Declare your action!

Work Excursion to Melaka

Previously… I was invited by the English Department of Pay Fong Middle School in Melaka to run RPGs and give a talk during their English Week programme. With my RPG gear in tow and Ain and Irfan as my support team, I was ready to for the events in the next few days on behalf of UniMAP. Day One: Year Zero Mini (2023-07-27) Because we were due be at the school after lunch, it allowed us time to recuperate from the drive the previous day. The storefronts along the beachfront road were closed except for one Indian Muslim restaurant, so we had lunch there. After Zuhur/Asar jama’ prayers, we headed there to meet with my contact there, the English teacher Kelvin. Thankfully, school traffic was not as jammed as the previous day. We easily found a parking spot. Then we went to the school’s language lab, where I ran Year […]

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Doom Agents 2023

Doom Agents: Stealing Crate 037

We had the room at the library for 2 hours. The group activity with my students took only 30 minutes. So, I introduced them to tabletop role-playing games. I thought that using Mini-YZE (with my own mods) would make it simple for them. Easiest setting to run for new students would be the Doom Agents setting. It is contemporary, and I can emulate modern spy and action moviews with it. DRAMATIS PERSONAE Chamice, Engineer – Tey Jack, Medic – Ooi Agent 47, Sniper – Danis Sniper Agent 47, Medic Jack and Engineer Chamice are assigned to a mission near Manaus, Brazil. The Approach The team, in an off-road vehicle, heads south into the jungle in the late afternoon. It is raining heavily and before them river with a strong current block their path. The bridge has been washed away. Chamise and Jack study the waters, then guide 47 to drive […]

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Dire Wolves are dire

DnD: Six Sessions in Six Classes

Once upon a time I ran five sessions of Dungeons and Dragons in five classes over the course of a week. Last month, in what purported to be a sequel long overdue thanks to the pandemic, I ran six sessions of D&D in six classes over the course of that week. It was during a Consultation Week. After all the consultations have been consulted, I had an average of  75-80 minutes to run a session. Not much time, so I used the same scenario framework for all six classes. Besides their own character names, I also allowed the students to name the region’s sovereign and their castles. Because there were many students each class, each player character is controlled by a team of more than one student. I have chosen to post text written by one player characters group from each class. As usual, please do not disparage the students […]

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Doom Agents The Endau Rompin Rescue Instance B

Doom Agents: The Endau Rompin Rescue (Instance B)

It’s the final week of the semester and I was able to run a game session each for two different classes. This was the second of the two. Click here for the first class. Freeform Universal: Doom Agents (PPIPT5) It is two years after the Brazilian mission. 10th June 2019: Another Doom Agent team is sent to the Endau-Rompin National Park for ANOTHER rescue mission.  This time it is the kidnapped daughter of a diplomat. The team of five arrived in Malaysia and set out for their mission immediately. Dramatis Personae In alphabetical order (played by student group names in quotation marks): Captain Kelvin, Soldier – “5Avengers” Dr. Bob, Medic – “Rulebreakers” Jeffrey, Sharpshooter – “Team Alpha” Jet, Thief – “North Team” Sancorn, Enforcer – “Amigos” The Mission Begins It is raining heavily in the thick jungle. Sancorn drives the team in a Toyota Hilux towards the GPS coordinates where […]

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Doom Agents The Endau Rompin Rescue Instance A

Doom Agents: The Endau Rompin Rescue (Instance A)

It’s the final week of the semester and I was able to run a game session each for two different classes. This was the first of the two. Click here for the second class. Freeform Universal: Doom Agents (IKOM3) What happened to the last Doom Agents team that left on the Brazilian mission. What happened to them, we might never know. However on 10th June 2019, another team was sent to the Endau-Rompin National Park to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a diplomat. The team of seven arrived in Malaysia and set out for their mission immediately. Dramatis Personae In alphabetical order (played byStudent group names in quotation marks): Bevis, Enforcer – “No Boundaries” Black Widow, Medic – “Titans” Captain Price, Soldier – “Team UVW201” Heister, Thief – “Cool Dudes” Jerung, Sharpshooter – “One Hit Wonder” Magnificent, Driver – “Queen Bees” Roye, Technician – “Magellanic Cloud” Watch the video belowto […]

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Guardians of Magic

Year Zero Engine: Guardians of Magic

I was not able to do it last year, but I thought I would run a tabletop RPG for my Theatre Arts students this year. Last Saturday, I invited them all to Discord and I gave them a briefing on how to play the game. For this online session I chose Free League’s Year Zero Engine as my system of choice. This is because I can scale it down enough for them to practice their role-playing. Here is a video recording of the session. It took almost 1.5 hours of actual play time, but I edited out the long pauses, duplicate instructions and action declarations, as well as all my ummmms and uhhhhhs. I edited it down to just under 40 minutes of video. Episode 1 IT’S A DOG EAT DOG WORLD Dramatis Personae Willy Wesley from London Zane from Asgardia Constantine from Moscow Sebastian from Austria Alice from Dubai […]

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Jakku Star Destroyer

SWD6: Scavenging the Fallen Part 2

Star Wars D6: Scavenging the Fallen Part 2 A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the crew of the YT-1300 light freighter Pretty Enemy was tasked with retrieving a Carbanti H-50 targeting processor from the derelict husk of a crashed Imperial Star Destroyer on the planet Jakku. Six months earlier, there was a battle there where many Star Destroyers  had crashed onto the planet’s desert surface. Although the star system was remote and unremarkable, it had become the very site where the military might of the Galactic Empire was finally extinguished by the New Republic… Last time on Scavenging The Fallen… Dramatis Personae Donetto Dusk – a smuggler Hamilton Zero – a speeder racer Lubird – a protocol droid Sam Aiman – a young Jedi Susan Sunbreaker – a brash pilot Zam Wessel – a bounty hunter The team had decided to press deeper into the Star […]

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The players and I

SWD6: Scavenging the Fallen

Star Wars D6: Scavenging the Fallen A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the crew of the YT-1300 light freighter Pretty Enemy was tasked with retrieving a Carbanti H-50 targeting processor from the derelict husk of a crashed Imperial Star Destroyer on the planet Jakku. Six months earlier, there was a battle there where many Star Destroyers  had crashed onto the planet’s desert surface. Although the star system was remote and unremarkable, it had become the very site where the military might of the Galactic Empire was finally extinguished by the New Republic… Dramatis Personae Donetto – a smuggler Hamilton – a speeder racer Lubird – a protocol droid Sam Aiman – a young Jedi Susan – a brash pilot Zam Wessel – a bounty hunter We have seen better days The Pretty Enemy, an orange-and-blue YT-1300 freighter, dropped out of lightspeed close to the planet Jakku […]

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Mission to Kijimi 2

EOTE: Mission to Kijimi

It was the last class of the semester and I had finished the syllabus a week early, so I organised a Star Wars RPG session for the students earlier today. The students used the Legends of the Galaxy pregenerated character sheets which I used in class previously, from all three flavours of the game: Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny. Here’s the story that resulted from the game session: Edge of the Empire Mission to Kijimi Dramatis Personae Sasira, female human Colonist/Entrepreneur – Amira Malea, female human Jedi Warrior/Starfighter Ace – Syuhada Kree, female human Smuggler/Pilot – Anis (Captain of the Portkey Mustang) Byt, male Twilek Technician/Outlaw Tech – Aiman Freya, Chiss Jedi Seeker/Ataru Striker – Wani Wedelia, female human Jedi Consular/Niman Disciple – Raf Arrival on Kijimi The crew of the Portkey Mustang were given a mission by the Rebel Alliance: to journey to […]

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Frog Yawn Village Party

DnD: Five Sessions in Five Classes

Another first for me this entire week is the fact that I ran RPG sessions for every one of my English classes, using Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. The students used Level 2 pre-generated characters downloaded from the DnD official site. I wish I was able to plan for more weeks, using the game to improve their speaking and writing skills, but c’est la vie. Here are capsule actual play write ups for each session that I ran. The names and details of the characters in each session can be read in the accompanying photos. The theme of the week was Arts and Culture. NOTE: The students who wrote these play reports speak nor write English as a first language. They did the best they could in light of other more pressing courses and assignments. Grammatical and spelling errors have been left in the text for research purposes, so do […]

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Group photo

DnD: Pretty Werewolves

Once upon a time at a time forgotten by lore, there was a city known as Big Dark Mountain. It was once a great mountain which had been hewn into a plateau. Humans, elves, dwarves and dragonborn came to build a city upon the plateau. Even a number of drow eventually settled there. Over the centuries, it grew into a prosperous city state. It was the centre of culture and commerce for the land. Meanwhile, evil powers began to dominate the countryside, corrupting a community here and despoiling a village there. Adventurers, warriors and explorers emerged from Big Dark Mountain, banding into groups of protectors. These groups venture forth across the land to seek out evil and darkness. One such party was the group known as the Pretty Werewolves… Dramatis Personae Ragnarok – Human Barbarian (Hafiy) Hago – Dragonborn Sorcerer (Danial) X.P.D.C. – Drow Rogue (Faizuddin) Rowling – Elf Wizard […]

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The ladies

DnD: Fallen Nation

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 adventuring party

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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A 2-player game

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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Dice Ibegon

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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FTK4

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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