Meadow of the Witch-Hares

I haven't put out a blog post in a while, primarily because I have felt I had very little to add to the OSR and TTRPG space as of late. Play reports on my games have felt too impossible to write and I am not someone who enjoys reading game design theory. Whenever a blog does maths on average dice rolls and bounded accuracy I start tasting copper, frankly. I appreciate those who do much the same way I appreciate plumbers, that is to say fondly! But I trust you to know what you are doing without telling me in explicit detail. Awful awful sentences. But to the point: GETTING BACK INTO RUNNING TTRPGS - SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE 1. YOU PROBABLY HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING - It might feel like you do, but there is a lot of muscle memory to running TTRPGS. Re-reading the rulebook is never a bad idea, but focus only on the DM/referee-facing rules. (This does not apply to crunchy systems, but if you like crunch you probably enjoy re-reading rules anyway, pervert) 2. WHAT DO YOUR NOTES SAY ...

You're stamping your feet on the platform. You are becoming intimately familiar with the face of your watch when a tinny voice interrupts your anti-reverie: "Please will the passengers waiting on platform one-" and everyone groans. You don't even wait to listen further before forming into a grumbling mob to descend on the help desk... Why was your train delayed? (D6) A shortage of train crew A signalling fault A fault on the train A scheduling conflict Inclement weather An incident on the tracks Caused by: (D6) Tenth Century Vikings, they travelled through the Underground into Bastion and got stuck here. The Ticket Bastards, a gang that violently extort fare-dodgers with giant hole-punch devices. Antelapes, red creatures with the head of an antelope and the arms and legs of a gorilla, territorial. Psychics Anonymous, religious fundamentalists, they make each other miserable in perfect silence. Veterans of the Sodor Uprising, failed to save the steam engine, well-armed...

I'm joining a Mothership campaign soon, playing through Gradient Descent. I've made a point of avoiding spoilers but was also asked to come up with a character so I can build relationships with the crew. It's a permadeath game where you drop out if your character kicks the bucket so it might be misplaced to put so much work into a character that might just die but I really enjoyed the concept I settled on, so maybe I could reuse her in some fiction in the future. Or maybe I'll even survive!!! - <ARCHIVE REQUEST GRANTED> <RETRIEVAL COMPLETE> <FILE LOADED WITH ERRORS, ATTEMPT TO RELOAD? Y/N> <FILE LOADED WITH ERRORS, ATTEMPT TO RELOAD? Y/N> <FILE LOADED WITH ERRORS, ATTEM> Ship's Chaplain Personal Log:  171 Present: DR. JOANNE PAUL LIVESEY Star-date: <BAD INPUT> Ship Name: <BAD INPUT> Sector: <REDACTED> New crew coming aboard in <REDACTED> days. No psych profiles have made their way over yet but what else is new?...

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...