side with artwork and map. Here’s one insert I’ve made for SWRPG on the player side: A blaster visual reference guide. No longer do you need to tell other players, “I have that blaster pistol that Han uses to shoot at the sarlacc […]

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From Industrial Automatons

Paper Minis: Astromech Droids

Do you know what any Star Wars RPG campaign requires? A liberal sprinkling of astromech droids all over the landscape. Indoors and outdoors, working or hanging out, moving or stationary, hyperactive or depressed, driven or apathetic. You’d especially want the ubiquitous R-series astromech droids from the manufacturer Industrial Automatons. I’ve had these made up for more than two weeks now and here they are for download! Download these astromech droids from Google Drive here.

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Combat & Movement

Star Wars RPG D6 GM Screen

Here’s something I’ve been working on for the last year or so, created over long periods of nothingness punctuated by brief periods of activity. My very own design for a full-colour Star Wars RPG Gamemaster’s Screen in D6 rules – using Inkscape. There are three pages of inserts, each US Letter sized. They work great with the Savage Worlds Customizable GM Screen. The first are tables for combat (injury, scaling, damage, healing, etc.), movements (manoeuvre modifiers, character & vehicle) and astrogation mishaps. The second are tables for Force Powers with modifier tables, and charts for weapons and gear. The last insert are nothing but stock NPCs to be used in a Rebellion-era campaign. That is, no Jedi and clone. Only Imps, fringer-types, droids (some from the Clone Wars which might have survived to the Rebellion era), and creatures that can kill you. I wish there was space for more stuff […]

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Be prepared

Paper Mini Imperial Troops

The ubiquitous Imperial Stormtrooper Corps is feared throughout the galaxy, which warrant their own set of paper minis. Here is a full 8-man stormtrooper squad. Are they Carida Academy graduates or GeNode clones? Who cares. I just want pie. Stormtrooper Scouts a.k.a Scout Troopers are highly mobile and lightly armoured. Here they are aimless without their 74-Z speeder bikes and waiting for the bus. Meanwhile, on the frozen planet of Hoth, four Snowtroopers were about to form a band.However, they forgot their thermal underwear. Storm Commandos use the Scout armour but painted black. So, I just inverted colours on the Scout minis, and voila! (Actually they’re not exactly identical, so these Commando minis aren’t really accurate.) You can also save money by printing these suckers in monochrome. I made them all in black and white. Click here to download the first batch of stormtrooper minis from Google Drive. Click here […]

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Meanwhile, deep within the recesses of Davis, CA

Paper Mini Fringers of Asok Yeesrim

Back in October 2009, I wrote about Asok the SWAGger who turned me into a Rodian Carbineer. I thought Asok’s artwork was clean and concise enough to be turned into paper minis. So I went down to his deviantArt gallery where many fantastic pieces reside to pick 12 artwork to be turned into paper minis. Most of the ones I collected could be considered fringers. There was a spacer, a pirate, some smugglers, pilots and gearheads. I gathered them up and put them into a printable paper mini PDF set. I sent a copy to Asok, and a few hours later – from the other side of the planet – this photo appeared: Download the pdf for free here: Download Asok’s fringers from Google Drive here!

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The gang, arrayed for a photo shoot

Paper Minis for Star Wars RPG

A Bad Example in the Spacelanes Star Wars RPG Paperminis Thanks to Ivan using generic paper miniatures during the Warhammer session last month, it struck me to look for Star Wars RPG paper minis on the web. There are a couple online, but I thought it would be awesome to create my own for my own game. Especially a custom set for the crew of the Bad Example. So I drew up simple illustrations of the player characters, based on the thumbnail to the right there. (Click on it to see a full sized version.) After a some advice from Ivan, a scanning session, a colouring session, a pdf set was produced. Each mini had a base width of 30mm. I also needed bases, so I downloaded some free pdfs from One Monk Miniatures. There are also some free pdf downloads at that website. Check it out if you require […]

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Photo by Ivan Tam Studios

A Robot Rescue – Bad Example, Episode 4

Last Sunday, the GOKL gang continued the role-playing adventures of Star Wars: A Bad Example in the Spacelanes. Two new players, Nigel of Singapore who played Bob the Wookiee, and Razzman who played Reelo Jackson the Rodian bounty hunter, joined the party as they embarked on a mission to retrieve their kidnapped crewmates, beginning with Weapon X the HK-78 assassin droid. The previous episode can be found here. Episode 4: Our Droid Is Not Open-Sourced Long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… Upon exposing a traitor Starson O’Kreem in the mobile asteroid pirate stronghold Irontooth Station, pirate lord Slaughter Maelstrom has confirmed a truce with the crew of the Bad Example. After returning to Sriluur to pick up Tickley, the crew sets off to recovered their captured droid companion Weapon X. Using the data taken from O’Kreem’s datapad, they attempt to discover Weapon X’s location and soon track […]

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Zee-Exthree

Pirate Politics – Bad Example, Episode 3

About six months ago, I ran the third Star Wars D6 game with the GOKL crew, which continued from Episode 2. But I was a bad GM then and did not take notes (mentally and on paper) of what occurred. Here is a run-down of the lost Episode 3 of Star Wars: A Bad Example in the Spacelanes. Details such as combat and NPC names were lost. New NPC names are fabricated for the purpose of continuity in the adventure and will be considered official for upcoming games. Episode 3: Piracy, Treachery and Kidnappings The crew of the Bad Example, Hunter Maelstrom the freighter captain, Nek’Koh’Moo’Su’May a.k.a Annie the Trianii, Ssssawar the Trandoshan chef and the clone Aden uneasily enjoyed the dinner set out for them by The Five Skulls Brigands. Weapon X, the HK-57 droid, just sat and made small talk. The pirate leader Lord Irontooth had earlier revealed […]

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Tachikoma

Whatever 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 […]

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Nothing but d10s used

I 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.) An “eclipse phase” is the period of time between when a cell is infected by a virus and when a virus appears in a cell and transforms it. During this period the cell does not appear to be infected, but it is. The Eclipse Phase world is set in a future where advanced technologies exist that would awe you […]

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Doug, Adrian & Ivan

A 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 Fantasy 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. Here’s my player character, Birgitta Tageslicht, the Roadwarden chick whose father was recently slain by beastmen in the woods. I played this woman as one who’s reckless into battle […]

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Glossary 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? The Glossary of Duckpocalypse This is a list of common slang words used by the English-speaking survivors of Duckpocalypse. Slangs in other languages are also used widespread, but are not included here. Alphas – Captains of Duckhunter teams Anatids – Ducks Angels – Duckhunters affected by positive Gutierrez-Spears Mutation Ayles – Aylesbury Ducks Balis – Bali Ducks Base Camps – Encampments Big Birds – Muscovy Ducks Big Dogs – Captains of Duckhunter teams Birdwatchers – Ornithologists, […]

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This rock is cooking

Even The Exhibits Mooned Me (With D6 Stats)

Muzium Negara focuses primarily on the cultural history of this magical fantasy realm currently known to the world as “Malaysia”, although some natural history of the land is touched upon. Outside, we were greeted by a number of old train exhibits. In other words, there were more trains here than any one time I’m at the LRT station waiting for a train to arrive. Irfan poses by the Inscription Stone of Terengganu, unearthed at Kuala Berang at the turn of the 20th century. 700 years old, it’s evidence that Islam thrived in that region at the early 14th century. This guy is from my old neighbourhood – The Perak Man. How old is this guy? Take our current year: 9391 Before Guild. Go back about 2000 years we arrive at the dawn of the Common Era at 11391 B.G. Between then and now, we’ve had the Roman Empire, the Dark […]

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