EGG EMBRY (EGG): I hope you’re doing properly. What media impressed Merryshire Detective Membership?
GARETH RYDER-HANRAHAN (GARETH): Nicely, the unique working title was Shires Out. From the thriller facet, it’s traditional English homicide mysteries – Agatha Christie primarily, a little bit of Conan Doyle. The cosy fantasy stuff is clearly Tolkien-inspired, primarily The Hobbit and the early chapters of Lord of the Rings, but in addition Farmer Giles of Ham. After which the bridging components come from Wodehouse and Flann O’Brien and the like, a contact of the absurd.
EGG: You’re utilizing one of the best (in my view) mystery-solving TTRPG engine, GUMSHOE. For detectives unfamiliar with the system, how does it work?
GARETH: The core idea of GUMSHOE is that it’s at all times extra enjoyable when the gamers get clues. The fascinating little bit of the thriller isn’t discovering clues, it’s understanding what they imply and the way all of them match collectively. So, GUMSHOE does away with rolling to see whether or not or not you notice the footprint within the flowerbed, or if you happen to can recall the traditional household feud between the Storkfoots and the Gullcatchers. Should you’ve obtained the proper skill – Discover or Family tree in these two examples, you get the clue. There are a couple of wrinkles and extra choices, however that’s the center of it – give the gamers info, guarantee they at all times have a result in observe.
EGG: Your membership solves small mysteries and the occasional homicide. With the journey modules, will they focus completely on homicide mysteries or will the smaller crimes be part of gameplay?
GARETH: They’re a combination. Largely homicide, to be truthful, as a result of homicide mysteries are enjoyable to write down – and murders offer you two very sturdy opening traces of inquiry, as you’ve obtained the circumstances of the physique and the backstory of the sufferer to analyze. However you possibly can play smaller-scale mysteries too, and there are pointers within the ebook for shortly developing with little instances in your detectives to resolve.
EGG: Is that this recreation designed for one-shots, multi-session adventures, a full marketing campaign, or the entire previous?
GARETH: So as, sure, ehhhhhhh, sure.
It really works rather well for one-shots. Mysteries are nice for one-shots – you’ve obtained a dramatic opening, a series of clues for the center of play, a transparent conclusion the place the thriller’s solved, and the gamers know what they’re presupposed to be doing – ask questions and poke round. (The Name of Cthulhu one-shot is the proper haiku of state of affairs design).
It really works rather well for campaigns the place you’re stringing a collection of one-shot mysteries collectively. The sport encourages the gamers to outline their village, their neighbours, to create their supporting forged (Halflings have a capability that lets them whistle up a unique cousin with a helpful talent each session), so in a marketing campaign, you’ve obtained this pretty natural development of this shared setting.
Multi-session adventures… now, it really works completely properly for that type of recreation, and actually, most one-shots in Merryshire can sprawl to a number of periods until the GM retains a watch on pacing. It’s a recreation that rewards tangents and tangles and subplots and so forth. Nevertheless it’s onerous to maintain a thriller coherent over a number of periods, not with out actually diligent note-taking. You are able to do it, definitely, however I’d recommendation breaking that multi-session journey right into a collection of largely self-contained mysteries. For instance, there’s one thriller I’m engaged on for The Dreadful Hare, our state of affairs anthology, that’s undoubtedly a multi-session journey. However every session largely wraps itself up, with just one or two clues left over that feed into the larger, overarching thriller.
EGG: Why play as a halfling, dwarf, pooka, or boggart as a substitute of people? (And what’s a pooka and boggart?)
GARETH: Halflings are human, or a type of caricature or cartoon of people. They’re individuals with sure points exaggerated for comedic impact, like their appetites, their hobbies, their parochialism, and different points downplayed. They allow us to play in a setting that appears and behaves just about like our world (or this fuzzy oldy-times Merrie England model of our world, with cobbled streets in little villages and scrumping for apples and squires and vicars and constables), however it’s in tender focus and every little thing’s a bit bit gentler and rather less consequential, and you may cease for tea and truffles in the course of a homicide investigation. Halfings are the default participant character kind; we encourage most teams to be largely halflings.
Dwarves… properly, they obtained dropped in partly due to the preliminary inspiration from Center-earth, and since they’re the proper top. However they fulfill two helpful roles within the setting. Firstly, they’re nice at being straight guys – they’re extra gruff and severe than the halflings, so the halfling absurd jokes play properly towards the distinction of the stoic, sober dwarves. Second, they carry in components of the broader world past the Driving – past the land of the Halflings, there’s this grim and threatening classic-fantasy realm, which is a helpful supply of plots. My phrase, previous Gaffer Grummukins was a secret spy for the darkish lord! Dwarves are good for gamers who wish to deal with the mystery-solving and never the nonsense.
Boggarts modified so much over the course of growth. They began out as a type of goblin-meets-gollum, and have ended up as these inverted halflings, with ‘spooky’ changing ‘cosy’. The goblin factor was a bit too chaotic, which overlapped with the Pooka. Boggarts are for gamers who like being bizarre and a bit sneaky and indirect.
And Pooka… they’re from mythology, they’re shapeshifting trickster spirits. They crept in from At Swim Two Birds, which is one in every of my favorite books. They’re there so as to add a bit little bit of magic – not an excessive amount of, simply sufficient. An excessive amount of magic and it’s onerous to do logical deduction.
EGG: As you play, you make the city that the mysteries happen in. How do you go about constructing the areas?
GARETH: We’ve obtained a stunning default village map, and a default set of villagers that you should utilize or ignore as desired. As a part of character creation, the gamers choose their houses and resolve on their Enterprise within the village; in addition they describe a few of their neighbours and give you odd rumours about them. They title the village, choose what it’s identified for. Importantly, they resolve who the village constable is and why the constable can by no means clear up a thriller with out their assist.
Now, the villages are all of a chunk. They’re all cosy little nation villages with a market and a pub and a tea store and a bit church, so related you may get away away with utilizing the identical map for each village. However every one’s subtly completely different, and doing the village creation collaboratively makes positive all of the gamers have a good suggestion of the temper of their group.
(Additionally, I ought to level out that not each thriller takes place in your house village. There’s a second map, the Environs, for the lands round. That’s the place you drop in stuff you solely want for one thriller and would possibly by no means be seen once more – the remoted nation home, the lavatory the place our bodies get dumped, the seaside you want as a result of the gamers have determined they wish to have a picnic on a seaside.)
EGG: Past Merryshire Detective Membership, what else are you engaged on?
GARETH: Merryshire’s companion quantity is The Dreadful Hare, an anthology of mysteries by Robin Legal guidelines, Kevin Kulp, and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. We’re additionally placing the ending touches to the Path of Cthulhu 2nd version books.
Additionally popping out quickly (not from Pelgrane) is my subsequent novel, The Dungeon E-book, which because the title suggests takes Rudyard Kipling’s traditional Jungle E-book and sticks it right into a D&D-esque dungeon. And a billion different initiatives, a few of which might get me murdered if I talked about them prematurely.
Merryshire Detective Membership from Pelgrane Press
Finish Date: Aug 22, 2026 at 3:00pm EDT.
“You play newbie detectives in a cozy-fantasy setting. Your band of plucky investigators solves mysteries (very often, homicide mysteries) that crop up with exceptional regularity within the pretty little halfling village you design collectively.”
Egg Embry doesn’t use AI in any of his writing. He participates within the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Video games’ Affiliate Program, Kobold Press Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Affiliate. These packages present promoting charges by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Video games, Kobold Press, and Amazon. Should you just like the articles at EN World please contemplate supporting the Patreon.
