Looking back at 09, looking forward to 10

Now that the new year is upon us, I thought that it would be nice to look back upon all that has happened in the past year and think about the future at the same time.

I guess I can say that 2009 has been a fruitful year for me. I got to do everything I wanted to do, and it was also a life changing year. This is the year where I got the chance of teaching an official class. Granted, it was merely a tutorial class in the university, but I had the opportunity to help young adults with their work. This was especially significant for me as well, as I realized from this experience that I actually liked and wanted to continue with teaching as a career at the jc/uni level. I’ve never been one who knew want he wanted in his life, and I don’t look too far ahead in the future as well. Something like that is certainly something to celebrate about. All these would not have come about without the support of Stella. If not for her support and constant reassurances, I would have gone crazy from the feeling that I’m one of those aimless people out there. Not that it’s a bad thing of course – just that it was starting to get to me at a personal level. So I haven’t yet announced it, but yes- I’ve sent my application to NIE. yay!

As a couple, Stella and I also had many great experiences: I  bought her her first iPod, we watched a broadway musical, a one woman solo play, found great new places to eat, had a picnic at the park, took nice pictures with the lomo and visited HK and Vietnam with friends. These were things that we’ve always wanted to do and finally got a chance to achieve. We also completed our Apple family tree with the buying of the iPhone, so that was pretty significant too. In terms of our gaming life, we’ve started roleplaying and playing a lot more boardgames on a regular basis. This was something we enjoy very much and it is definitely an activity we will continue to pursue together.

Looking into the future, in the next month or so I’ll have to finish my thesis, and then it will be off to Hokkaido for our second grad trip. Hopefully we would have gotten a DSLR by then. After which would be NIE (assuming I get the job), and life will continue to unfold from there, with passion and lots of drive. I’m just really thankful that I have Stella who has been so supportive and understanding every step of the way. 2010 is gonna be a blast.

Happy New Year people!

Simple report of WFRP3 after one game

Saturday’s game was supposed to be one where I finished up the neverending dungeon of D&D with the players (I don’t know why the fuck we never could get out of there), but as 3 of them couldn’t turn up, I decided to run WFRP3 with Stella and Shang. Since I got the game only the night before, I only had less than 4 hours to read through the rules and get the gist of character creation down. Needless to say, I made a couple of bad mistakes along the way, but overall, it was a good change of pace, and certainly a very promising game, depending on the kinds of expansions that will come out in the near future. I’ve ordered the Adventurer’s Toolkit, and the official campaign, The Gathering Storm, was announced a couple of weeks back. Will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Session report (A Day Late, a Shilling Short) :

Rogen the Woodelf Thief and Thoradin the Dwarf Slayer have been staying in the Red Moon in for a couple of days. Rogen, on a personal quest to steal a precious wizard’s orb, is restless. A package that was due to arrive a day ago – the sender being his friend- was late. Thoradin, looking for a glorious death in battle, follows him in search for a good fight.

There, along the road, with dark clouds in the distance, they see a carriage, overturned and under attack by a couple of gors and ungor beastmen. Rutger Abend, Rogen’s friend, was badly wounded and was battling a gor while the ungors tore at the carriage. Rogen let loose an arrow from long range, which hits the gor in the arm, attracting it’s attention. It howls in rage, and points to the two heroes. The ungors charge and the battle was in earnest. Thoradin promptly lept into the fray, and attacked the beastmen, while Rogen let loose a hail of death from afar. It was at this point where the two realised that the gor had a warhorn slung across its waist. They knew that they had to kill it before it had the chance to call for reinforcements. And they did.

Unbeknownst to them, there was a merchant trapped inside the carriage, and it was at this point of time where he decided to pop his head out and started calling for help. The dwarf, just finishing his kill, was startled (takes one stress) and promptly forms a grudge against the merchant. The merchant (I presented him in the most annoying noble way possible) started whining for help, commanding the two heroes to get him and his stuff out of the carriage, to the dwarf’s irritation. Rogen, remembering the package, tries to find his package, to no avail. The Dwarf threatens to kill the merchant, and decides to untie the horses and ride away, but as luck has it, fails his climb roll. As he struggles to mount the horse, and has Rogen searches in vain for his package amongst the mess of the carriage, a distant horn sounds from the forest.

Three beastmen appear from the trees, lead by a fearsome and cruel looking wargor. They immediately heads toward the carriage. At this point, the dwarf, being sorely irritated by the whining merchant, decides to use his Perform a Stunt card, and throw the merchant in front of the beastmen and attempt to escape. Predictibily, the merchant gets hacked by the beastmen, who then proceed towards the heroes. Rogen starts firing arrows from the back of the carriage, and Thoradin turns around to fight. The fight was bloody, and the dwarf took a lot of wounds, but killed the wargor. Rogen, in a bid to avoid a blow by a gor, ducks around the carriage, forgetting that Rutger was still leaning against the carriage. Rutger’s decapitated head lands in front of Rogen, a grim reminder of what happens when you can’t defend yourself. He promptly unleashes an arrow at the gor, which falls quickly with an arrow in its eye. A crack of lightning, and the rain begins to fall in ernest. Rogen then sees his package, lying on the ground a distance from him. It must have fallen out of the carriage.

Bloodied and worn from battle, both adventurers scramble up their horses and ride off into the distance.

~~~~

Thoughts: This was surprisingly good. The action was smooth, and there was hardly any pause in game to refer to the rulebooks. Mainly this was because everything that you actually needed was there on the cards. After the dice mechanic was understood, both Stella and Shang took to it quickly. There was certainly some grim humor in the game, from the thrown merchant to the friend left to die. Due to the speed of the mechanics, I felt like the players did quite a bit in one 3 hour game. This is important, as I do not get the opportunity to run 6-7 hour games. The d&d game

The dice mechanic was pretty awesome as well. There’s nothing like it that I’ve seen in other games (not that I have a lot of experience, but still,). It almost seems like you are reading tarot cards, interpreting the results to advance the story. Not only do you know whether you succeed, you know why and how you succeeded. That’s powerful.

Where there have been criticisms levelled at FFG for turning WFRP into a boardgame, I am inclined to feel that the fears are mostly unfounded. It DOES have tactile components to represent stress and fatigue and recharge points (and FFG does produce good quality components), so if your idea of a roleplaying game with chits diminishes the value of what an RPG ought to be, then this is not the game for you.

What I didn’t like particularly was the abstract movement. While I do not like the tactical simulationist style of D&D 4e, the abstract movement was a little tricky to handle, at least from a GM’s point of view. I understand the rationale though, as it lends better to a rules light and story heavy kind of setting where combat is not the only part of the game but one of the key events which progresses in the story, but I could imagine it getting a little complicated with more players and enemies.

Conclusion: In sum, I liked it, and I hope that Stella and Shang liked it. I will probably replace D&D with this game. In fact my mind is already rife with ideas for a long term campaign, and I hope that I can finally have one campaign under my belt. Been one of the things I’ve always wanted to do but never had the chance to do so.

iPhone day + meetup with Lalang

Yesterday, we got our iPhones together! We had been talking about it for a long time, and we decided to take the plunge. I also signed up for the mio home plan for the rest of my family during this process. Stella got the 16gb white iPhone, while I decided to get the 32gb one, since it would last me quite a while. So we’re both glad and happy owners of new iPhones, and I think this more or less completes our Apple product family ownership. Guess which belongs to who?
Later that evening, we met up with Lalang and Alvin for dinner at Cafe Iguanas after buying our iPhone covers, followed by more drinks and music at the Pump Room. Although the band came late, we were still entertained by the great music and the jokes that the lead singer cracked during the course of the first set.

Stella and the beer tower :
Both of us:

We stayed on for the second set, and during that time, there were various song dedications, of which one was for the CEO of Starhub. I must say that he was really sporting about being called up on stage and even danced and sang to the song Can’t Take My Eyes of You. The classic moment would have to be when the lead singer called out who’s from M1, Singtel and Starhub respectively just for kicks, and each time, separate portions of the crowd raised their hands and roared in response. It was crazy. As if everyone somehow got the joke and knew what to do.

We then took a cab home and had some delicious processed food at the 7-11 just below Stella’s block. It was nice, just chilling in the middle of the night in the cold evening and chatting. I was glad that I could finally be out with the girlfriend, especially when I’ve been somewhat bedridden and roombound for most of the week. So this was really refreshing.

Wonderful Friday. I love Fridays!

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.

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…

Joochiat adventure

Friday was the day for our Joochiat adventure! Although we were supposed to head there last week for one of our regular food hunts, we put it off. This week, we decided to head down for some durians and to explore some of the stuff that people have said were famous there.

Before all that, we headed down to Borders to get some stuff. I bought a copy of the PHB 2, and Stella got herself To Kill A Mockingbird. Headed to the Borders Bistro after for a drink and a snack before meeting up with Keane and Serene for dimsum dinner at Victor’s Kitchen.

Stella the happy camper:
The fateful smoothie. It was great stuff. Unfortunately the glass that we got had pieces of paper/sticker in it. I was constantly sucking out pieces of it, and finally I took it up to the manager who replaced the glass of drink for me. I suspect it was one of those brand stickers on the fruits that got into the blender. Whatever it is, that was fine – we actually got a free glass of smoothie out of it.
Tuna and cheese melt. Thought it was really value for money for about 12 bucks.
Next up, we headed down to Bugis for some shopping, before meeting up with Keane and Serene at Victor’s Kitchen at Sunshine Plaza. This was a place that Stacey’s friend recommended to us some time back, and it has sat pretty high in terms of its ‘dodgyness factor’ as well as the quality of the food.
When we left Bugis, it was around 9. We took a train down to Aljunied and the first stop were the durians. It was just a street down from the MRT station, and we had to make our choice over another stall which we first encountered. We skipped that when we observed not many people eating there. Turns out that the entire row of fruit stalls were owned by the same people. Doh. Had the Mao Shan Wang durians, for something like $18 per kg. This one was a 2kg durian, and we promptly set about demolishing it. Great stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much durian in my life before.
Stella looking very happy with her durians:
Next up, we headed down for some beancurd with youtiao (deep fried dough fritters). Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much from this because I’ve more or less tasted both before. I mean, beancurd? done that. Youtiao? done that too obviously. But man, this shit was good! Somehow or another, the combination of flavours (read: oil) were just right there. Totally hit the spot on that one.

Rochor Beancurd – the place where we had the good stuff:

Stage 2 – complete!
For the final leg of the food hunt, we walked down a little to the place they call 126, or wan tok sek. Supposedly it means something like ‘found a place to eat’ in Cantonese. We heard that the establishment was good for its dim sum, so we headed in for some. The general crowd eating outside was quite a good indicator that we had reached the right place. Sat outside for a bit before heading in – good decision since there was air conditioning inside (I wonder why non of those people outside realised that).

Had the paper wrapped chicken:
A smallish crab steamed with garlic:

Final verdict : wellll…. I didn’t think that it was that fantastic, really. It was cheap, truly, but it wasn’t something I would travel all the way to Geylang for. I think Stella feels the same about this place too. We would head back to Victor’s anytime for dimsum. The redeeming factor would probably be the fact that 126 has a pretty extensive menu, so there’s lots to try.

We then headed back home by bus. The crawlers of the night were just about to emerge, and Geylang started to unveil itself for what it was most famous for. Both of us were tired, but really happy that we managed to explore someplace new this week. We’ll be back to look for some of the other dishes that we missed out this round. We chatted and joked on the bus as we rounded off the night and the week in the best possible way – just a quiet time with the best company one can have in the whole world.

birthday week (continued)

Day before my birthday, we met up with the guys for drinks at Walas. Although The UneXpected wasn’t playing that night, we still had a good time just chilling out and listening to the replacement band for the night. They weren’t half bad. Apparently they were some 60s old men rockers, and they could really play the stuff we requested from them.

It was nice just hanging out together, and Stella and I enjoyed their company for the night.

Some pictures for the night. Had to put the 4 person one in the centre as Hong was too “broad”:

All of us:

The following day, we had a gathering at my place. Stella had previously arranged for Andy and Keane to come back on the 20th to celebrate my birthday. Was really touched that she went through all that effort to get all the gaming people in one place. Also, this was special to me because it was my first birthday party ever. I don’t think I’ve ever organised a party for my own birthday before and it was something different for a change.

Prepared some food courtesy of Stella’s mom, and had some other food that my mom prepared earlier in the day. I booked the function room downstairs and prepared for the gathering.

Us before the party:

The food:

Waiting on the couch for the guests to arrive:

Andy grabbing a bite, with Tin watching on :

Keane and Serene who flew in from Wellington:

Stella, Serene and Tin:Me with Keane, Serene, Elton and Sheena:

After eating, we brought out the boardgames. For the night, we decided to play BSG since it was a group favourite. Also, we wanted to get Keane and Serene to try it to see if they liked it.

Shang arranging the cards. Andy and Jon hanging around:

Hong and Jingyi

Sheena and Elton, Keane and Serene. Learning the game.

Me and the beloved organiser of this party :

Unfortunately, we had to evacuate the place by 11, so we headed out to cut my birthday cake.

Everyone pooled in money to buy me my very own copy of Space Hulk! Been hearing all sorts of good stuff about it but was hesitant about spending the money on it since it was a whopping 149 bucks for a single game. Stella jumped on the opportunity when she heard me mention it to her a couple of months back, and she made a pre-order for it from PI. Thanks baby! Truly a geeky present, and I really liked it very much. Thanks everyone!

The guys:

The girls:

After that, it was more BSG. We finished the game at a nearby void deck. In the end, the Cylons won, but it was a good game all in all.

Most of the people departed from there, but Keane stayed for a bit to join Elton, Sheena and Stella and myself for a game zombie killing in Last Night on Earth. Definitely one of the better zombie games out there. From there, we parted ways, and there ends my very geeky and special birthday party. I had a great night, and if not for Stella, I would never have gone out to plan something like this for myself. Thanks so much dear, for the effort you’ve put in =) And finally, thank you friends, very much for making my day.

BSG

Got to watch two episodes of Battlestar Galactica with Stella today over lunch. Enjoyed it quite a bit, especially after the six player BSG board game session with the guys and their respective partners on Saturday. It was a riot, and I must say that the board game captures the level of paranoia of the series very well. Everyone thought I was a Cylon just because I hesitated for a moment to process what Mindy said. wtf. Great stuff anyways.

Running a Dark Ages game this Saturday for Stella, Jon, Mindy and Shang. Will be good I hope.

and it all comes marching in

Had a wonderful Friday with Stella. First to the CLSA office, then a nice lunch followed by a failed trip to the Manga Kissaten which I have been wanting to go for ages but we found it shut down for good the day we decided to finally make a trip there. Watched a movie after, had dinner at Marche before meeting Cheryl and Erwin for drinks and some supper.

All in all, a great day, and it’s been some time since I’ve been so relaxed. I feel recharged to face the new week of more holidays. haha.