Adapt and Strike Again When The Moment Is Right

As you can no doubt discern, I'm not going to be able to complete the 31 Days / 31 Characters Challenge by months end. Again.

 
January is simply waaay too busy a month each year and I was quite sick over this past few days. 

I'd normally be feeling kind of down but today is a special day - Lunar New Year! 

It's the Year of the Snake and it represent wisdom, transformation, and growth! Hopefully I can shed (get it?) the mishaps of this first month and make the rest of the year far more productive. 

Gong Hei Fat Choy! 

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Dragon Dance!

Gong Hei Fat Choi!

Wow but there are a lot of ways to write that! Each of China's regional languages and their variants has a different way of pronouncing and spelling the phrase, which literally translates to 'Wishing You Prosperity'.

I tend to go with the Cantonese pronunciation I've been most exposed to. Sometimes I spell 'Choi' as 'Choy' but generally I use the same phrase the same way every year. 

This year is extra cool for us geeky gamer types as it is the Year of the Dragon and Dragons are pretty damn cool.

Happy Lunar New Year everyone!

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Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

Gong Hei Fat Choy!

Saehae Bok Mani Badeuseyo!

Akemashite Omedetō Gozaimasu!

A Very Happy Lunar New Year Everyone! 

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Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

Gong Hei Fat Choy! A very Happy Lunar New Year to one and all!

As is my annual traditional I am making an Asian dish for dinner and wishing I'd remembered to buy Snowy Mooncakes before they were all sold out pretty much everywhere that sells them. Sad Tiger. 

Wishing you all the best for the coming year!

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Year of The Ox

Today there is cause for celebration...it's also my birthday. 

February 12, 2021 is the beginning of the Chinese New Year of The Ox, as well as being the birthday of such notable personages as Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, and my favorite voice actress, the one and only Tara Strong. 

I also wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge Black History Month, something I feel it behooves us all to do and to look into further. Some amazing people have done some fantastic things and you should know about them. 

Promoting the concept of Yin Yang I must also note the passing of several extraordinary talents from stage, screen, sports, and beyond including Christopher Plummer, Cicely Tyson, Cloris Leachman, Hank Aaron, and Larry King, just to name some of the personalities we have lost in 2021. 

Yesterday was the birthday of my friend Dave Cotton, who passed away last June. Dave has been mentioned many, many times on this blog as he was a sweet guy and a creative powerhouse. I miss him terribly and this was the first time in 10 years we didn't discuss how close our birthdays are to each other. 

Strange what you remember isn't it?

Yes, last but not least it is my birthday today. Ugh. I have never been particularly fond of the day and although I was starting to get over that in recent years, 2020 has kind of reset my disinterest in making a big deal about it. Hopefully I can push past the feeling and enjoy it. 

Quoting my good friend (and incidentally my ex-wife) Selina...May The Ox Be With You. 

Yes, she said that.

No, I don't know what it means. LOL

Gong Hei Fat Choy Everyone!

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Aw, Rats!

Gong Hei Fat Choy!

Happy Luna New Year - Year of The Rat!

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Special Occasions

Merciful Mercer on Moclus! It's already February! How did this happen? 

This month...is a big one.

It can't be!

Are Adam and Barkley the same person?!?

No, of course not. ; )

Barkley Hat knitted by my lovely girlfriend. 

February is always pretty thought provoking and emotional for me for various reasons but this year, well, this one is special. 

On the 12th of this month, I will be 50 years of age. Fifty. Half a damn century. I honestly can't believe I've made it this far. 

In addition, on the 23rd of the month I will be marking off 10 years, that's TEN YEARS!, of the Barking Alien Blog! That's right gang, this month I intend to celebrate a decade of people all across the globe taking time out of their lives to pay attention to my mad, pop-culture fueled RPG ramblings. You're all invited! I'll put out soda, chips and guacamole. Does anyone have any extra folding chairs?

How does one celebrate such milestones? Hmmm. Hopefully with some content, something I've been light on of late. I will definitely try my best to get some new posts up, revisit some of my favorite old ones, and maybe get in some guest material or player spotlights. This really does feel like a momentous occasion so I best do it up right.

Looking forward to partying with you guys...Happy February! 

Woah. That feels weird...

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Before I forget...

Gong Hei Fat Choy!

Happy New Year!

Good fortune and happiness to you all in this Year of the Pig!

Also...

February is Black History Month!  This year I would like to direct your attention to Huffington Post's Black History Built This. For the entire month they will be shedding light on figures and events in Black History without having that light wash away the culture the way many modern tellings do. It looks to be a very interesting and enlightening approach to the subject. Take a look won't you? 

Lucky Dog

Happy Lunar New Year and Spring Festival Everyone!

It is the Year of the Dog, which as you can imagine is a favorite year of mine. Heh. 

Woof Woof and Gong Hei Fat Choy!

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Monkey Business

Gong Hei Fat Choy!

 

Happy Lunar New Year - Year of The Monkey to All!

  

 

'Monkey'

Oil on canvas, 8"x10"

 

A very special thank you to my old friend Paul David Elsen, an accomplished painter and truly decent Human being for allowing me the use of his painting for this blog post.

 

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Year of the Horny Animal

Whoah there boys, and girls! Just relax. That's NOT what I meant.

2015 is the Chinese (as well as other East Asian cultures)  Year of the Goat, but in truth it's a bit more complex than that.

You see, a Snake is a Snake (make no mistake),
And a Horse is a Horse (of course, of course),
But the Chinese character 'Yang' means 'Horned Animal'.

As such, various Western parties trying to understand our Eastern brethren, have translated the character to mean Goat, Sheep, or Ram. It doesn't help that even in China there are mixed opinions about which animal people want representing them.

Interestingly, some of the artwork I have seen celebrating the New Year has a creature more closely resembling some sort of Gazelle, or Antelope.

Well, whatever Horned Animal you prefer, Good Luck, Peace, and Prosperity to you from Barking Alien.

Gong Hey Fat Choy (or in Mandarin, Gong Xi Fa Cai)!

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High Horse

Happy New Year, The Year of The Horse, to all my friends and their families who celebrate it.

Gong Hei Fat Choy!*

 

*The phonetic spelling and pronunciation I use to wish you all a Happy New Year is based on Hong Kong Chinese/Cantonese and not Mandarin. This is because most, if not all, of my Chinese friends are from either Hong Kong, Canton or one of the Canton region's close neighbors.

 

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Traveller - Foundation And Empire

So I described the Player Characters who participated in the first session of our new Traveller campaign. Now some details on the campaign itself...

 Flag of The Solomani Confederation

The Setting

The campaign, entitled Traveller - Operation: Paladin, focuses on the Spica Sector, a sector of Charted Space where the Solomani Confederation borders the Hive Federation.

In my version of the Traveller canon the Solomani Confederation, an interstellar government centered around and run by Humans from Sol (Earth/Terra), is a subsidiary government to the larger Third Galactic Imperium, which absorbed the Confederation a little less than 100 years ago following the Solomani Rim War. Previous attempts to absorb or squash the Solomani simply made them more eager to reassemble and rebel (we Earthers are independent and tenacious!) so this time the Imperium let the Confederation keep doing their thing, they just do it for the Imperium. That is to say, as long as the Imperium gets taxes, military support and trade opportunities from the Solomani, they can run their sphere of influence as way they damn well please.

Now, this attitude has worked pretty well for both parties, though Solomani pride is always smoldering just under the surface. One of my players said...

"The North beat the South in the Civil War. That was 150 years ago and people down there are still pissed. This is only a generation or so back."

Righto! See, our campaign begins in the Imperial Year of 1095 or 5613 AD on the old Earth calender. The Solomani Rim War ended in 1002. In 1045 there was a rebellion of sorts in which hidden caches of weapons were used in an attempt by Solomani guerrilla forces to liberate Earth, which had been captured by the Imperium during the war. That attempt, referred to as The Phoenix Project, failed.

Now things move along relatively smoothly, although undercurrents of unrest are bubbling up and may surface before long. In the meantime...

The Adventure (Or What The Players Did And Made Happen)

Our session began in the Flux Subsector, subsector J of Spica, on an orbiting space station Highport called Bussard Reach. Bussard Reach orbits Leighton (technically Leighton IV), a once temperate/terrestrial world that is now experiencing an ice age of sorts. While not as frozen as say, Hoth, it is largely covered by ice and snow and cold weather gear is needed to operate on the surface.

Enter Belarus Hosta, a 38 year old woman with a very important personal mission. She sets out almost immediately (after getting the lay of the station) to hire a group capable of taking her to a planet called Shallows. Shallows is a Solomani colony working on experiment aquatic farming techniques. After hiring the rest of the PCs, she reveals that she has a considerable investment in the colony and it went silent about three months ago. Since than there have been a number of changes to the situation.

First, the Imperium has declared the planet a Red Zone and is not letting any commerical or civillian traffic approach the world. Unfortunately, according to Hosta, the Imperium won't give her any additional details. She needs to see for herself what is going on so she can report back to her lawyers, financers, insurance people, etc.

Another change, and one that came as a surprise to even Hosta herself, was that the border between the Solomani Confederation and the Hive Federation moved. Originally she was told the planet Shallows was right on the border between the two powers surrounded by both unclaimed planets and a few Hiver Colonies. That was six months to a year ago when the colony was first set up. Now, three months after the colony's last contact, the Hivers have claimed those previously non-aligned and unclaimed worlds and pushed forward, placing Shallows deep in Hiver territory.

So, at the end of our first session, a Jump-2 Lab Ship containing Belarus Hosta, the ship's owner and pilot Dr. Emil Fujikawa, his assistant Maria, Navigator and Engineer JayZed Trisector, gun-for-hire Rex Kincaid, bar owner and entrepeneur 'Barkley'*, Thorellian pilgrim Berell ThirdTurnFromThe Sky and his friend, the mysterious Kael, are all heading into Hive Federation territory to find out why a fish farming world ceased all contact and was declared off limits.

Side Story Theatre!

While assembling a Grav Vehicle from spare parts purchased at a Salvage/Junk/Machine Parts store, JayZed discovers the Gyrocompass/GPS unit has one previous destination still logged into it. Other than that, the unit has been reset and it's memory erased. He is able to unlock the information and discovers it leads to a point west of the mines on the surface of Leighton.

The grav speeder parts, including the chasis obtained later, are almost certainly from a type of Police Patrol Speeder common on the Solomani Rim. This may be a civillian version, usually sold to local sheriffs after being stripped of weapons when a Police Force upgrades to a better model.

***

Hosta convinces her friend Barkley* to come along on the trip by getting him to take a vacation from the bar while at the same time hosting a promotional gimmick. Posters, flyers and the like announce that Barkley has disappeared to some fantastic adventure. When will be return? What stories will he have to tell? Stop by Barkley's Den Bar and Restaurant to get your ballot (free with purchase of any drink or entree) and guess (i.e. wager) when he'll return. Be here when he does for valuable prizes like discounts and t-shirts! If you guess correctly there will be a cash (ok Credit) prize!!!

Really she wants him around for his heightened sense of smell and hearing and his familiarity with the Hive Federation.

***

The Thorellian is on a religious/philosophical journey to 'Follow His Path'. He believes now that his path runs along Kael's. Indeed, the paths of all these characters now run parallel and he must follow them to the end and either great enlightenment or death.

***

Kael has a complex past and has asked Berell to help him see his own path, and the paths of others if possible, in order to gain some insight into his next course of action.

***

Kael, Fujikawa and others share a considerable dislike for the alien species known as the Ithklur. The Ithklur serve as military troops for the Hivers and Hive Federation. Several of the PCs have had run ins with the Ithklur as part of their backstories, some of which lead to the death of friends and loved ones. In Fujikawa's case, the Ithklur held him hostage and made him work for them operating, repairing and maintaining mining robots. An Ithklur encounter may be unavoidable as the team enters Hive Federation space.

***

I am sure there is more but I can't think of it all right now. So much happened!

OK, sleep now...WAIT! I almost forgot...

Happy Birthday to my good friend Dave!

Happy Chinese New Year! Wealth and prosperity in the Year of the Snake!

It's my Birthday today, February 12th. So, yeah.

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*Yes! Barkley shows up once more in a campaign of mine. Here he is a Vargr who has dyed his fur green and claims to be from a rare minor race variant of the Vargr who dwell on 'The Other Side of The Galaxy'. He tells tall tales and entertains the patrons at his Bar/Restaurant 'Barkley's Den', located in the center of the center level of Leighton Highport, aka Bussard Reach.

He is also the guy on the station who knows what's up and what's going down and trades information for information or occaisionally something else of value.

One Month And Two New Years Later

If this is the first month of the last year on Earth, I think it's gotten off to a pretty interesting start. You just can't beat a 'Year of the Dragon' for excitement and luck now can you?




While it's true my main game is going by the wayside, I think the potential for a new one is wide open and I'm very excited about the opportunities.

I began this month by discussing IPs and licensed games and indeed I have a new IP game concept or two waiting in the wings but I may hold off on discussing them just a little longer.

Instead, I would like to focus a bit on some of my newer game ideas, especially my projects for eventual publishing, my supernatural game idea which I've wanted to talk about forever and maybe, finally, a bit more about some of my favorite new indie games that some of you may not be familiar with.

Don't worry, we have until December before the Mayan Calendar ends and destroys us all. I'm sure I'll have time to get to everything.

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Year of The Dragon!

Happy Year of the Dragon Everybody!

onsidering who we are this should hold a very special place in our hearts. ;)

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P.S. Our dragon is 'Red's Blue Dragon' from Fraggle Rock.

P.S.S. I hate Google and Blogger. Hate them. It get less functional everyday and the new interface is gawd-aweful. As we advance we get crappier?

Gung Hei Fat Choi!

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!



SHAZAM! The next thing you know its the Year of the Rabbit!

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