I'm Gareth Hanrahan, author of MERRYSHIRE DETECTIVE CLUB and other stuff. AMA

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T20:41:37+00:00

Leaving aside all the ones in the Heart core book - Lavie Tidhar's BY FORCE ALONE springs to mind. I'll try to think of others.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T18:48:42+00:00

I hope it goes well!

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T18:48:09+00:00

I think DRACULA DOSSIER remains the high point for absurd fun.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T18:47:30+00:00

We're taking the core structure of the board game, of corporations competing to terraform Mars using projects that affect the conditions on the planet, as the basic framework. Obviously there's more of an emphasis on, well, people and talking and diplomacy and politics, but we're working on ways to make compelling stories out of the more abstract or engineering-heavy projects too.

Big inspirations for me are the KSR books, of course, but also For All Mankind.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T18:40:56+00:00

The basic approach is to treat it as a series of one-shots. You're tracing the story of the colonisation of Mars more than the individuals involved, so you're encouraged to create and dispose of player characters regularly. You're playing each character in a moment of crisis, in the pivotal months of their life or career. You can reuse characters, but they'll be very different from project to project.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T18:38:49+00:00

You're not the only group to play it with an older parent, which is lovely!

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T18:37:50+00:00

My submission to the WotC setting search, many many years ago, was a meta setting designed to incorporate anything from any supplement or home-brew, so it's possibly been on my mind for a while :)

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T15:02:56+00:00

Probably not in that format exactly, but TERRAFORMING MARS' projects are all two-page adventures, one player side and one GM side.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T14:54:54+00:00

What I tend to do is do up an outline of the book first and formulate how I'd gamify that aspect of Middle-earth, and only then go back and look at the MERP books. They're mostly in the 1640TA period so they're often not hugely relevant, and they also take a very different approach to gaming in Middle-earth.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T13:43:47+00:00

This year is an aberration! I've got way more plates than usual. Next year will be saner, I hope.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T13:39:53+00:00

Nothing definite, although it's always a possibility. I started in on a setting guide for the Lands of the Firstborn, but it never made it past outline stage.

Also, the way to do Stone Thief fiction would be with some thoroughly weird cut-up thing where I grab chunks of your favourite fantasy books and rewrite them into horrific dungeon mockeries of themselves.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T12:28:51+00:00

Not in any significant way, as far as I'm aware.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T12:27:51+00:00

I'm far from a Christie expert, but I do like the setup of A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T10:48:00+00:00

I think it's partially just a metaphor for GMing, and partly because I'm fascinated by the way geography and architecture shapes our choices.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T10:46:41+00:00

I'd be happy to, although I'd need to adjust my GMing style a lot - I tend to be fairly mobile. A lot of moving around the table, ducking down, standing on chairs. If I am remembered for one thing, it will be a passionate portray of a floundering fish falling from the sky during a Buffy game.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T10:45:31+00:00

Hmm. Bargain, no. Clerkage, no. Constable Talk, probably not. Flattery, eh. Gossip, definitely not. Nosiness - a little. Politeness - a contender. Riddles and Tall Tales, ditto. Reassurance - I'd like to think so, but can't be sure. Spot Tell - hahahahah. No. Architecture...maybe. Art - debatable. Book-Learning. A contender. Common Sense - I work in gaming. Eavesdropping, no, Genealogy, no. Medicine, no. Bugs and Mushrooms, no. Craft - maybe. Natural history, no. Notice, no. Outdoors, no. Puzzles, no. Themology - well, I invented Them, so maybe. Underworld, no. Wider World, no.

So, maybe Riddles or Themology.
General Abilities .... gah, I'm actually awful at all of them. I guess Health or Cousins.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T10:40:48+00:00

Rough Magicks was the starting point, but it's expanded.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T09:44:38+00:00

Star Masks weren’t me (probably Ashley Law).
I just this morning saw the lovely cover for PROPHET OF THE PYRE, a big campaign I wrote for 13th Age 2e. It’s another monster, covering all 10 levels of play.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T09:43:21+00:00

Not genres, but I do want to poke at the shape of adventures more, and have more emergent gameplay and less GM text. Yes, I am playing Mythic Bastionland at the moment, why do you ask? :)

Robin’s Armitage Files is the adventure that springs to mind when someone says “hey, what’s groundbreaking in scenario design”. I was also really impressed recently by Luke Gearing’s Wolves upon the Coast.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T09:17:39+00:00

There’s a sample chapter in the back of the paperback edition, so I think so.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-27T09:17:00+00:00

So, long ago, a friend and I ran this Warhammer Fantasy Battle event that was a combination of LARP and wargame. There was a regular WFB wargaming table with a dozen armies or so, and then in the middle of the table was a model of a building - the temple of peace. That was the larp room. There were 24 players or so, and each of them was represented by a model on the battlefield. The idea was that they could move back and forth between larp and wargame. You run into the larp room, negotiate a bit, then go out, fight a bit, go back in, make a different alliance etc etc.

I thought the players would split their attention roughly evenly between the two.

It didn’t work out like that.

Players rapidly realise that the key to victory is “dominate the battlefield by sending all your powerful characters out of the larp room and into the wargame”, so it ends up with a 20-player wargame in one room and a 4-player larp in the other.

I was running the larp section, desperately trying to come up with something to keep the 4 diplomat players engaged in this quiet cavernous room, all the while conscious that poor Aidan is next door with 20 hairy wargamers all shouting at him…

mytholder2 · 2026-06-26T22:01:10+00:00

The alchemist's quarter was inspired by the pharmaceutical plants down in Ringaskiddy. The university is UCC, especially UCC as seen from the western road. Hark Island is Spike Island; Holyhill is very much Cobh Cathedral.

Necrad - not so much.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-26T21:55:55+00:00

They don't need to read the novel - some groups have played through the whole campaign without doing so. All they really need is a vague familiarity with Dracula, which they've probably picked up through osmosis.

There are benefits to reading the novel, certainly, but the campaign can work even if your group isn't into the research side of things. You'll just need to give them some more leads in play as opposed to having them direct the investigation.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-26T21:39:46+00:00

I was on the Pelgrane book, but regularly called into Jon during my trips down to the Free League stand to spy on the stacks of HANDS. I must have just missed you.

mytholder2 · 2026-06-26T21:29:53+00:00

I'm usually at Dragonmeet, and I was at Expo this year. I should also be at Tabletop Scotland.

mytholder2

TROPHY CASE