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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Patreon: More Enigma Corps
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) on Oct 28, 2018 at 7:00pm PDT Edward MacGregor has been commissioning more paper miniatures over the months. The paperminis are for his uchronic South East Asian early-20th century setting where Western colonialisation did not occur and local culture has evolved into a dieselpunk society. Entitled Enigma Corps, the setting is written for the FATE ruleset. Here are three more batches for characters paperminis! They are all now live at my Hishgraphics Patreon page. Check out the photos below. Batch 6 features a bunch of street toughs and maidens who do not dabble in the dieselpunk technology of the era. Click here to download Enigma Corps 06 at my Patreon page. Batch 7 comprise of dieselpunk bikers and their mechanics. For the first time ever, we have a papermini of a bike. Click here to download Enigma […]
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Interview at Asians Represent!
Late last month, I did an interview with Agatha Cheng and Daniel Kwan. It was for their podcast, Asians Represent! over at One Shot Podcast. The episode was released a couple of weeks ago. In the show, I talk about the benefits of using tabletop RPGs to teach students English here in Malaysia. Also, how RPGs can be indirectly used to inspire learning of history and culture. I also talk a bit about my artwork and Patreon. I finally listened to the whole episode during work commute a few days ago. If you thought I sounded sick on the show, it is because I was. I was suffering a bad sinus infection during the recording, but at the time I did not think anything of it. Listeners have been kind, telling me I was good in it. But, wow, I could definitely hear myself being woozy and not very coherent […]
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Students Comparing and Contrasting
For this entire week I had to teach the students compare and contrast essay. Additionally, the theme for the week was “Social Issues”. How should I get them to understand the structure of the essay and the framing for each body paragraph? Firstly, I got each class to list out the social issues that they knew about. (I highlighted the fact that a social issue in one culture might not be in another, and vice versa.) After some coaxing and jolting of memories, ideas flowed freely. After that, I lectured them on the structure of the compare and contrast essay. I also told them what the essay writer’s intention should be when writing such an essay. Then, each class chose two out of various social issues they listed. From each issue, they had to list out a number of aspects that both issues had in common. For example, the aspects […]
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Grad Student Association Meeting
I was invited to the Graduate Student Association annual general meeting for our university. I have never been to one of these things before. This is because I never thought I would be an academic until three years ago. Also, I never thought that I would even have a Bachelor’s degree eight years ago or so. I was almost appointed the President, but being a part-time student I do not believe I would be able to handle the work. This would be unfair on the other members. Instead, I was appointed to the Academic Bureau Committee in the association. A lesser position, I should think. I have no idea what the job entails, so I should ask them the next time we meet.
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Research Method Presentation
My first semester as a postgraduate student ends with a presentation of my research proposal. The presentation was given during the final Research Method class that I have been attending every Saturday morning. During my studies, I discovered that reading for the literature review is difficult. This is because lack of time thanks to teaching and work duties that I have to complete. I believe the only solution is to set aside an hour or two for reading every night. How else can I absorb and collate enough information to write a proper research proposal, and subsequently a thesis?
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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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Book: Creatures of Near Kingdoms
Wait for the arrival of an envelope. Steal a peek or two a day at your mail slot at work. You will wait a longer than usually needed. When it arrives you are surprised, as if it knows when to spring its existence upon you. It is tightly wrapped in clear plastic. It heaves a sigh of relief as you tear it out of its swaddle. It opens up and reveals its treasure to you. Its treasure are ideas tightly packs in words. It is the CREATURES OF NEAR KINGDOMS book. Clearly, it has evolved into an expert in camouflaging itself in the wild. Its publisher has categorised it as a comic. But it does not look like a comic. Neither does it smell like a novel. To say it tastes like a gaming sourcebook would be unfair to it. When it speaks, it identifies itself. Still its self identification […]
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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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Combat Missions Game
During semester break week, I was assigned to the team that would be teaching a class for a contingent from the Royal Malaysian Army. For my “role play” segment of three hours, I decided to design a card game that doubles as a rudimentary roleplaying game (RPG). Two nights before, I spent up till 0200 hours designing the mechanics and physically producing the prototype cards by hand. There were 7 decks consisting of the Mission Objective deck, Insertion Method deck, Terrain deck, Weather deck, Obstacle deck, Setback deck and Enemy Contact deck. The Mission Objective deck has a target number of between 9 to 11. Each of the other decks has a modifier number anywhere between -3 to +3 depending on the situation on the card. To accomplish the mission on the Objective Deck the player has to roll a twenty-sided dice (d20) equalling or below the target number given. […]
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Anniversary at the Dispensary
It has been 18 Gregorian years since Ain and I were wed. This year we decided to celebrate by visiting the doctor’s office because when I was at work today, she threw her back. Thankfully it was just a minor sprain and not a slipped disc. Even so, it did cause her much discomfort and pain. After the doctor’s visit, we picked Irfan up from home and went to fill up our potable water bottles. It was at the Serunai Padi restaurant so we stopped for some snacks. Some heavy snacks.
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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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Paperminis: Mimban Stormtroopers
Solo: A Star Wars Story introduced us to several new branches of the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps. During the battle on Mimban, several stormtroopers are seen in dark and muddy costume. I am uncertain as to whether the armour looked muddy after being on Mimban for so long, or if it was some sort of purposeful mud camouflage pattern. Here is a series of eight mudtroopers if you want to play Star Wars RPG on Mimban, or any muddy planets. Click here to download and assemble these paperminis for free from Google Drive. Have fun with them.
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Paperminis: Human Jedi Knights
It has come to my attention that I do not have any Star Wars RPG paper miniatures intended for use as Jedi. So as starters, here is a set of eight Jedi (two colour-variant sets of four designs) to be used as generic human Jedi. They are garbed in prequel-era Jedi Knight robes with either blue or green lightsabres. Too be fair, I think they look kind of bland. Scenes with a lot of Jedi in the prequels also do have this bland quality to it. I think it accentuates how much dogma and homogeneity have permeated the once-magnificent Jedi Order. With more time perhaps I can make Star Wars Rebels/West End Games-era Jedi which has more diverse costume designs. I would also like to create common alien species Jedi paperminis. Maybe, even Darksiders with their red-bladed lightsabres. Click here to download for free and assemble the Human Jedi Knights […]
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Verkle Artwork
And then it came to pass a couple of weeks back that a number of Star Wars Twitterfolk began talking about an animal. Specifically, the carcass of the creature that was the bait which drew Chewbacca and resulted in him, Luke, Han, Threepio and Artoo being captured in an Ewok net trap on Endor. Since its appearance in Return of the Jedi, the critter has been named, and is known as the verkle. In the midst of the discussion, I thought it would be amusing to sketch a conjectural design of what the whole animal would look like. Using inks and markers, I came up with the following: According to its wiki article, the verkle “prop is a white tailed deer with fake teeth added to the deer’s anus.” The original tweet: Return Of The Jedi is on #TNT right now. Has there EVER been a name given to that […]
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The Dice Motherlode
Lazada offered 15 sets of polyhedral dice of various colours online for about sixty local bucks including shipping. It even threw in a velvet dice bag which could be of benefit. In any case, Here are pictures of the colourful dice that arrived at the office. These dice will serve me well with games like Eclipse Phase, The Laundry and Dungeons and Dragons.
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