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 […]
Continue readingDnD: 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 […]
Continue readingEncounters in a Remote Kampung
As you travel deep into the South East Asian tropical jungle to where remote kampungs stand, you realise that this is no walk in the woods. The tropical jungle is thick. Thicker than you thought possible. Huge trees larger than life, themselves teeming with additional lives, block your path. Between […]
Continue readingThe 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 […]
Continue readingPatreon: 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 […]
Continue readingInterview 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 […]
Continue readingStudents 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 […]
Continue readingGrad 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 […]
Continue readingResearch 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 […]
Continue readingThe 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 […]
Continue readingBook: 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 […]
Continue readingDnD: 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 […]
Continue readingCombat 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, […]
Continue readingAnniversary 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 […]
Continue readingSavage 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 […]
Continue readingPaperminis: 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 […]
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