Once upon a time, before the onset of the plague years, I ran a Laundry RPG campaign at work. You can read about it here. Since then, one of my players Dr. Noriha has been writing research papers about using games in language learning. She has been using our campaign notes! Along with Dr. Ina, I am also the co-author of a chapter in book entitled “Naratif Dalam ‘Gamifikasi Permainan Penglipur Lara’: Menjana Pemikiran Kreatif Dalam Pengajaran Dan Pembelajaran“. Translation: “Narratives in Tabletop Role-playing Games: Generating Creativity in Teaching and Learning.” The title of the book is Wacana Ilmu dan Kemanusiaan (Knowledge & Humanity Discourse). First of all, I am grateful for the writing team for involving my activity in their research. This tracks with my own research of employing RPGs to improve speaking skills. Secondly, I will be pushing using “Permainan Penglipur Lara” as an official translation of “Tabletop […]
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The Laundry: Infiltrating a Carcosa
The Laundry RPG Episode 4 Infiltrating Carcosa Dramatis Personae Badrul, Antiquarian (Bazli) Jijah, Spy (Yuzie) Lucy, Military Officer (Farah) Ray, Linguist (Noriha) Talhah, Hacker (Rizal) Note: For this section of the game session, I created a random encounter table with a simple success/failure dice roll, just to see what went on between the months of March and July, in 2019. The Capital Laundry Services (Malaysia) Team Bunga Tahi Ayam‘s first mission in Ulu Yam began and concluded in January 2019. They were not assigned any missions until March 2019. Then they were sent on one mission per month, with rotating team leaders. The First Half of 2019 In March, the team leader was Lucy. They were sent to Kedah. There was an incursion at Alor Setar. A tentacle creature was trying to come through a Level Four Gate and eat the diners on top of Menara Alor Setar. The mission […]
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The Laundry: Getting Ahead of Themselves
Episode 3 Getting Ahead of Themselves Last time on The Laundry, Team Bunga Tahi Ayam was sent to Ulu Yam to look for the missing Team Bunga Kemboja of Capital Laundry Services agents. Their de facto field supervisor Pn. Izani escorted them in their car while micromanaging them loudly and obnoxiously. The trail of the agents lead them to the kedai runcit of En. Sabri Mat Hassan where a pair of undead armed with automatic weapons attacked them. Later, they discovered the house of En. Saad Ibrahim, a sculptor who works with wood. One of his sculptures had been possessed by an extradimensional entity and killed Team Bunga Kemboja leader Keith Yong. It seemed like this was caused by occult pages of a book that was found all over the countryside. The conclusion of the encounter with the possessed wooden sculpture was a blast… Dramatis Personae Azizah a.k.a. Jijah (Yuzi) […]
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The Laundry: An Unbelievably Wooden Dialogue
Episode 2 An Unbelievably Wooden Dialogue Previously, the agents that comprised Team Bunga Tahi Ayam and their de facto field supervisor Puan Izani travelled to Ulu Yam to investigate the disappearance of Team Bunga Kemboja Capital Laundry Services (Malaysia). Their investigations led them to a kedai runcit owner named Sabri Mat Hassan and an ancient occult book written in arcane Jawi titled Kitab Serba Serbi Budi Bicara Alam. Also, they were attacked by undead gunmen. The mission continued… Dramatis Personae Azizah a.k.a. Jijah (Yuzi) – a Fifth Form student who is also an experienced spy from Pulau Langkawi. Badrul (Bazli) – a 65 year-old antiquarian from Ipoh, Perak. Lucy Abdullah (Farah) – a “plumber” from Tangkak, Johor. Rayha a.k.a Ray (Noriha) – a linguist from Batu Pahat, Johor. Talhah Abdullah (Rizal) – a computer hacker from Segamat, Johor. Chapter 1 A KAMPUNG HOUSE STANDS ALONE The team decided to travel […]
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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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Patreon: Troops on the Ground
The latest Patreon paper miniatures were released hours before August arrived, but I forgot to feature them here on the blog. So here are the Troops on the Ground series of modern soldiers for any modern role-playing games that require soldiers as player or non-player characters. Easily used with games like Covert Ops, Delta Green or The Laundry. The image above showcases the four basic designs. Each design has three discreet variations. There is space for you to write down character names. Click here to go to the Patreon entry to download the PDF file for printing and assembling! Or be a patron. Or share. Or something. Many thanks to our patrons on Patreon for the opportunity to create these paper miniatures over the years.
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The Man From Counter Possession
Episode 1 The Man From Counter Possession On this slow lazy Sunday afternoon, after binge watching the new series Stranger Things which I had described elsewhere as “totally a Laundry RPG scenario set in America, where Black Chamber operatives in the Department of Energy attempt to contain their screw up in a small town in Ohio”, I thought I would sit down with Irfan to generate a Laundry RPG character. And if I had the time, then I would run a short, simple scenario for him. The Laundry RPG is based on Charles Stross’s The Laundry Files novel series, which is a delightful mashup of unspeakable horror and droll British humour, where the world of espionage meets the Cthulhu Mythos. It uses the Basic Role Playing (BRP) system used by Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Pendragon and Stormbringer RPGs. Irfan created a 25-year-old British grad student named Dustin Hopkins, a Capital […]
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Laundry Photo Goes Viral For Some Reason
When I was reading the Laundry RPG rulebook away from home in Lunas, I thought I’d take a photo of the “What is a Roleplaying Game” section of the book and post it on Google Plus and Twitter. Here’s the link on G+. Over 130 reshares! And on Twitter the picture achieved close to a phenomenal 1,100 retweets! Here’s the screencap I took when it hit a thousand retweets. Even Cubicle 7, the publisher of the Laundry RPG, mentioned it on their official website! As usual I’m blaming the viral outbreak on the many-angled ones living at the bottom of the Mandelbrot Set.
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