Meadow of the Witch-Hares

Happy (belated) New Year! The weather is finally warming up here in the UK after a bitter cold snap in the first week of January, and the Meadow of the Witch-Hares is similarly thawing from a deep hibernation. I'm running a second season of Mythic Bastionland at my local game shop and had the first session take place yesterday on the 12/01/2026, so I'm keeping a write up for my own and my players usage, and hopefully your reading pleasure. Skip to the end for a photo of me at a Birds of Prey experience at Cheshire Falconry, as taken by my lovely girlfriend who bought me the experience as a birthday gift. Much love to you my darling and dashing knight-in-shining-amore!  Designing The Realm Map This is a new map I made over the course of about 2 and a bit days, based on the same principles from the first map I used in my very first sessions running Mythic Bastionland. The art style is more refined, the hexes are about 50% bigger and most importantly, each hex has a code so it is ...

In 2023 I started keeping track of all the books I read in a year using a table in my notebook, as I read a lot of books and often forget what I have read through in a year. I now collect data like how long it takes me to finish books, whether I finish them at all, page counts and so on. It is satisfying to see the numbers improve but I'm reflexively hateful toward goal-setting, so self-help isn't the aim of the exercise, I just want to remember what I read each year and maybe read a bit more each subsequent year. 2025 was a difficult year full of setbacks, but it was pretty great for books! Here are some of my favourites, with honourable mentions at the end for books I liked but can't fit into a category. THE BOOK THAT MOST SURPRISED ME A View Across the Valley Stories by Women from Wales c.1850-1950 Edited by Jane Aaron ISBN: 978-1-909983-88-5 I picked this one up whilst on holiday in North Wales. I always love a short story collection (I'm particularly fond of the Ta...

  The Meadow of the Witch-Hares has lain fallow for too long. Flu has tore through the nation and posts have died overripe on the proverbial vine. Worst of all, the foul gait of Christmas lurches Bethlehem-ward to be born... I had a couple of posts in the pipeline that I ended up deleting as they felt insubstantial and hard to write. This ruleset is definitely slight but the point is to try and get my ego out of it and to get something on the page. I felt quite proud of the Selkie Class post but I was embarrassed by how little traction it got. I'm well enough to write again and I've let myself get out of practice so here: read these rules and get a good chuckle, if you run it that's a bonus. Here is a ruleset for running a Christmas Movie-themed one shot. It IS a surprise so do not tell your players what the game is called. Simply say it is a ruleset for playing a rom-com and rom-com adjacent Christmas movies as a TTRPG. The comedy of the game is having these silly Christma...

 Hello again! It's been a while, I've been writing a submission for a zine called 'Neuromyths' on the subject of neurodiversity and mythology. It's a short story called 'Changelings' and I'll link it and drum up a commentary when everything is in place, but for now I'm going to share a player class and monster stats all to do with Selkies! Selkie Hedge Mage, by Larry MacDougall for Magic: The Gathering WHAT IS A SELKIE? Selkies are mythological creatures from various folklores around the UK, but they tend to be particularly associated with the island of Orkney off the coast of Scotland. The tale I have heard (there are numerous variations) goes like this:     Once upon a time, there lived a lonely fisherman. He had no crew, no friends, no family. He would go out onto the sea in his one-man coracle and catch fish to feed himself, sometimes taking the extra haul to the market on the other side of the island, but never staying longer than his business d...

Like most people who have played it, I'm a Mythic Bastionland evangelist. I want to put an example of my thesis from the title at the start for two reasons: one, I hope it convinces you to try Mythic Bastionland if you haven't already; and two, it gives me a chance to talk through what I was thinking at the table and how that resulted in the gameplay. THE GAMEPLAY The players spent most of the session encountering omens from the Chariot myth. Huge craters, destroyed farmsteads with displaced families, things of this nature. Eventually the Charioteer himself descends from the Heavens and starts boasting to the players about how powerful he is. "I shaped the moon, my hammer blows carved its cratered surface! I dug out the sea and terrified the trees with my strength so they no longer wander as people do..."  Amy (a player who has lost a character in every single game we play) calls his bluff and he lands in front of the party. I knew that Amy would probably die in a str...

I’ve been meaning to start a TTRPG blog for a while and the Hexmas Blogwagon from Prismatic Wasteland seemed as good an excuse as any. In short, you write a hex for this winter wonderland and place it adjacent to another blogger’s hex! This particular hex sits directly south of Orcish Toy Factory by Magnolia Keep. By the way, did you know Sir Gawain and the Green Knight takes place at Christmas? THE CHAPEL OF THE GREEN When you enter this hex for the first time, begin at encounter 1. Then when you re-enter, go to encounter 2, and so forth. A knight with a greataxe bars your way. His skin is green and veiny like the underside of a leaf and his beard has mistletoe growing in the curls. His horse is shaggy like a willow tree. He steps down to greet you and wish you a pleasant festive season. He wants to play a game. You take his axe and strike him as hard as you can, then you meet in two days time and get struck by him in turn. If you win you get to keep his axe! If you deny him his gam...