Sunset Tavern

Had a great time at the Sunset Tavern snacking on fries and chicken wings while watching Fight Club on the Macbook tonight. The cool night air made it all the better for a timeout with the girlfriend.

Dwarf Berserker (aka Thoradin the Broken)

Partially finished up the dwarf berserker model that I got from the Avatars of War range of miniatures. Really great sculpt I must say. I used it more as a testing ground for painting flesh, since I wanted Stella’s elf queen miniature to look better =) This model will be used as Shang’s character in my 4e d&d game – Thoradin the Broken, the Dwarven Berserker.

 

One fine day

Woke up to the sounds of rain against my window. Another rainy day, another day of tuition. But the good thing is that I’m free from the constraints of the agency, and I’ll finally be earning the full amount of money that I work for.

Watching Victor Victoria tomorrow. Can’t wait!

New books

Headed to Borders and Kino yesterday to grab some graphic novels and books. Stella got her Milan Kundera books, while we picked up the Dark Heresy rulebook together by FFG at Borders. Dark Heresy pits the players as acolytes of the Inquisition, tasked to root out evil in its many forms. Jon has been raring to give it a go for a couple of weeks already, so maybe we’ll give him a chance once the current D&D game slows down a little. Would be nice to take a breather for a change and be a player with the girlfriend. If all goes well, perhaps this might even be a good game for Stella and I, being both in the cosmic horror genre as well as being set in the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40k world. It’s a gorgeously produced book, and we’re both pretty impressed by the production quality of the rulebook.

More reviews of the game once we’ve gotten down to playing a couple of sessions.

Sushi Kikuzawa

Friday once again! It’s been raining for the past few days. Despite the wet weather, it is a great time to head out and walk the streets, as long you weren’t the one caught in the deluge. We headed first to Kino to get some books, and then to Borders for more books, before heading down to Sushi Kikuzawa. For those who remember, both Stella and I posted rave reviews about the place during our first time there, and we had planned this since the middle of the semester (man, how time passes so fast!).

Headed to Kikuzawa around 615. Sadly, the chef himself wasn’t there, but his two assistants were serving for the rest of the night. Despite the fact that there was a family with noisy kids running around, we had a wonderful time chatting and enjoying the delicious sushi. While the flow of food slowed down, and the rice got more and more as time got by, the pace was just right for us to have a very awesome dinner.
Christmas lights are up:
Unfortunately, Stella dropped her phone into the toilet, and it died. We then headed home after a short walk, so that she could get her sister’s phone as a replacement and retrieve some of her contacts. Poor girl Look how sad she is.

So the rest of the Friday evening was spent at Stella’s place, and despite not being out for the whole night, I had a wonderful time just hanging out (haha;)), enjoying the cool night air, and watching psudeo-horror movies in the comfort of Stella’s home.

TGIF!

a meet up

So we met up with Karina, Derek, Cheryl and Erwin last night over some japanese food, and then deserts at Nectarie. I mentioned to them my interest in joining NIE, and listened to some of the comments about the work/life balance of teachers in different schools. Gonna be helpful in helping me make my decision, although my mind is frankly already quite made up. Its nice to see that everyone is doing well and relatively happy.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e

Pretty excited about the WFRP 3e. Initial playtest reviews were more than favourable. Apparently the new dice pool system really helps too. Some guy even gave some analysis of how our minds quickly internalize symbols and colours instead of numbers and blah blah, but I know I’m sure excited to bring it out on the table and playtest it with the group. I didn’t play the first nor the second ed so I won’t discriminate in anyway until the playing is done.

Musings from the dungeon master’s throne

I haven’t really blogged in a while, and here I am with two posts in a single night. In this post, I’ll be talking about something closer to my heart – roleplaying games.

Recently. I’ve had the great opportunity to get back into roleplaying games, thanks to Stella. When Andy (and Keane before him) left, the group which I spent countless Friday and Saturday nights gaming with disbanded. Well, technically there weren’t many of us left in Singapore anyway.

In any case, I digress. When Stella and I got together, one of the first things that we spoke about was gaming, in particular miniatures and pen and paper roleplaying games. Slightly over a year back, she suggested that I try to reform a gaming group, and that she’ll love to play in my games if I ran any. So it started – first with a Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign with her and Andy, and then Jon joined in. After that was a Cthulhu 1920s campaign with Shang, Jon and her, and another Dark Ages campaign that followed soon after where Mindy joined us for a game before she left for Canada. All in all, we had a relatively good time, although I felt that the dynamics of the group did not exactly suit a horror campaign that relied heavily on the players actually putting their real world knowledge aside and being willing to be scared. I therefore made a switch to Dungeons and Dragons 4e. Don’t get me wrong – Call of Cthulhu has been my main game, and it will always be. I gladly run that anytime for anyone who’s willing to be scared for an evening. We’re now in the height of our geekdom, maybe more than ever, and I’m really thankful that Stella has been supportive of this hobby all this while.

Now, like many gamers that grew up in the 90s/00s period, I’ve had the honor of playing, and running Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. While the system was arguably complicated and sometimes counterintuitive (the horrible THAC0 system), it was a great experience. I remember many Saturdays with my younger brother and cousins, seated on the floor and having games. Come 3rd ed, I was so excited – I went out and bought the PHB, read it, and put it on my shelf. A year later, I read it again, and put it away again. By this time, I was playing Vampire the Masquerade in a regular campaign and many other game lines concurrrently. It was nearly the peak of geekdom. But somehow I never got to start 3rd ed. It seemed too complicated for me. I could understand the rules, but to ask me to explain it to a new gamer – I can’t do it. I’ve been through the scenario many times but it just wasn’t newbie friendly, in my opinion.The book now resides in a box at the top of my cupboard where I put my other games I don’t play anymore. This was also partly compounded by the roleplaying (games that focuses more on the story than the rules) vs. rollplaying (games where you roll lots of dice to decide on how the story moves) divide, where I belonged to the former, believing that the latter was inherrent in d&d (I still do, but more on that later).

So why am I back to 4e, or even Dungeons and Dragons then?

Several reasons actually. Firstly, it has always been my dream to run a serious and regular dungeons and dragons campaign. I’ve always liked the idea of adventuring in a fantasy world, exploring seedy cities and beating back hordes of monsters with a bunch of companions. I spent many nights of my teenage years thinking how I would describe a bar fight, a fight with orcs in a dungeon to the players. But I had no one to try this game with. Now that I consider this the peak of our (stella and I) gaming career, I felt that it was time to start one.

Secondly, as much as Dungeons and Dragons is a game that inherently promotes -and sometimes, rewards – creating the most powerful monster killing machine possible within the ruleset, I have to admit that it is fun. There have been criticisms leveled at 4e about how it feels like a watered down boardgame as compared to the classic system where the game master makes a Ruling as compared to a Rule- and I do agree very much with this group of people- but IT IS FUN. You have players standing up when dice are rolled, jumping up and down screaming and laughing when good or bad dice results hit the table, and panicking when a seemingly harmless hobgoblin bathes the corridor in a gout of flame. In general I felt that the group somehow enjoyed themselves more. Also, the rules are much simpler and streamlined for a new game master (i.e. me) to start a game. As for the roleplaying elements, I’m working on it. I believe that it is really up to the game master and the players to make the best experience of the system that they can. Hopefully I’ll manage to get in some more social elements into the game. Stella and I constantly talk about it, and I’m seriously concerned about this campaign as well, but I think I’ll work it out, somehow, and I hope that the players will all have a good time, and tell good stories when we’re old. Already, some stories are emerging. Such is the great thing about roleplaying games – the stories – they never ever really die.

Life begins?

So- a couple of updates. School has officially ended for the semester, so Stella and I have stopped having weekly tutorial classes. We’re now just waiting for the 30th where the EL1101E exams would be over for the students as well as for us.

My mom went for a knee surgery. She’s fine and recovering at home, so I expect to be looking after her for the next two weeks at least. It’s the third day and she’s already walking around without the walker. I guess that’s a good sign.

Meeting up with some people next week – Cheryl/Erwin and Kar/Derrick on Wed, and I’m not sure if there’s going to be game on Sat, but if so – the usual gaming group guys.

Sushi Kikuzawa on Friday! We’ve promised ourselves this for quite a while already, and we simply can’t wait for it. We had a fantastic experience the first time round, and we’re thinking of going there for dinner this Friday, since they have more varieties of sushi available. More on that soon.

Oh and the one hour painting per day thing is working out – most of my Everblight army is almost done, and I will be moving on to Stella’s Orboros units soon. War is coming…

Someone hatched a rain on us

We’ve been putting off going to Hatched for a couple of weeks already, so we decided that we should head there, rain or shine. As I always say, be careful for what you wish for, because it did indeed rain on us, and quite heavily too.

Headed to Westmall in the early afternoon as I had to purchase a phone for my mom. Finally ended up with a Nokia E63 thanks to a guy who opened the box and decided that he didn’t want the phone. We then headed to purchase Soul Calibur for Stella’s PS3 so that we could play it in the evening.

Us at the busstop before it started raining:

It began raining heavily so we were forced to take a cab into Evans Road, where Hatched was located. Ended up there almost an hour from the reservation time. The place was relatively empty save for a couple of aunties who spent the time bitching about their daughter in laws.

Halloween Hatched and the view from inside. I kinda liked the chairs. They were pretty comfortable:

Us:

My chicken-killer in crime, with the blackboard behind her showing the various specials for the day. The place used a pretty rustic decor which made it feel really cosy. Loved the half lit bulbs as well.

Root beer! Man, it’s been a while since we’ve had A&W rootbeer. Still one of the better ones as compared to Dr. Pepper and even Bundaberg imo.

I ordered the Vegetable Melt. A muffin topped with cheese, mushrooms, caramelized onions and avocado. Stella loved the mash, which was topped by a blended mushroom sauce. Lovely.
For those who do not yet know, Hatched is a concept cafe serving all sorts of dishes that have to do with eggs. They do have non-egg related dishes there, as in my vegetable melt above, but the main bulk of the menu items use eggs. Stella had the cheese omelete on toast. This was okay, and I loved the thickness of the toast.

Potatoes stuffed with scrambled eggs and roe. Frankly, for 10 bucks, this was a little blah for the both of us. I frankly thought I was getting large potato skins, not these baby ones. Disappointing indeed.
Finally, we had pancakes as a ‘dessert’. This was really good. Simple fluffy pancakes topped with strawberries and caster sugar. Stella had been wanting to have pancakes for some time already, and this really satisfied her – and I as well.

We headed down to town later to do some shopping, but ended purchasing nothing much. On the way, we stopped by Muji and grabbed some stationeries and snacks. There was this packet mango pudding thing that was pretty delicious. Came in one of those “suck packets” and all you needed to do was to draw out the pudding by sucking on the straw. Although it was nothing much, it was one of those things that just makes you happy – eating delicious mango pudding through a straw.

Funny faces:

As it was getting late, we headed to Shinjuku for a quick meal. Again, we were surrounded by Japanese men who spoke about things which we had no idea about. Again, we were seated in the same small corner by the back door. Somehow that gave the whole eating experience a nice sort of familiarity. I had the ramen while Stella had the miso Saba set and both were delicious. I really should try the saba set the next time.

After taking a long bus ride back to CCK, we picked up Overlord 2 from Lot 1 and headed home to play our games. First, we drew up a 500 point army for Stella’s Black Templars. After that was done, Stella promptly proceeded to trounce my ass in every single match in Soul Calibur, and we switched over to Overlord 2 after a while. I probably can say now that I am better at rolling dice than button mashing. Sadly, I got one of those terrible giddiness once again from playing Overlord, and I had to sit aside for a bit while the girlfriend continued with the game. We then ended the night with supper with Stella and her mom at Al Hazar.

And here concludes one of our ‘Bao Ka Liao’ days, and it was really fun just doing all the things that we always liked doing. Although it was in small chunks, it didn’t make it any less enjoyable. Great way to end the week, and the semester.