The Origins of Merryshire

by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan

Whence came Merryshire Detective Club? If we wish to be exceedingly nice and accurate, we can date it to after lunch on November 29th, 2023. Dragonmeet in London is one of the few times when all the far-flung Pelgranes return to the nest, and it’s become a tradition for one of us to run a game on the friday night while we eat Simon’s delicious sticky toffee pudding.

My insight was to create a GUMSHOE game where eating sticky toffee pudding in the middle of a scenario was an act performed entirely in character.

However, Merryshire’s roots go deeper. Another of my hats involves writing supplements for The One Ring roleplaying game. Tolkien is a passion of mine, and writing material for that game is a singular joy. But nailing Tolkien’s tone is tricky. Most other game settings have a degree of flexibility – just look at all the myriad interpretations of Cthulhu, from bleak nihilism to shlock comedy. You can throw in asides, use odd ideas, go off on tangents. Not with Tolkien. That’s not to say you can’t have different interpretations and a wide variety of adventures in Middle-earth, but you have to be very, very, very careful with your words.

But part of the joy of writing is coming up with wild ideas and trying things out. Therefore, I’ve found it useful to have a release valve when working on a Tolkien project, another book where I can exorcise the inappropriate. For example, the first time I wrote Moria, I wrote Eyes of the Stone Thief at the same time. Merryshire contains every bad joke I wanted to make over the course of several One Ring supplements.

The other major inspiration, of course, was the desire to really GUM some SHOES. We’ve done all sorts of investigative games in the past – multiple flavours of occult weirdness, super-powered crimes, space cops, vampire espionage, swashbucklers – but I wanted something that hewed closer to classic mysteries like Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes. As halfling society is basically late 19th/early 20th century England with sillier names and a slight fairytale gloss, it’s non-destructive nerdtroping. The butler can do it without having to be a secret Cthulhu cultist…