Force and Destiny: The Lost General As role-playing practice for my English theatre arts class, I ran a FFG Star Wars RPG session for the students. If playing a space swashbuckling character who might also be an alien or a droid does NOT stimulate their acting chops, I have no idea what will! Although it was technically a Force and Destiny game, we had character types from Edge of the Empire too, thanks to the Legends of the Galaxy pregenerated character sheets. It was the same pregen sheets I had used in a class earlier in the year. Dramatis Personae Merick, female Zabrak Guardian/Armorer – Veronica and Siew Yee Malea, female Human Warrior/Starfighter Ace – Haziqah and Syafikah Koogik, female Rodian Explorer/Big Game Hunter – Syakirah Byt, female Twilek Technician/Outlaw Tech – Nadhira Kree, female Human Smuggler/Pilot – Amelia Flames, female Droid Soldier/Commando – Siti Aisyah Martial Law on Zaadja! With the Empire clamping down hard on the remote system such […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Teaching
Mini Six: Debacle in the Amazon
Mini Six: Doom Agents 02 Debacle in the Amazon This marks the first time my students have played a second game in a single campaign, although they all played new characters because of a TPK in their first session. Dramatis Personae Agent Trolala Zelimkhanov, a Chechen driver – Nasha and Nurul Ain Agent Nancy Nassirian, an Iranian fixer – Syafiq and Weng Zun Agent Adam Mbokota, a South African shooter – Athirah and Sabrina Agent Adrien Nicolas, a French hacker – Malvinder and Asyraaf A year after the incident in Fukushima, a fresh new group of agents were sent deep into the Amazon in South America. Command was suspicious of the construction of a manufacturing plant owned by the multi-national corporation Eternitech located by the Amazon river. Trolala Zelimkhanov, the elegantly dressed agent, drove their pink Ford Ranger along the private road that would take them to the Eternitech factory. […]
Continue reading
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. […]
Continue reading
The First UUM Incursion
Last month, all of the sudden, I was tasked with writing a script for a short play for an English Language Carnival to be held at UUM. Not just that, but I had to coach the actors, who were all students of our business school. The theme was “peace”. So I wrote a script with 10 speaking roles (2 narrators included) entitled Requiem to War. However the event was postponed on account of royal demise. Then we got word that a new date had been set. All the actors got back into gear. I attended their final rehearsal. I only handled the acting and staging part of the rehearsal. My colleague Yuzy did most of the heavy lifting with regards to costume, props and logistics for the troupe. Friday evening, Irfan, Ain and I drove to UUM to check out the site of the event. We had dinner at the […]
Continue reading
Mini Six: The Seaside Catastrophe
And so it came to pass that I was given the opportunity to present my ideas for tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) as a language learning tool to the workplace. During the workshop, I also ran a Mini Six session for the participants. For the first time ever, I gamemastered (GM) an RPG session for colleagues, which was something I never thought I would do. This entry chronicles the epic events that transpired in-game during the session: Mini Six: Agents of CIL The Seaside Catastrophe If this actual play report sounds familiar, then it is because it is the same scenario I ran for my class last month. This time though, the pregenerated player characters (PCs) consisted of a whole new mix of agents. Dramatis Personae Alex and Farahhein as Agent Mustonen the Finnish combat medic Sareepa and Masturah as Agent Khoo the Malaysian sniper Ivy and Angela as Agent Takeuchi […]
Continue reading
Teaching Without Power
This semester I have to help teach another English course to a class of professionals in another learning institution. Today, during my class in which I have prepared a ton to slides to be shown on the screen, the unthinkable happened. There was a blackout. So I took the class outdoors. Luckily there was a cafe right outside the class, which was closed on a Saturday. The students helped me transport the whiteboard out to the corridor. I tried my best to think of an exercise they could do in groups which would compel them to do research, write then speak. In the meantime, the exercise also helped in getting the students to form a proper persuasive essay structure. One thing is certain: These folks, unlike my much younger regular students, had no hangups about public speaking. The topics I chose for the exercise correlated to the topics in the […]
Continue reading
Theatre Was Suddenly In My Repertoire
Did I not join this university as a language translator? How did I end up teaching English Theatre Arts as a co-curricular course? It really matters not, because I am enjoying my role as an language educator here. More so because I love teaching enhancement of soft skills. So my course began this week. We began with the obligatori Negaraku anthem song. I tried getting the students to read part of the Aliens script – slightly modified – to get them to emote (with and without stage direction). I dealt them this random lines exercise between two students to get them to emote better, but during the first week even “sadness” elicited an unstoppable wave of giggles. During the second week I got the students to read the script that I wrote for students involved in another programme. Perhaps I need to write a blog post about that programme soon. […]
Continue reading
Mini Six: A Day By The Sea
Mini Six: Doom Agents 01 A Day by the Sea For the third time I ran a tabletop RPG session for my class using the Mini Six system, and this time I have integrated it with the English curriculum we had. The week’s lesson theme was Natural Disaster and I also had to teach them about Descriptive Essays. The RPG became a teaching tool in this situation, because students were able to interact verbally with each other in the context of the narrative. I did some research on the seaside towns in Fukushima, Japan to prepare for the session. During the game they also had to roll dice to determine that the action they declared succeeded or failed. And then had to write their game experiences as in-universe stories for homework using a structured set of questions I sent them via Google Forms. Dramatis Personae Sabrina as Berry, the scientist Athirah […]
Continue reading
Symposium Gift Artwork
At the language symposium last week, besides the two assignments I wrote about I also had a third task: Which was to sketch some artwork to be printed and presented as gifts to the special guests of the event. The common theme for each drawing was Perlis. I drew them all in Krita separately. Photographic references, of course, were used. Originally I had composed them all in a single artwork. Ultimately, the committee decided to frame them as separate images.The artwork was printed and framed in groups of fives and threes. Here is one of the group-of-three frames given to the speaker after the teaching workshop in the afternoon. Click here to view the artwork on ArtStation. Click on the expand icon on each image to expand them.
Continue reading
My First Language Symposium
Another new experience I underwent was the language symposium I attended this weekend. The language symposium was an annual collaboration between three universities, two of them in southern Thailand. I was also part of the organising committee, although my duties were by far the most unimportant and required the least time and effort compared to everyone else who did a fine job. My job (aided by Bazli who knew the ropes better than I did here) was to figure out and set up the opening ceremony gimmick. In the early weeks of planning (when we had thought of setting up the symposium in Pulau Pinang) I envisioned using a drone for the gimmick. However, it would be much more economical and easier for everyone to just book the use of a gong from the university’s recreation unit: At the end of the set up and rehearsal night the day before […]
Continue reading
Enhancement Workshop at Langkawi
If you had asked me 10 years ago or so, I would say my new experiences will be declining gradually the older I grew. There would be less chances for me to do new things. I am pleased to report that I was wrong. In the last year or so I have been involved in a number of things I never thought I would be involved in with regards to my professional life. Last weekend I accompanied the entire language department for an Enhancement Workshop. The workshop was held at a hotel on Langkawi Island. It had been some time since I was at Langkawi and we have not been there since moving to Perlis. The ferry ride took an hour and they played a Jackie Chan movie on the cabin screens. I think there was a lion in a sports car or something? I fell asleep en route as […]
Continue reading
Force and Destiny: Jungle in the Sky
I was finally able to run another role-playing game session for my students for an English Language speaking exercise, the first for this semester. Probably no other games will be run because it is already quite late in the semester for other sessions. Students will be concentrating on their finals. Although it was technically a Force and Destiny game, we had character types from Edge of the Empire too, thanks to the Legends of the Galaxy pregenerated character sheets. Force and Destiny: Jungle in the Sky The GALACTIC CIVIL WAR rages across the Empire! Thousands of suspected rebel agents have been rounded up and imprisoned by the IMPERIAL SECURITY BUREAU in secret prisons across the galaxy. Many innocent citizens have disappeared because of the Empire’s evil wrath, including SENATOR GAR LODOS from the DURO system. With little time to spare, the REBEL ALLIANCE has sent an extraction team to […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
Some Sort of Translation Workshop
Then it came to pass that I have to present a talk at the department’s inaugural Basic Translation Workshop. Public speaking is not something that comes to me easily. Despite all the training afforded to be by over 25 years of gamemastering, it still affects me negatively as I was extremely introverted growing up. I did not know whether it felt more harrowing about to give a talk to strangers… or to people I know, such as my fellow workmates here in this case. After several days burning the midnight oil producing the slides and rehearsing, it was time for me to dive into the deep end of the pool. I was creating new slides less than 30 minutes before the talk was scheduled to begin! And I would not have be able to do it without the help, suggestions and support of my colleagues in our Translation and Language […]
Continue reading
Mini Six: Shadows Through The Mist
I have always stated that tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) can be amazing teaching tools, not only for language purposes but to develop critical thinking skills, social skills and general knowledge. Yesterday, I finally ran a game in an English for General Purposes class to see the students could be engaged enough for them to communicate with each other and me without being shy. The Setup Seeing that polyhedral dice were rare in these here parts, I thought I would run a game that used the ubiquitous six-sided dice. Thus, AntiPaladin Games’ Mini Six was chosen. Besides, the system is based on West End Games’ D6 system which runs the Star Wars RPG which I have been familiar with for the last 26 years. The previous week the students and I had agreed to participate after briefly explaining to them what the game is, how it would be played and what […]
Continue reading
At The End of the First Week
And now the first week of teaching is over. What do I have to report? The students are well-behaved (so far) and are very disciplined, most wearing their dark engineering jacket uniforms. They adhere to procedure quite well to, even if registering for classes seemed to be a haphazard affair. They spent little time appointing a class representative among themselves. And the class reps were easy to communicate with via smartphone messaging apps. I was quite apprehensive of presenting the module to the students, especially in trying to get the lessons delivered relevant to each class’s course as each class belonged to a different engineering or business course, and I had to customise the delivery and how I presented examples to each class. And my gamemastering experience also helped, I believe. Ultimately I discovered that the key to a good lesson presentation is to brush up one’s stand up comedy […]
Continue reading