#Philippine Special Forces

[roosterarts]

We're Special Forces of the AFP,

And we are soldiers of liberty.

Some infiltrate into the enemy;

Others are sky paratroopers.

AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) Special Forces Song

The Philippine Army's 1st Special Forces Company (Airborne) was activated on June 25, 1964. Later on, as more qualified members joined the unit, the organization would recieve support formations and would be upgraded to become the Special Forces Group (SPG).

Trained in both internal defense, and possible external deployment, recruits for the SPG would have to first endergo rigorous training program and pass the Special Operations Course, the Ranger Course, the Airborne Course, Communications Course, Medical Course, Weapoms Course, Demolition Course, and the Intelligence Course.

The 1st Special Forces Company would see its first deployment in the jungles of Sulu, where it would conduct counter-insurgency operations.

However, by the late 1960s, trouble would hit the SPG. Due to the Philippine's commitment to the Vietnam war, many of its members were diverted to PHILCAG-V (Philippine Civic Action Group - Vietnam). To make things worse, the reputation of the SPG was tarnished due to its involvement with the contraversial Operation Merdeka, which was a secret Philippine attempt to invade Sabah.

Due to its involvement in Merdeka, the SPG had to change its name in hopes of distance itself from the operation. Its new name thus became the Home Defense Forces Group (Airborne) - HDFG. Over the next decades, the HDFG would continue to conduct counter-insurgency operations throughout the country. In 1976 the HDFG would be placed under the Army Special Warfare Brigade, where they would join other units such as the Scout Rangers and Special Operations Group.

After 1986 People Power Revolution, the HDFG would once again be renamed, this time to the People's In Defense Regiment. However, this name did not last long, and would soon be redesignated back to HDFG within the same year.

In 1989, the HDFG would return to its original name and would be called the Special Forces Regiment. Today, the unit continues in its task of protecting the country and conducting counter-insurgency operations.

----------------------------------------

Depicted in this pieces is Silver and Unnamed GF Pony (Yes that's what I'll call her OC for now until we agree on a name) wearing the HDFG's iconic Seven Colour Brushstroke Pattern Camouflage Uniform. On Silver's left shoulder you can see the Airborne patch, while on Unnamed GF Pony's right shoulder, you can just about see the Ranger patch. Both are armed with M-16 rifles.

[roosterarts]

Just some Mod Pone and Gf Pone dressed as members of the Philippine Special Forces Regiment.

Mod Pony Monday

It’s time again! Show off your mod pony/ponysona/mlp sona

This week's style is once again from @/randomgurustuffs because I didn’t have a whole lot of time ;w;

[rhk111sblog]

The Army Artillery Regiment (AAR), Army Aviation Regiment (AAvnR) and Special Forces Regiment (Airborne) SFR(A) recently conducted their first Interoperability Exercise (IOX) in Nueva Ecija, which included the live-firing of the Philippine Army’s (PA) newest Artillery Asset, the Autonomous Truck MOunted-howitzer System (ATMOS)

SOURCES:

Army Artillery "King of Battle" Regiment, Philippine Army Facebook Page Post, 09/23/23 – 1119H {Archived Link}

Army Artillery "King of Battle" Regiment, Philippine Army Facebook Page Post, 09/22/23 – 2105H {Archived Link}

Check out the Links to my other Social Media Accounts at https://linktr.ee/rhk111

If you like my Work, buy me a Coffee to help support it at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rhk111

[jc96]

[this story is currently in its early development stage.]

The world is divided into two—the “normal humans” and the “powered humans”; people with mutations and abilities that put them above the rest.

It is unknown how the powered humans came to be but it started, one day, when a baby was born with gills on his neck—Case Zero. As the boy grew, so did his mutations—his hands and feet became webbed and it became clear how the boy was born to be in the water.

The next one was a girl—Case One, who was born with wings on her back, which only grew larger as she grew older. Soon, her wings grew so large it dragged on the floor. In a matter of years, her ability to fly and speed became even greater than planes and jets. A girl born to be in the skies.

What started with a baby every few months soon became a baby every month, to a baby every other week to a baby every week.

Today, 1 powered baby is born every 100,000 babies.

With the increasing number of powered humans, the governments of the world decided to implement the Powered Registration Act which aims to, as with normal human beings, register and regulate the powered humans. In line with the Act, the governments of the world created the PHSO - Powered Humans Statistics Office, the governing body solely for the powered humans, led by powered humans for powered humans.

With the emergence of the powered humans, a new occupation is created-heroes.

Registered and regulated by the government, heroes are employed by the PHSO to maintain order and peace while working together with the non-powered force.

Of course, when there are heroes, there are villains—powered and non-powered alike who do not agree with what they call “hero worship” given to heroes.

A never ending cycle of fights between good and evil, peace and chaos which span decades. Nothing new.

Of course, all of these do not concern you. You are not a hero nor are you a villain.

You are a barista with your own café in Sinagtala City.

[rating: 17+ for depictions of blood, non-detailed descriptions of violence, alcohol and cigarette use, off-screen character death(s), and others. this is subject to change as the story progresses]

You are a barista. Sure, your cafe may be a bit odd, compared to others but it is a cafe, nonetheless. Your pride and joy.

You’re the most ordinary citizen in Sinagtala City. Sure, you have secrets you’d do anything to keep, but who doesn’t?

This is a story following your daily life as you entertain customers, buy ingredients and stock your cafe.

...Sure.

— customize your mc! customize your name, pronouns and appearance!

— name your cafe!

— note: this story is set in the philippines and the mc is canonically filipino. as such, customization options are limited to those that are common in filipinos.

— romance 1 out of 3 love interests! are you going for the classic, best friends-to-lovers route? or maybe you'd prefer the enigmatic regular customer? how about the no-nonsense police captain?

— ₜᴿʸ ₜᴼ ᴹₐᴵₙᵀₐᴵₙ ʸᴼᵤᴿ "ₙᴼᵣᴹₐᴸ" ₗᴵᶠᴱ

The Best Friend 

Miguel Rivera [28 years old, he/him][ro]

— your best friend since childhood, Miguel is a constant presence in your life, the one person who has been with you through everything; from childhood quarrels with bullies to the death of your mother. Miguel was the first person to come in during your opening day and has been your #1 supporter from day 1.

— going by the hero name “Torch,” Miguel has the ability to control and produce fire, able to use it for short-distance flight, shoot fireballs as well as turn his whole body aflame for a short period of time. 

— tall, at 188cm, with a muscular build (but not bodybuilder muscles) from years of training. Brown (kayumanggi) skin, black, wavy hair that reaches his ears and light brown eyes. All of Miguel’s clothes are made from a special thread created from his hair to ensure their resistance to his fire.

The Regular

Kahel [26 years old, they/them][ro]

— a regular customer, Kahel is one of your first customers. They’ve been coming to your cafe for the past 5 years almost daily, with no fail. Through the years, the two of you have formed a friendship. Despite your years of knowing them, you know almost nothing about Kahel’s past and what they actually do for work (they told you they’re a ‘writer’). You don’t know Kahel’s abilities, only that they have physical mutations.

— average height, at 170cm, with a thin build. Pale skin with long, straight hair they keep to their lower back and tied into a braid. Kahel often changes the color of their hair, so often, you don’t know their real hair color. Their eyes are a light gray, and their ears are pointed, like an elf’s ears.

The Captain

Cristina Solomon [34 years old, she/her][ro]

— the captain of the Sinagtala Police Force, Cristina is tasked in ensuring the peace and safety of the inhabitants of Sinagtala City. The youngest to ever hold the position of captain, Cristina holds deep confidence in her abilities and in the pride her colleagues have of her. In her 2 years since becoming captain, the number of crimes have decreased even further, to the point that other cities have called on her expertise and guidance.

— Cristina has the ability to produce shields and force fields which are able to withstand even a direct hit from a bomb. Cristina possesses amazing control of her abilities, even using them for maneuvering. Although powerful, the more shields she produces, the weaker they get until they’re barely stronger than a glass panel.

— tall height, at 178cm, with a thin but muscled build because of her training as a police officer. Brown (kayumanggi) skin and short, straight, dark brown hair she keeps in a bob, stopping just above her jaw. Cristina has dark, almost black, brown eyes and a beauty mark under her left eye.

The Part-timer

Lib Santos [20 years old, they/them]

— a college student who works part time for you. they’re very happy to work for your cafe because it’s the only one they applied to that’s able to accommodate their schedule. They’re able to attract small objects to themself, an ability they use in working.

— short, at 150cm, with a round build. Brown (kayumanggi) skin with freckles on their face. Round glasses hide their dark brown eyes. Their hair is short, a pixie cut, and dyed a light blue.

The Mayor

Penelope Pascual [45 years old, she/her]

— Sinagtala City’s mayor. Unlike past mayors that were personally chosen by Sinag, Penelope was voted for by the public. A well-known figure in the city, it was only a matter of time before Penelope was voted mayor. Penelope is able to control and manipulate air. She mainly uses it to allow herself flight while patrolling the city.

— tall, at 175cm, with a curvy build. Tan skin accentuated by her light brown eyes and long, straight dark brown hair usually tied in its tight bun.

hello! jean here, bringing you a new story. of coffee beans, heroes and villains is an interactive fiction in it's early development stage. the story will be released in chapters and will be completely free from start to finish.

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Happy Birthday Charlie!

It's @sentientcave's birthday, and I wanted to F I N A L L Y do an author rec for him!

Name: Charlie (He/They) Links!: Twitter - AO3 - Ko-fi

My Favorite: Retirement Party Price has retired from Military life, and he's not handling the change well. But on the one year anniversary of him hanging it up, his boys bring him something special to help keep him busy. You. (Dark fic! Read the content warnings)

Runner Up: Heavy Weighs the Crown Fantasy AU - A princess in self-imposed exile is forced to come home to face the man who took her father's crown and the life she left behind. 141 x Reader.

Runner Up to the Runner Up: Hit Me With Your Best Shot When Rory "Scout" Price moves in with her dad after a rough break-up, she's looking forward to reconnecting while she gets her feet back under her. But unfortunately, a post-divorce Kyle Garrick is moving in too, and he seems determined to be a pain in the ass. But then again, he is kind of hot.

Favorite Not Yet Posted Story:

EVERYTHING

WITH

RIPPER

AKA The Rugby AU (I'm working on a Kinktober Prompt with Ripper in it and I know I'm overthinking it but I want Charlie to like it so so so bad it makes me stupid.)

Why I recommend: It's long, so it'll go under the cut.

Where do I even start?

Every reader character and OC invites you to explore what makes them tick. They're flawed, and because they're flawed, they're good. They're real. And they're diverse, lovingly and intentionally. It's clear that Charlie does the research to intentionally write about experiences outside of his own. (Y'all... he researched Philippine Spanish for Retirement Party. For a conversation with a side character. The stars in my eyes...)

Charlie loves the complexities of these characters. Their ups, their downs, their triumphs and their failures. I don't think I've ever rooted for and hated and loved and wanted to strangle Captain John Price like I do when Charlie writes him. There's no glossing over the fact that Price is an asshole with Charlie. But there's no mistaking that he cares, either (in his awful, terrible, patented John Price ways).

I've grown so much as a writer for the conversations I've been able to have with Charlie. My understanding of the 141 is deeper, not just when it comes to cannon, but also what makes them tick in my stories. I'm so excited to explore the world of Being Gaz's Ex, which was directly inspired by the way Charlie writes Price in Nobody Does it Better. It's the way Price loves and it isn't enough and how sometimes it's okay that that's not okay.

Every time Charlie shares a bit of writing with me, I lose a little bit of my mind. And I hope that you all will appreciate Charlie with me, today!

[fatehbaz]

"The globe" and the Empire.

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By the dawn of a century christened as both the American and the geographic century, [...] European explorers and cartographers actively filled the last [apparently] remaining terrae incognitae [on their maps and globes] [...] and excited economic [...] interest [...] in near and far parts of the world and their markets. As imagined [...] in ambitious [...] projects such as the "Millionth Map" [...] in 1891, this world was deemed a sufficiently homogeneous entity […]. [A]t least among the white, free populations of various metropoles[,] […] Europeans [...] established one single imaginary of the world, [...] a meticulously surveyed global environment. [...] On the Western side of the Atlantic, on the other hand, maps and globes heralded, braced, and promoted the expansionist projects of [...] a century of national coming of age for the United States [...] [and its] spatially unsettled, globalizing empire. [...] Americans viewed maps and globes [...] as "arbiters of power" [...]. Drawing a direct line between geography and wars of empire, President McKinley, for instance, told an audience of missionaries […] that, once his prayers to God about the “Filipino question” had been answered, his first presidential order was for “the chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker) to put the Philippines on the map of the United States” [...]. Americans [...] needed to pay special attention [...] to those recently-made-cognita regions (such as the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico [occupied by the US]) [...]. [H]oping to materialize the "global Monroe Doctrine," [...] Americans' lives were mapped onto a cartographically known, commercially accessible, cognitively smaller world [...], inscribing it in their own “imperial vernacular” [...].

Text by: Mashid Mayar. "What on Earth! Slated Globes, School Geography and Imperial Pedagogy". European Journal of American Studies 15-2. Summer 2020.

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Simply put, World War II made the United States a planetary presence. State Department officials furiously churned out wartime memos establishing U.S. policy - often for the first time - regarding every nation, colony, region, and sub-duchy on the map. [...] In 1898 imperial expansion had inspired new maps. The 1940s wartime expansion yielded a similar burst of cartographic innovation. [...] Life devoted a fifteen-page spread to the “Dymaxion map” [...]. More popular was the “polar azimuthal projection” perfected by the dean of wartime cartography, [R.E.H.]. [...] The map was an enormous hit, reprinted and copied frequently. [...] The U.S. Army ordered eighteen thousand copies, and the map became the basis for the United Nations logo, designed in 1945. “Never before have persons been so interested in the entire world,” gushed Popular Mechanics. [...] The world must be seen anew, the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote, as a “round earth in which all the directions eventually meet.” “If we win the war,” he continued, “the image of the age which now is opening will be the image of a global earth, a completed sphere.” That word MacLeish chose, global, was new. [...] If the last war was a world war, this one was, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it in September 1942, “a global war.” That was the first time a sitting president had publicly uttered the word global, though every president since has used it incessantly. For Christmas that year, George Marshall presented FDR with a five-hundred-pound globe for the Oval Office. Placed next to Roosevelt’s desk, it was comically large. It resembled the globe with which Charlie Chaplin had performed an amorous dance two years earlier in The Great Dictator, only bigger. [...] “Just as truly as Europe once invaded us, with wave after wave of immigrants, now we are invading Europe, with wave after wave […],” wrote the journalist John Hersey in 1944. Except it wasn’t only Europe. The “invasion” landed in force on every continent [...].

Text by: Daniel Immerwahr. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. 2019.

---

[A]n empire's use of narratives of technological progress to expand towards the "ends of the earth" [...] naturalize[d] dominance over the global commons [...]. As the Pentagon declared in 1961, the “environment in which the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps will operate covers the entire globe and extends from the depths of the ocean to the far reaches of interplanetary space” […]. Extraterritorial spaces, such as the high seas, Antarctica, and outer space, are imaginatively, historically, and juridically interconnected. Their international legal regimes […] [were] developed in the midst of the Cold War […]. [M]odern ways of imagining the earth as a totality [...] claimed for militarism […] derive from colonial histories of spatial enclosure. Denis Cosgrove [...] points to the [...] [late eighteenth-century British Empire's] encirclement of the globe through Cook's navigation of the seas, which allowed for colonial claims to expand to a planetary scale. [...] This circumnavigation in turn led to [...] establishment of Greenwich mean time as a world standard [...]. [T]his encirclement is both a spatial claim to the planet and a temporal one, in that it plots time from a British center. [...] In the memorable words of [...] McLuhan [from 1974, relating to US surveying] [...]: "For the first time the natural world was completely enclosed in a man-made container [...]." The first photograph of the earth from outer space was taken by a V-2 rocket shot from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in 1946 […]. [A]n Apollonian eye, [...] the [...] photographs [...] were part of a context in which […] popular US magazines used wartime cartography in ways that naturalized militarism and empire under the guise of a unifying view of the globe.

Text by: Elizabeth DeLoughrey. "Satellite Planetarity and the Ends of the Earth". Public Culture, Volume 26, Issue 2, pages 257-280. Spring 2014.

[curlishh]

*Throws you my Mouthwashing Oc and runs away*

(Js scroll down if you want some lore,,)

(This is before the crash!!!)

( TW; Mentioned of SA, death, gun, and FreakyJigglingBalls (Jimmy) )

This is Efren Dela Cruz!

He is the executive officer of the crew, which means he checks the safety of the ship and makes sure that the crew are mentally okay. He sometimes help Swansea and Daisuke in handling machines (since he was a mechanic in his previous job) and even Anya in organizing medic stuff. Despite his job is simple and nothing special, he enjoys to be it. He brought cassete tapes to describe his experience in space and how the stars looked (he loves stargazing)! When he is done with his daily activities, he just listen to music using the CDs and CD player.

Other Facts;

-Very quiet yet stoic

-Ambivert

-A Filipino (He was born in the Philippines, but moved to another country)

-If Curly wondered why there is 3 packs of Sweetener are missing, it wasn’t Daisuke.

-Sweet tooth

-Loves stars

-Early 30s!

(After the Crash)

Efren looks like the same as before, but he is more a bit paranoid. He started acting this way after the celebration. He started to think that Jimmy is… something else. And he was right. I decided to give him a bit of trauma; Efren was forced to watch Anya get assaulted, someone tried to force him to join him, and because of this, he has a bruise on his wrist. Unfortunately, he died along with Swansea. He was shot by Jimmy on the throat. Did Jimmy saw Efren in his hallucinations? Yup! Jimmy has been hearing “I was there.” along with (in Jimmy’s hallucinations) Swansea attacking Jimmy.

What does Efren think of his crewmates? (Before the Crash)

Captain Curly; “ Oh, Curly? I think he’s responsible enough to be the Captain! I don’t know why Jimmy looks at him like he is going to kill him, though… “ (Friendly)

Jimmy; “ The definition of unhealthy jealousy. “ (Tension)

Anya; “ I know she failed her med school eight times, but I think she’s good at her job since she is the only one who has knowledge of handling injuries. “ (Friendly)

Daisuke; “ The sigma alpha sunshine of the crew. “ (Friendly)

Swansea; “ Haha, old man. “ (Neutral/Friendly)

[captain-price-unofficially]

Philippine Army Special Forces Regiment (Airborne) battle IS-linked militants in Marawi, 2017. Dig that tiger-stripe camo!

[charlotte-of-wales]

a summary of the Monaco Tea, creds to the lovely anon who sent me the article <3

btw most of the information on the family was in article one, the latter were more just info on real estate + off shore accounts

again, this info is all coming from the former accountant of the family:

Prince Rainier III was seriously considering changing succession laws so Caroline would be the head of the family and Monaco as he found Albert to be weak. Albert is said to be the "despised member of the clan" who would stutter while speaking to his father. Rainier even looked into what this would mean to the Grimaldi name since Andrea - at the time 17 - obviously carries his father's name (Casiraghi) and not his mother's (Grimaldi). Rainier told the ones carrying the investigation that this was done in case Albert died.

the funds from Albert's state endowment and his private funds would be mixed all the time.

Albert would say yes to essentially everything his family asked for, including a $30 million apartment for Stephanie

Palmero (the accountant) would frequently buy things for the family to keep "their privacy". He bought Charlene's engagement ring and multiple properties for the Grimaldi's in France. He would pay property taxes for those properties and have the family pay him back.

Caroline and Stephanie would frequently make use of and sell family property (Rainier's cars, family jewelry and art, etc) without letting him know, even though they technically belonged to Albert.

Caroline is in charge of the family's castle in Marchais, which he had an issue with as she would always go off budget.

he makes a note to pay attention to Pierre Casiraghi as he is very ambitious and his dealings in real estate could create problems (spoiler alert: it did)

Caroline is said to hate Charlene

the allowance that Charlene, Caroline and Stephanie receive increases constantly, which worried Palmero. As of late, they were: 1,5 million euros for Charlene, 900.000 for Caroline and 800.000 for Stephanie yearly. This follows the family hierarchy.

 Jazmin Grace receives 86,000 dollars per quarter. In February 2010, Palmero had to spend $5,000 “extra for her birthday”. Albert also bought her a $3 million apartment in New York City.

Albert spends almost a million a year funding Nicole Coste's (the mother of Albert's second illegimate child) fashion business. It's all in Alexandre Coste's name as Nicole fears that Charlene might create issues when Albert dies.

loots about Charlene. She frequently demands high sums in cash, her personal chef is $300 a day, she has multiple undocumented people from the Philippines working in her staff, the celebrations for the birth and baptism of the twins was well over half a million euros, in eight years Charlene spent around 15 million euros when she received 7.5 million euros in endowment (the Palace didn't deny this and said that the accountant was simply told to pay the difference with the family's personal funds), she spent 965,000 on a villa in two and a half months, her office decoration cost a million euros, she requested 3 x 300,000 for her brother's house.

Palmero made sure to change Monaco's regency laws so in case something happens to Albert while Jacques is underage Charlene won't be regent. Instead, the principality will be ruled by a regency council.

Albert has a secret apartment in Monaco, bought by one of Palmero's secret companies. He also got rid of problematic photographs of Albert (hinted at blackmail).

there was a whole system for hiding sums used on "special missions". They were labeled DS (for special destinations) and with time were used to pay for an informal intelligence unit that operated within the police force of the principality. They'd collect information on those close to the family and even on politians of the principality. He would also pay journalists to paint a good picture of Monaco while Hollande was president in France and was constantly criticizing tax-havens.

the DS accounts would be used to hide over-budget situations, including budget for the children's nannies and the budget for the wedding.

they were terrified of the Panama papers, as a lot of money laundering funds go through Monaco and the family had accounts on Panamanian banks.

a link between a Russian billionaire and the Monegasque Minister of Justice was revealed in 2017 and the Minister was forced to resign. An investigation was launched by a French judge and there was fears that the palace would be involved: jurisdictional immunity was granted to members of the sovereign family by order. There was rumours that the French judge wanted to hear the Prince as a witness......he was told to leave the principality. He was accused of having, through his “behavior perceived as authoritarian and vexatious”, “endangered the proper functioning of the criminal justice system”.

the real estate market is a big point of collision here and a big focus of article 3. Nothing too interesting to report - Palmero says he tried mingling in the market to break down the monopoly of real estate owners in Monaco (centered around a bestie of the Casiraghi brothers) while Albert claims Palmero had close ties with some of the developers and tried mingling with things that were of interest of the government in order to make money. The real estate issue was what eventually led Palmero to be fired. Palmero and a former laywer of Albert who was his childhood bestfriend and is also now a persona non grata claims that Albert is now fully under the influence of the bestie of the Casiraghi brothers who now controls the real estate in Monaco.

Palmaro is STILL paying property tax on properties he bought for the family!! crazy!!

Palmero detailed a number of off-shore accounts that hold about 250 million euros of the family's fortune including a company created specifically for Charlotte Casiraghi. He passed on the information from that account to Albert's new accountant at a monitored meeting.

Albert's explanation is lowkey....pathetic. He claims he told Palmero to move all of his family's assets from off-shore accounts to Monaco but Palmero never did it and that was that. He claims he was never able to obtain a precise statement on the family assets due to Palmero's secrecy and Albert just trusted him. He claims Palmero would act in his name and refuse to delay his decisions.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Second, do you have any good fantasy RPGs set in a non-european focused or at least not medieval-European world? It can be based off of a real-world culture or something brand new

THEME: Non-Western Fantasy

Hello friend! For this recommendation, I wanted to highlight games made about non-western fantasy by authors who hail from the cultures that inspire the games. For that purpose I really want to shout-out to rpgsea and rpglatam, two community/movements that have made it much easier for creators from Southeast Asian and Latin American cultures to advertise and publish their games. Not all of my recommendations come from these communities, but they’re a great jumping-off point to find more games with unique settings, fresh ideas, and beautiful, beautiful art.

Nahual, by Miguel Angel Espinoza.

Nahual is a tabletop roleplaying game about brjos nahuales, humans of mestizo and indigenous ancestry that have the power to shapeshifter into an animal form. These nahuales hunt angels to make a living, running a changarro - a business - together to sell the products they make from the bodies of the angels they have killed. These are stories about underdogs, struggling to find their place in a Mexican world of fantastical and overwhelming forces.

Miguel Ángel Espinoza is a Mexican layout artist and game designer, and the head of Smoking Mirror Games. His ttrpg Nahual really picked up steam on Kickstarter, unlocking stretch goal after stretch goal. At its core, this game is PbtA game about underdogs going up against celestial parasites. Angel Dust is a potent drug, and angels are used by corporations, politicians, and the Church to lure in worshipers and make money. You play the labourers at the bottom of this pyramid, aching for freedom but trapped inside a concrete jungle. Your biggest asset? The special gifts you’ve inherited from your ancestors, watered down as you’ve lost your cultural memories. 

This game is more urban fantasy than anything else on this list, but if you want to explore a game about reclaiming something that you’ve almost lost, you should definitely check out Nahual.

ARC, by momatoes.

Ready Yourself. For Tonight, we save the world.

The RPG to slay the apocalypse. Capture your imagination with near-inescapable dooms that threaten infinite worlds. Be a hero or be the guide to facilitate a heart-racing story to remember.

ARC enables people wishing to run a game with limited experience. The Doom and its Omens help create tension and manage the story’s pacing. The rules are approachable so you can focus on helping make the best story for the table. Additionally, the last chapter of the full book is filled with tips for building a good experience for you and your friends. 

The creator, Momatoes (aka Bianca Canoza), is from the Philippines, and is the custodian of RPGSEA, as well as a Winner of the Diana Jones Emerging Designer Award. Her game, ARC doesn’t have a lot of setting decided for you - instead, you decide elements of the setting yourself. There's even a license for creators who want to publish their own content! The biggest selling point of ARC is the Doom, a terrible event that the Heroes want to prevent at any cost. The GM will set up Omens, which are pieces of the story that advance the Doom - pieces the characters will need to investigate and interact with in order to resolve. Finally, the Doomsday clock is a tool that can be used to keep the sessions tight and focused: every moment on the Doomsday clock has the GM roll 1d6 per unresolved moment - the higher the roll, the closer you tick towards catastrophe! If you want a beginner-friendly game that allows maximum creativity, you should definitely check out ARC.

Arunika, by Anonymocha.

Darkness and gloom threaten to shroud the entirety of this world you call home. Or perhaps, it already had. However, there's hope.

You are a Light Bearer. This beacon of light you hold is the key to reviving the world's gleam and hope, through your own. You are bestowed with the pursuit of rekindling the world, forging bonds with its inhabitants along the path, and freeing it from the murk with what you can offer.

Arunika is a TTRPG of maintaining hope, sharing it with the world, and most importantly, caring for yourself while you're at it.

The rulebook reflects a world's journey towards revival from the characters who escalate it. It is made with the vision of a game that has a non-violent, narrative-first, and feelings-focused system which can be interpreted in many optimistic, creative, whimsical, melancholic, or introspective ways.

Mocha, the creator, is an Indonesian artist with a beautiful and unique art style, visible in the projects they create and contribute to. One person plays the Light Bearer, a character who holds the Light, a beacon that needs to be used to rekindle the world. Other players can play the Companions, friends and old foes that accompany the Light Bearer on their journey. This game can be run with just a GM and one player, with all of the Companions as NPCs. The stats of your character will fill or deplete depending on the events of the game, so Heart will increase when the party has a positive interaction, while Hurt will increase from suffering harm, or decrease when your character is comforted. If you want a game that is easy on the eyes, gives you the basic premise and lets you build your own world, you should check out Arunika. 

Hearts of Wulin, by Lowell Francis and Agatha Cheng.

Hearts of Wulin is a game of wuxia melodrama, Powered by the Apocalypse. Players take the role of skilled martial artists in a world of rival clans, conspiracies, and obligations. The game emulates films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Chinese wuxia TV series like The Smiling Proud Wanderer and Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, and Chinese martial arts novels from the second half of the twentieth century. In these tales, romance is as dangerous as a blade. Everyone has ties to factions, loves they can’t quite express, and secrets which will shake them to their core. As in the source material, stories in Hearts of Wulin are driven by the characters’ duties, romantic desires, and entanglements with other characters.

You get everything you need to play the game in three different styles: Core, Courtly, and Fantastic. The core game is as described above: a game of wuxia melodrama featuring wandering wulin warriors. The courtly style of play sets the game in a world of politics and factional scheming. The fantastic game adds strong elements of the superrnatural to the story. Each style of play has its own playbooks and moves—it's like having three games in one! 

Agatha Cheng is a cultural consultant and a podcast host, on top of being a co-author of this wuxia-inspired game, in a genre she’s loved since childhood. Hearts of Wulin is an homage to melodramatic stories about protagonists, torn between equally treasured relationships. You may be in love with your teacher’s greatest rival, or perhaps your master and your father despise each-other. The PbtA system that Hearts is built on prioritizes emotional conflict and failure that moves the story forward, while slimming down the mechanics to simple 2d6 dice rolls. If what you’re looking for is story beats that rip your heart up and make you feel all of the feelings, you should check out this game.

Gubat Banwa, by makapatag.

Gubat Banwa is a game of rapid kinetic martial arts, violent sorcery, heartrending convictions and bouts of will. Warriors that channel gods face sorcerers that master black arts, martial artists who have unlocked a new form of cultivation clash swords with those that perfect the night alchemies.

Gubat Banwa is a  Southeast Asian fantasy martial arts Role-Playing Game, inspired by the refulgent cultures of Southeast Asia. Raise your spears, KADUNGGANAN, you elite warrior-braves and asura-knights who travel The Sword Isles to prove their conviction and dictate the fate of the world. Revel in larger-than-life war drama like in Asian Dramas, ballistic tactical martial arts grid gameplay in the vein of Lancer or Final Fantasy Tactics, and find glory beyond heaven. Wield the Thunderbolt of Liberation! Rejoice! In the Glory of Combat!

Makapatag, or Waks, is a Filipino creature who loves creating tactical ttrpgs. All of their games have strong Southeast Asian inspiration, but Gubat Banwa is what you’re looking for if you want good old fantasy. Rules-wise, the author credits Lancer, Pathfinder 2e, ICON, Ryuutama, Apocalypse World, and so many more iconic, well-loved games for their inspiration. This game is made to specifically centre Southeast Asian cultures, and the setting is not solely based in a specific historical setting, but is rather inspired by many cultures and stories of these cultures. I strongly recommend you read the Note On Intended Audience on page 4 if you get this book.

And what a book it is. 400 pages, with maps, roll-tables, an extensive dive into the lore and terms created for this book, and pages and pages of gorgeous gorgeous art. Character creation is heavily involved, incorporating the culture you hail from, the ideal you’re fighting for, major life events and debts, as well as different Disciplines, combat arts that each have their own styles, weapons, and techniques. Fighting in this game is not just a matter of survival - it is a science. If you want a game that gives you in-depth characters and hours and hours of material in a world in which every piece of lore has been carefully thought out, I heavily recommend Gubat Banwa.

Mangayaw, by goobernuts.

Mangayaw is an RPG for one facilitator (the Mangaawit) and at least one other player. Players act as Binmanwa, adventurers and survivors in an archipelago of bloodshed and goldlust. This game is inspired by Philippine legend, folklore, culture and history. The game and its setting is still a work-in-progress. Based on and inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, Mausritter and numerous other games. 

Benj, the creator, is a member of RPGsea, and draws heavily from Philippine folklore and history for this game. This is absolutely for OSR fans, with delay fast combat, class-less and level-less characters, and a ton of equipment and magic items inspired by Philippines folklore.

Whereas many OSR games present the rules with the assumption that the GM knows what they’re doing, Mangayaw contains a page of principles for the Mangaawit, outlining narrative focus, the purpose of danger and treasure, and advice on how to present the characters with choices, NPC motivations, and the benefits of random generation. It also contains principles for the players, and principles of the World, providing guidance for folks who may be unfamiliar with the culture that inspires this setting. There’s suggestions for names, descriptions of unique items, and tables for magic and sorcery. If you love roll tables, you’ll love Mangayaw.

Brave Zenith, by Roll 4 Tarrasque.

Brave Zenith is a post-fantasy tabletop RPG, set in a world inspired by Brazilian culture and long summer nights playing JRPGs on a pirated PS1. With a set of simple interpretative rules, that focus on player creativity and imagination, explore the ruined world of pastpresent, meet colourful (and deadly) creatures, see the sights of the Second City, partake in delicious Monkey Oil and become an adventurer.

Roll 4 Tarrasque is a team of Latinx creators whose efforts won Game of the Year for 2022 at the Indie Groundbreaker Awards with this game. Brave Zenith is a game about fantasy odd-jobs, rather than epic quests - your characters are cleaning up houses, hunting ghosts, stealing from the rich, etc. The people and creatures of the world are unique and enchanting, from the friendly Jelly shopkeeper to the slippery butter construct, to little porcini goblins. 

Characters have 3 stats, gain abilities based off of their occupations. There are three suggested origins to help you determine what your character looks like, but you’re also welcome to create your own! There are typical hallmarks of dungeon delving here, such as loot tables, monsters to fight, and spells to cast. For the GMs, there’s a chapter full of advice on how to prepare for a session, quick NPC generation, and tables to help you write an adventure on the fly. Finally, the rulebook itself is bright, colourful, and fun - perfect for communicating the kinds of games it’s designed to run!

Lutong Banwa by Sinta Posadas (Diwata ng Manila).

We, the Tamawo, we have no concept of hunger, food, or of a nuclear family. We wandered aimlessly for a long time. Then, we met a Giant Grab. She took us in like her own children. Clothed and sheltered us like we were her kind. We call her Mama Kasag. She showed us more about the people that came before us. The ones she calls “Humans”. 

Lutong Banwa is a cooking game, where you set out to adventure and find ingredients from Spirits and recipes from old civilizations. Embark on this anti-canon storygame adventure with its own custom system and play to find out just what sort of zany adventures you can get up to in this weird, wild world. Do whatever you want.

Sin is a Filipino game designer who loves designing games that incorporate magic realism. Lutong Banwa is no different. You play Tamawo, who have bodies that appear similar to humans, but live in an age in which humans are long gone. Humans are strange beings of a past age, with unfamiliar customs, such as cooking. You’ve picked up cooking as something to explore, and thus go out on errands to find new ingredients for Mama Kasag. This game is charming and small, quick to learn and easy to play. It even includes recipes to get you in the cooking mood! If you like cozy games with low stakes and a charming setting, you should absolutely check out this game.

A Thousand Thousand Islands.

This is not a game, but rather, a collection of system-agnostic zines for use in fantasy tabletop games. This collection is designed by a trio of Malaysian designers, and contains places such as Mr-Kr-Gr, a river kingdom ruled by crocodiles, Korvu, a maritime nation of tenant mercenaries, and Ngelalangka, a market inspired by Southeast Asian bazaars. If you have a game system that you’re already comfortable with and you want to explore fantastical places within that system, I heavily encourage you to check out these zines.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Radley Balko at The Watch:

Here’s a sentence I never imagined I’d need to write: It would be a bad idea for the U.S. to go to war with Mexico. And yet here we are. The thing about a candidate as historically dangerous, impulsive, and incompetent as Trump is that he routinely proposes stuff so off the wall that it would tank virtually any other campaign. But because of this, some of his nuttier ideas are overshadowed by everything else he does. In a previous post, I looked at one of these under-the-radar ideas — Trump’s catastrophic promise to deny federal funding to any school that requires kids to be vaccinated. Today, we’ll look at another — the Trump/Republican vow to bomb or invade Mexico. Trump has repeatedly threatened that, if elected again, he will bomb drug cartels and fentanyl manufacturing facilities in Mexico. He has also proposed sending assassination teams or special forces units into the country. He vowed to take these actions with or without the consent of the Mexican government. The Mexican government has been pretty clear about where it stands on this: They would not consent. So let’s be clear about what Trump is proposing: He’s proposing an invasion of Mexico. Which means he’s a proposing a war with Mexico.

Trump’s history with this threat suggests we should take it more seriously than the typical bluster he spouts during one of his campaign rally monoglogues. Rolling Stone reported last year that even then he had already asked his advisors to assemble a “battle plan” to enact shortly after he’s elected. He also reiterated his promise in an interview he and running mate JD Vance did with Fox News last month (Vance is also all for it). The origin of the war with Mexico idea dates back to the end of Trump’s first term, when, in response to rising fentanyl overdoses, he attempted to designate drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, despite the fact that they don’t fit any reasonable definition of a terrorist. He apparently thought this would allow him to bomb the cartels as if they were ISIS cells. It turns out that it isn’t that simple. You can’t simply call people “terrorists” and immediately start bombing the countries where said “terrorists” are operating without first consulting with the leaders of those countries. Mexico’s president promptly and resoundingly dismissed the idea. This apparently irked Trump enough to take the position he advocates today: Just bomb them, anyway.

[...] Destructive, counterproductive policy that treats foreign lives as disposable has long been the hallmark of U.S. overseas drug interdiction. We’ve funded the extra-judicial execution of drug offenders in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. We partnered with South American governments to shoot down suspect drug running planes without regard to the possible loss of innocent life — that is, until the policy claimed the lives of a U.S. missionary and her daughter. In Panama, the CIA (specifically, George H.W. Bush) propped up and facilitated the drug-running operation of brutal dictator Manuel Noriega. When Noriega was no longer useful for fighting communism, the U.S. then indicted him for said drug running, then (specifically, George H.W. Bush) invaded and bombed his country. We killed hundreds of Panamanian citizens in the process.

As for Mexico itself, in the mid-2000s the U.S. incentivized the country’s government to enlist its own military in the drug war. That policy toppled some cartels, but also spawned destabilizing turf wars and violence as rival factions vied to replace them. The winners then and the military have since been fighting for nearly two decades. The death toll is now approaching half a million people. When asked about the carnage, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton basically said in 2011 that tens of thousands of dead Mexicans was a price the U.S. was willing to pay to keep harmful drugs away from Americans. (It did not keep illicit drugs away from Americans.) The arguably most destructive U.S. overseas anti-drug program was Plan Colombia, Bill Clinton’s drug eradication program that poisoned farmland, fostered rampant corruption, and pushed that country into a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people. This too did not keep illicit drugs away from Americans.

[...]

It will backfire

Even drug cartels have a code. They go out of their way to avoid harming U.S. law enforcement, and they don’t target U.S. citizens. When underlings have violated this code, or when U.S. citizens have suffered collateral harm, the cartels have bent over backwards to make amends. The last thing they want is to bring the full force and weight of the U.S. government upon themselves. This of course doesn’t excuse the times drug violence has harmed American citizens. We should naturally seek justice in those cases. But while what Trump is proposing won’t end the illicit drug trade, it will create an existential threat to the current cartels. It will back them into a corner. Cartels avoid U.S. casualties because they want to remain in operation. If they know the United States is sending its military to kill them, there’s no incentive to adhere to the code. They’re likely to lash out — against U.S. law enforcement, U.S. citizens, possibly U.S. politicians.

[...]

Mexico isn’t our enemy

Depending on how you measure it, Mexico is either our first, second, or third biggest trade partner. Any military action taken without consent of the Mexican government would bring most of that trade to a screeching halt. That risks about $855 billion in annual commerce. It would threaten millions of jobs, particularly in California, Texas, Louisiana, and the industrial Midwest. When Trump threatened to completely shut down the border during his first term, economists warned it would result in a shortage the goods from Mexico, including computers, cars and car parts, gas, chemicals, and produce (goodbye avocados!). Mexico is also a big consumer for U.S. agriculture. So corn, soybeans, poultry, pork, and dairy farmers would also take a hit. We’d also see major interruptions in supply chains that flow through Mexico. When the Border Patrol shut down just one official crossing in San Diego for just a few hours in 2019, businesses in that city lost $5.3 million. All of this economic damage would come in addition to the calamitous economic effects of Trump’s other disastrous campaign promises, like across-the-board tariffs and mass deportations.

Radley Balko perfectly describes why going to war with Mexico is a reckless and costly idea.

[carlocarrasco]

Muntinlupa Mayor reacts towards discovery of cops who turned out to be working as bodyguards for Chinese nationals

Recently in the City of Muntinlupa, an incident took place inside Ayala Alabang Village which eventually led to the discovery that two members of Philippine National Police-Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) turned out to be working as bodyguards for Chinese nationals and drew a reaction from Muntinlupa City Mayor Ruffy Biazon, according to a Manila Bulletin news report. To put things in…

[catdotjpeg]

LOOK: Multisectoral groups marched along Commonwealth Avenue earlier today as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivered his third State of the Nation Address (SONA) at the Batasang Pambansa to assail his failed promise of a Bagong Pilipinas [trans. New Philippines]. For the groups, Marcos’s Bagong Pilipinas is a grand sham. Amid promises of better living conditions, 46 percent of Filipinos rated their families as food poor—the highest since 2008—according to the latest survey of Social Weather Stations. “[H]inaharap [ng ating mga kababayan] ang realidad na mataas ang presyo ng mga bilihin, lalo na ng pagkain—lalo’t higit, ng bigas,” said Marcos in his speech earlier, affirming bleak realities on the ground. On top of a cost of living crisis are poverty wages that fail to meet the family living wage of P1,190, as estimated by economic think tank IBON Foundation, the P35 wage hike in the National Capital Region (NCR) enacted last week was dismissed as an “insult to minimum wage workers” by Leticia Castillo of human rights alliance Defend NCR. Such wage hike is far from the P150 raise being lobbied in Congress by labor groups under the National Wage Coalition. Castillo also decried the persistence of red-tagging and vilification of activists perpetrated by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. From July 2022 to June 2024, 3,419,044 cases of threat, harassment, and intimidation were recorded by human rights group Karapatan. The number of political prisoners also climbed to 755 as of last month. These human rights violations run contrary to Marcos’s establishment of a Special Committee on Human Rights, which was labeled “toothless” by Human Rights Watch. Marcos’s claim of a bloodless drug war is also inconsistent with the 359 drug-related killings—34.3 percent of which were committed by state agents—recorded during his second year in office by research project Dahas. Moreover, despite claims of an independent foreign policy, the Philippines under Marcos remains dependent on the US and its unequal treaties, said Liza Maza of MAKABAYAN. Last year, Marcos announced the creation of four new US military bases in the country under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the US. Such treaties with the US have been criticized for intensifying tensions with China and the broader Indo-Pacific region. Clarice Palce of Gabriela and Ronnel Arambulo of Pamalakaya raised their worries of the Philippines being dragged into a stand off between two global superpowers which will only worsen the poor living conditions of Filipinos. The program ended with a symbolic destruction of the effigies of Marcos and Vice President Sara Duterte. The broken UniTeam will be challenged by the Makabayan Coalition which will field a complete senatorial slate including ACT Teachers Party-list Representative France Castro and Gabriela Women’s Party Representative Arlene Brosas in the 2025 midterm elections. Photos by AJ Dela Cruz, Marcus Azcarraga, Audrey Sanchez, and Sarah Gates

-- Philippine Collegian, 22 Jul 2024 9:45pm PHT

[doctormastertardis]

How old were you when you discovered DW? How old are you now? How far into DW are you?

It's so weird how DW became this "international" geek sensation. I am 38 years old this year (2024), and was born and raised in a small province in the Philippines, far away from Manila... my family moved to California when I was 13... I remember I used to watch Queer As Folks (the American series) when we moved to America from middle school to high school (age 13-17). That was also around the same time I discovered and marathoned (online) the ORIGINAL Queer As Folks as written by Russell T. Davies. Coincidentally, I was also a BIG fan of Coupling back in my "American high school" years, which Steven Moffat wrote for but I didn't know back then... I think I didn't really get into Doctor Who until the Matt Smith era though in my mid-20s... I remember I had just graduated from college at age 24, and I was looking for a good show that would remind me of "nostalgic" shows I used to watch as a kid (BUFFY was a big show for me throughout childhood and teenage years). I got into DW because Matt Smith was a cutie, not gonna lie. And it was during the fifth season, too, when Amy Pond was soooo young! I remember after finishing Matt Smith's VERY FIRST DEBUT (his first episode), after that, I marathoned (almost) all of David Tennant's! I had started with Martha Jones and finished all of the specials and Donna's season. I remember forcing myself to watch Nine and Ten/Rose's seasons (which in hindsight, I was being ignorant about the history). At the time when I was first getting into this show at age 24-27, I was CURRENTLY watching Matt Smith's then-current-run while simultaneously "catching up" on Tennant's. I remember, I didn't really start watching Classic Who until I was in my late 20s to early 30s, and to this day I still haven't seen all of Classic Who. I have seen MOST and A LOT of Pertwee's episodes, the entire first season of First Doctor, a FEW and SOME of Fourth and Fifth's popular episodes, and very little of Sixth and Seventh's episodes. I did see McGann's movie, and it was cool. I haven't seen a 2nd Doctor episode simply because they're difficult to find... But yah, it is INCREDIBLE to see DW gain popularity all over the world. Now it's on Disney and we have Fifteen.