The second RPG session I ran during the Geomatics Carnival 2018 at UiTM Arau was DwD Studios’ BareBones Fantasy. This session had even less prep time than the Star Wars session I ran earlier in the day. However, it turned out to be one of the most hilarious sessions I have ever had he pleasure of gamemastering in recent years. BareBones Fantasy The Day the World Burned The day began like another day for the two adventurers the elven thief Mus and human warrior Kazuma (both at Rank 1) and their hireling Aqua, an archer, who were travelling through the wilderness on horses. Upon Kazuma’s shoulder was his faithful hawk. The Blood in the Standing Stones The light woodlands ended and a wall of dark twisted trees and dense thickets blocked their path. They were considering what to do when they heard a scream from beyond the wall growing before […]
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EOTE: Rescue on Crait
The first RPG session I ran during the Geomatics Carnival 2018 at UiTM Arau was Fantasy Flight Games’ Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion. The players, who were UiTM students, used the Legends of the Galaxy pregenerated character sheets I used in class previously. Edge of the Empire Rescue on Crait The YT-2000 light freighter Sitichepa (I’m… sure this is an in-joke between the players) dropped out of hyperspace off the Crait system. Aboard the ship are a group of rebel operatives in search of fellow rebels whose ship disappeared near Crait: the star-pilot who was born and raised on space freighters and barges Kreepo, the sharp Twi’lek engineer Byt, the droid assassin FLAM-O who was bristling with weapons and Malea the Force sensitive warrior who had a lightsabre on her belt. Kreepo brought their ship closer to the desolate planet so Byt could scan its surface for signals. The Twi’lek […]
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Gaming at the Geomatics Carnival 2018
Today, the Centre for International Languages was officially invited by Zainee to UiTM Arau nearby for their Geomatics Carnival 2018 exhibition. There was a hobbies exhibition section where I set up shop with tabletop RPGs with my colleague Bazli. I would talk to visitors about using RPGs as a language learning tool. Also, to run games if and when I can. Sharnizan of Serious Games UUM was also present to introduce and sell his product the Ace of Maths game to UiTM students. Though at this point he was explaining the card game to Bazli. There was no dearth of visitors to our tables when the exhibition started. The exhibition organisers even provided Bazli and I with a packed lunch. My usual suspects line up was arrayed for display at their table, eliciting enquiries once in a while. I ran two game sessions for visitors. I ran the Edge of […]
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Meanwhile, During the Rest of SILK 2018
The Symposium of International Languages and Knowledge was quite the event. Besides running the RPG workshop, I also sat in other talks, participated in other educational workshops and also had lots of food. Here are some photos to show the experience I underwent at Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand. WU was holding their 26th anniversary expo on campus, a big event we were told. SILK was scheduled to be held at the end of March in conjunction with their anniversary. We waited at the border for their transport to pick us up. It took four hours for the two transports to deposit us at a hotel near their campus. That evening, a bunch of us went out to the expo site at the university in search of dinner. The expo site was big, along a single road on campus. There were vendors who sold food, flowers, furniture, agricultural gear […]
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Mini Six: Whiteout, or an RPG Workshop at SILK 2018
This weekend I was honoured to be able to run a tabletop RPG workshop during the 2018 Symposium for International Languages and Knowledge which was held at Walailak University at Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand. Last year, SILK 2017 was held here in Perlis and was featured on the blog as well. Here are some photos of the event with an actual play report of the game that I ran for the Thai students. The little abstract for the workshop which I submitted a couple of months earlier appeared in the programme book for the symposium. Parallel talk session were underway when I went to scout the room where I was due to run the workshop. I quickly set up the table and then did some last minute game prep for the coming participants. Besides showing off the diversity of RPG systems, these book covers displayed side-by-side on the table can […]
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The Second UUM Incursion
I love tabletop games. I have started to incorporate more tabletop games into my teaching and learning. Suddenly, my friend Shanizan invited me to be a jury member for the Sintok International Games and Gamification Challenge 2017 at UUM. This was nothing less than a great opportunity to be part of the community here. Anyway… After a formal invite had been sent to the workplace, I was now an official representative of the Centre for International Languages at the SIGGC 2017 event at UUM. My colleague Yuzi was also invited to be a member of the jury. Shanizan greeted us when we arrived. After the jury briefing was complete, we went on out assignments: to grade the participants’ games on display. The games ranged from standard tabletop snakes and ladders variants to mecha combat computer games. Yuzi and I brought the Thai interns from the workplace to join the fun. […]
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Tabletop Games Expo at UniMAP
After almost two years in Perlis, there arose an opportunity to host a tabletop game exhibition here at the university. Gray, a gamer I knew and interacted with online back in Kuala Lumpur, planned a KakiTabletop Northern Tour. This tour would take his team and himself from KL to Taiping to Prai to Penang to Perlis and back down to Ipoh before returning to the Klang Valley. We thought it would be great to hold a tabletop gaming exhibition to introduce tabletop games – boardgames, card games and role-playing games – to the students of this university and the local community. If you remember I even once ran Mini Six for one of my classes last semester as a speaking exercise. After proposing the event to the Centre for International Languages, we had the green light to go ahead. With the help of colleagues, we scheduled the Tabletop Games Expo […]
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Shane Goes To Star Wars Identities
As mentioned in the Star Trek exhibition post downriver, my brother from another mother and hemisphere Shane went and visited Star Wars Identities exhibition at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton. Shane gave me permission to feature photos from his expedition into the world of Star Wars miniatures, maquettes, concept art and costumes. Which gives me a reason to post more Star Wars photos on this blog for the lulz. FOR THE LULZ! See this grin on Shane? I will match and exceed that if I ever visit an exhibition like this one. In the background, Boba Fett is unsettled by his number one fan. The entire set up sounds fantastic. As a visitor, you are able to use the interactive displays to choose which path you take as you traverse the entire exhibition. What you choose will create an original character attributed to you as you reach the […]
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Irfan Treks to an Exhibition
Irfan went to the National Science Centre. Star Trek the Exhibition was being housed there for the time being. Shane managed to go to Star Wars Identities which looked better, but I takes what I gets. They didn’t beam us aboard, we had to walk up the steps and push the door open. Thankfully, this procedure did not need the use of a Heisenberg compensator. There’s a reason why most of these photos aren’t in the exhibition hall. Taking of pictures are not allowed inside. We’ve never been to the science centre before, and we’ve discovered reasons to return in the future when we can. There are a lot of great interactive science exhibitions that are child-friendly. I’d bet Yaya would love to explore the science exhibits. Them’s fighting words below! Did I say photography was not allowed? I managed to sneak a couple of shots. I couldn’t pass an […]
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Aerocarnival 2008
As I spent three full days over the weekend (plus Friday) manning the booth at Aerocarnival 2008 which was held at UniKL-MIAT, Ain, Irfan, Cik Emma and Cik Su went about the fair outdoors, taking photos among the static displays. There were lots of kids looking for jobs in the aviation industry, wearing the wrong clothes for it and with bad haircuts. Needless to say I was a crazy old man with a shotgun yelling at the kids to get off the lawn.
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Time To Get To Work. Oh, and Photos!
Let’s take advantage of the free wifi some more and post new pictures of work. Just like other entries of business trip photos on this blog, there are lots of exhibition booths and models of aircrafts. There are real full-sized aircrafts in the premises but I didn’t take any photos of them. Also, there is an aerobatic display outside which is quite loud and makes it hard for us to work inside the hall. I must be working at exhibitions too long already. Everywhere I turn I meet people I know. The booth below is ours. The 5-sided display stand with the spotlights in front was Shide’s idea. The graphic design on each of the five sides were done by me in .ai format. In the space of about 7 hours, then emailed to the booth construction people to be turned into stickers. Too bad the didn’t put it on […]
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Why It’s Been Quiet Around Here Lately
It’s been a busy month, even since before Aidilfitri. The reason of it all will now be shown as a series of photographs for the event that took place at Shangri-La Hotel on the 24th and 25th of October. Sorry, no photos of me cause I didn’t get anyone to snap one at any time. Here’s the aforementioned series of photographs with captions: Before I left, I shook the organiser’s hand saying, “Awesome party, yo.” Next stop: LIMA 2007!
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What Transpired In Pakistan
Like DSA 2006 back in April, we were at another defence exhibition only this time in Karachi, Pakistan. My apprehension was soon laid to rest as the local organisers as well as the other foreign exhibitors who were great folks whose company I enjoyed. Whenever we got together, there usually was loud chuckling and sometimes there were incredible belly laughs, which I believe began for the first time when we tried to figure out what the acronym “CIP” actually was. Nope, ain’t tellin’. There were Barry and Martin from Australia, John from England, Bernard from the Czech Republic and sometimes we were joined by Jean-François from France, who was our neighbour in the exhibition booth next to us. All of us were ably and excellently cared for by our Pakistani attachés (so to speak) Shah, Shamir and Arsalan. I was chained to the booth most of the time because the […]
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So There We We Were At Jinnah International
Hikam and I arrived at about 2025 local time via the Pakistan International Airlines flight. It was enjoyable. I think I slept four out of the six hours airborne. The inflight movie was Pirates of the Carribeans – Dead Man’s Chest. Luckily the hotel transport people were waiting for our arrival. One less thing to worry about. It’s now almost 1000 local time in the morning, and we’ve had some breakfast. Access to Wireless LAN in only in the lobby on the ground floor and on the 6th and 7th floors. So, here I am in the lobby trying to get some information down the internet tubes.
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Next Week I Fly To…
…Karachi, Pakistan. The journey will be nested between the coming two Saturdays. Since the company is small I have to run around getting stuff done in preparation for the trip. Between this and the course assignment – that had me on edge for weeks until I finally submitted it one week late – I had no time updating this here weblog. Heck, I didn’t even have time to come up with some artwork which I promised myself I’d come up with for recreation time. A stand-out moment during the running around would be last Friday when the Airline employee looked at me (when she realised I was booking the tickets for myself) and asked with a tinge of disbelief, “You’re the one going?” Hopefully by two weeks we’ll have some photos of Karachi here. (And hopefully we’ll have internet connection at the hotel there.)
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Surrounded by War Machines
It was a long, tiring four days at Defence Services Asia… and here’s a collection of my personal photos of the event. There I was trying to sell the map generator and pilot task management system while surrounded by missiles, rifles, tanks and other things that can blow you up. It was a great experience and can’t wait to get another opportunity at doing it again. Here our neighbour from the UK is trying to show us the peace gesture. Unfortunately the camera exposure foiled him. Colin, also from the Thermoteknix booth, explaining to a visitor how his company’s thermal imaging equipment works. We were looking out for zombies in the crowd from their cold body signature all day in vain. Hans, our neighbour in front of us from Vectronics in the Swiss Pavillion, showing off his binoculars with rangefinder and compass heading display. On the other side of […]
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