Once upon a time, a cadre of wayward mercenaries – warriors lost without a kingdom – roamed around in search for adventures and a purpose. They hired themselves out to protect the common folk from a growing evil that has begun to stalk the land. Dramatis Personae Sage – Drow Rogue (Aminin) Mordred – Human Druid (Ganesan) Kaisa – Half-elf Bard (Fadzmil) Kal-El – Elf Fighter (Hafiz) Clark – Half-orc Paladin (Zaini) Raven, Guardian of the Jungle – Human Barbarian (Nazam) Mid – Dragonborn Sorcerer (Hamidah/Hajar) Lin – Human Fighter (Sharlin) Dul – Human Paladin (Afiqah/Syahidah) Chapter 1 Starry Falcon The story began in a tavern. The tavern was located in the village of Starry Falcon in the nation of Camelot. It was a Camelot populated not merely by humans, but also elves, dwarves, drow and dragonborn. However it was a dying nation as its high king named Arthur disappeared […]
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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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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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DnD: An Assessment of an Island Economy
Dungeons and Dragons in Class I ran Dungeons and Dragons for the first time… in a classroom. On Wednesday, I found that there was time to run a role-playing game session for the class while giving them a focused objective language wise. So I bought my D&D books. This class had never played any RPGs before, so I hoped that they could follow the instructions and the plot of the game as we developed it together. I brought pregenerated characters. They selected what they wanted to play. I briefed them on Attributes, Skills, Hit Points and how the dice rolls are used. Soon, we were ready to play. Dramatis Personae Naivara – High Elf Wizard Amalin – Half-elf Bard Pedepoit – Drow Rogue Bougainvillea – Dragonborn Sorceror Gong Nekara – Wood Elf Ranger Kemaih Cendoi – Human Druid The six are officials of the Sultanate of Purnama Utara to assess […]
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Savage Worlds: A Simple Job
Kuala Lumpur 2099 was a colossal city-state, among hundred of other city-states which still existed on this dying Earth. Half of the population of the planet were safely nestled in these cities subject to amazing technology, while also under the watchful eye of the tyrannical megacorporations. The other half of the population are either rich enough to buy their way onto space habitats across the solar system or are dead, killed by a vengeful mother nature outside the walls of the city-states. DIGITAL REMAINS 01 A Simple Job Today I ran a short Savage Worlds cyberpunk scenario for the first time for my son where he played an “information retrieval specialist” with a “switchblade katana” (Yes. I’ll allow that! Same damage stats as a normal katana!) in Kuala Lumpur 2099. His yet-unnamed retrieval specialist had been paid to break into and steal a file named “deathbringer.odxz” from a terminal in […]
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DnD: Abduction at the Ancient Ruins
Finally after almost 30 years of gamemastering roleplaying games, I finally got to run Dungeons and Dragons. Setting background: 130 years in the past, a fleet of jongs, perahus and lancang led by a Laksamana of the Sultanate of Melaka left their port for the Kingdom of China. As they approached the island of Temasik, a mist of green and purple descended upon them. They sailed in the mist for three days without the sun or blue sky. After the mist vanished, they found themselves in unknown waters. At night, the stars were different and the moon had a different face, and shone blue. The flotilla sent scouts north, south, east and west. The scouts discovered an archipelago to the east and led the fleet to an island that took them two days to sail around. The Laksamana decided on building an encampment at a river delta protected by a […]
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BBF: The Day The World Burned
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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EOTE Tabletop Day Session: The Pilot and the Spy
Interlude 1 The Pilot and the Spy Last night before the end of International Tabletop Day, Irfan returned to his role as Hondo Pash the Smuggler Pilot in Star Wars Edge of the Empire role-playing game. We began with an obligatory Star Wars crawl: Movin’ It had been several years since the fateful Battle of Shadda-Bi-Boran. While his family were safely sequestered away on an Alliance safeworld, Hondo Pash had been working as an Alliance operative travelling the galaxy taking on one piloting mission after another. The Corellian Engineering Corp G9 Rigger-class modified freighter known as the Junk Bucket dropped out of lightspeed off the Igmalar system. The planet Igmalar was a humid, fog-covered swamp planet deep in the Enteague Sector in a minor star cluster slightly above the galactic plane. Nestled in the Outer Rim Territories, the Enteague Sector was under the absolute grip of the Empire because of […]
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SWD6: A Hot Day in Mos Espa
I brought West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 2nd edition Revised and Expanded with me to class on Monday. There was time for me to run an hour of Star Wars RPG for my students, so I mustered together all the ones who would speak and ones who would take notes on behalf of their characters, which meant two students per player characters. The students used the pregenerated characters I made for last semester‘s gaming session in class but they named their own characters themselves. Star Wars D6 A Hot Day in Mos Espa Dramatis Personae (Pregens): Creed Kenobi – Failed Jedi Dini – Kid, Creed’s apprentice The Mighty Jedibo – Bounty hunter Wakanda – Outlaw Uvuevuevuenoenoonosac a.k.a. “Osas” – Rodian saboteur Two suns shine down upon the planet Tatooine. A Rebel team landed their modified YT-1300 freighter at a landing bay in the city of Mos Espa […]
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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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EOTE: Dude! Where’s My Starship?
It began as a impromptu invitation to a roleplaying game (RPG) session. Suddenly there I was running a short Star Wars Edge of the Empire scenario for my colleague Rizal at my office. Commandeering Oskara’s character folio, Rizal became the human male bounty hunter known as Riz who owns the YKL-37R Nova Courier named Glamorous Hedgehog manufactured by Gallofree Yards. Edge of the Empire Dude! Where’s My Starship? The previous day, Riz arrived at Port Emerald in the Ord Mantell system. He accomplished a mission to retrieve a family heirloom for a local entrepreneur and earned four thousand credits. He was gleeful of his new-found wealth and booked a nice room at a two-story old tavern-style bed and breakfast at the very edge of the mesa that housed Port Emerald, overlooking three landing platforms. The Glamorous Hedgehog was parked upon one of the platforms. Money The Bright Jewel sun was shining […]
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Mini Six: The Vanishing at Kuala Perlis
Plans are underway at work to create a tabletop RPG actual play video web series to be posted online. Initiated and managed by Bazli, it would be our push to promote role-playing games (RPGs) as language learning tools that would not only be holistic and comprehensive, but fun and immersive when done right. My task is to run the session as a gamemaster (GM) and Bazli will cut the video into encounter-sized bits to be uploaded. To begin with I ran the participants an impromptu session of Mini Six using the pregenerated templates I created for the Doom Agents class. Like the students before them, the participants took the roles of international agents sent on a mission to investigate extraordinary occurrences. Mission Report (in brief) Six agents were sent to Kuala Perlis to look into a phantom island that appears after sunset between the Kurong Tengar beach and Langkawi. A fishing […]
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Mini Six: Rescue in the Rainforest
Mini Six: Doom Agents 03 Rescue in the Rainforest Last time on Doom Agents, four operatives sent to investigate the Eternitech factory deep in the South American rainforest located by the Amazon river had been captured by Eternitech’s security forces led by Hideo Eguchi. After an enemy flashbang grenade did its job in the store room where they were laying an ambush, the four agents found themselves each tied to a chair in the Eternitech factory floor, specifically on a conveyor belt that would lead to a shredding machine. Dramatis Personae Agent Trolala Zelimkhanov, a Chechen driver – Nasha and Nurul Ain Agent Nancy Nassirian, an Iranian fixer – Athirah and Sabrina Agent Adam Mbokota, a South African shooter – Syafiq and Weng Zun Agent Adrien Nicolas, a French hacker – Malvinder and Asyraaf Agent J. Johnson Jonathan, a Nepalese hitter – Alif Agent Harry Wilson, a British talker – […]
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SWD6: The Battle of Corulag (Instance B)
Star Wars D6 The Battle of Corulag Instance B This Star Wars RPG game session (D6 system) was the first of two that I ran today using the same scenario I quickly devised yesterday for my English language classes. It was to see how different two different groups of students would play through the same adventure in the same day and if I could cope with both. The scenario was also written so the students would be able to discuss compare and contrast essays however because I started the class with an hour of presenting the conventional syllabus, we only had 45 minutes before time was up, thus we were unable to complete the scenario. The session I ran earlier in the day can be found here. Dramatis Personae Sergeant Jadoo, Human male outlaw – Lutfi Fetty, Human female bounty hunter – Pei Yong Broboroi, Human male failed Jedi – […]
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SWD6: The Battle of Corulag (Instance A)
Star Wars D6 The Battle of Corulag Instance A This Star Wars RPG game session (D6 system) was the first of two that I ran today using the same scenario I quickly devised yesterday for my English language classes. It was to see how different two different groups of students would play through the same adventure in the same day and if I could cope with both. The scenario was also written so the students would be able to discuss compare and contrast essays however because I started the class with an hour of presenting the conventional syllabus, we only had 45 minutes before time was up, thus we were unable to complete the scenario. The session I ran later in the day can be found here. Dramatis Personae Paragas, Human male bounty hunter – Haziq Vyruz Girl, Human female outlaw – Ganageswari KC, Human male brash pilot – Ong […]
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