Faces of The Stranger

 The 31 Days / 31 Characters Challenge

is upon us once more!

Originally I had planned on going with a particular theme for 2026 but as I began exploring my chosen concept I decided it wasn't how I wanted to open 2026.

Instead I'm going to lean into the original intent of this challenge and create more brand new characters then I have in the past. Considering the fact that I primarily showcase PCs and NPCs from the games I've run and participated in over my 49 years in the hobby, this will be a big change, at least for me.

In fact, it might prove sort of difficult.

Unlike the majority of the TRPGamers out there, I don't generally enjoy the process of 'Character Creation'. Mechanically that is. I love creating characters! I just find most systems for generating PCs kind of tedious; an often limited set of options that I have to slog through to get kind of close to the idea in my head.

There are exceptions of course, systems where I truly enjoy Character Creation but they are usually ultra-simple like the Smurfs RPG or Meteor City - Star Rainy Days or strangely rather complex like Champions. I also really like games that hit that sweet spot in the middle thanks to the mechanics effectively reflecting the setting or genre; Ars Magica and Star Trek Adventures come to mind. Basically, I like Character Creation that gives stats to the concept I've come up with in my mind, outside of any system.

I also tend to dislike games where you create your character purely or largely through random die rolls. There have certainly been instances where random generation gave me an idea for a character I hadn't planned on making [yet still enjoyed] but outside of Traveller, that was mostly in my earlier years when that was pretty much all there was. 

So, how am I going to make this fun for me and also useful? Well, the latter is easy; focus on games I might actually use someday and character who can double as either a PC or an NPC. Yeah, that shouldn't be too hard, right?

Wish me luck gang.

Before I go, I want to wish everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, who comes to the Barking Alien blog a very Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year! May 2026 be better than 2025, 2024, 2023...well, you get the picture. Thank you for taking the time to visit this small corner of the internet and reading what are surely the delusional yet hopefully entertaining scribblings of a madman. . 

See you next year,

AD

Barking Alien

Another sad passing to announce is that of Tim Kask, a playtester of the original Dungeons and Dragons game, the first real employee of TSR, and the first editor of Dragon Magazine, actually starting with its predecessors, The Strategic Review and later The Dragon. 

Even though his beginnings in the hobby were by way of wargames, particularly those of Avalon Hill, Kask once wrote in what was intended to be the forward to Eldritch Wizardry that, "D&D was meant to be a free-wheeling game, only loosely bound by the parameters of the rules." Later he wrote, "It all starting going bad with the publishing of AD&D, The Player’s Handbook. Here come the rules lawyers, the nitpickers, and the homegrown experts. The fun started to leech away within months. Now there were dicta, dogma, and regulations; gone were the days of guidelines."

While I do not have a particular fondness for the D&D of those days in the Golden Age of TRPGs, I do appreciate and respect the hobby's history and noteworthy personages. Tim Kask definitely qualifies as one of the forefathers of what we do and if I may be so bold, I think he and I would've gotten along just swell. 

Rest in Peace. Godspeed.