Let's open up the doors to your imagination, and take a stroll.

- You're a bunch of ex-military types, all surviving members of your unit. You're the squad leader, and you and your buddies are driving along a country lane to the Badger's Drift, the pub in town. Tonight, however, your weekly trip down the pub is interrupted by a brilliant light lancing up into the sky. It's coming from a saucer-shaped vehicle which is sitting in the middle of the road ahead.

- You're a hypnotherapist. Your new client has just turned your world upside down. 'My husband,' she has just said. 'I think he's trying to kill me.'

- You're hanging around the apartment block where you all live. One of your buddies is demonstrating a weird new ability of theirs - they can practically predict the future. They've persuaded you all to put in bids for tomorrow night's lottery. Two unmarked black Cadillacs suddenly roll up. They don't look like the local drug dealers' cars - they drive Lexuses.

Four men pile out of the Cadillacs. They are practically identical - black suits, black fedora hats, white shirts, black ties. Black shades. They are all tall, slender, and gaunt, like undertakers. They walk funny as they approach your crew.

What do you do?

And what game are you playing?

Well, what you do depends on your characters, your backgrounds, and your training.

But the game you're playing ... is Mythras.

Modern Setting

The background for the game doesn't really matter. Whether you're riding a destrier to Castle Porovel in the Principality of Lambida, a flycycle tooling along at Mach 2 across the Great Plain to meet the Grass Kings of RIngworld, or a quadbike through the New Forest for a rendezvous with the Lymington Ley Line Explorers, Mythras can be used for them all.

The focus for the next few weeks' worth of blogs is on a modern setting. Ideally, the stories can be set anywhere in the last ten, or up to ten years into the future. As of the publication of this blog, that's anything from January 2012 to December 2032. But if you like, you can set your stories in any time period which people call "modern" - from the 1950s through to the 2040s, if you like.

What makes this era familiar?

- Transportation: The modern game has modes of transportation available which allow you to travel anywhere on the globe; from bicycles to aeroplanes, from quadbikes to helicopters, from roller skates to trucks. Want to have your characters travel from Holyhead to Paris? They can hop onto the Dublin ferry, and from there arrange for overseas or air travel to France, or they can go by road to Manchester and hop on a plane from Manchester Airport. The world is only a few hours away.

- Communications: The internet has opened the world to your fingertips. Everything from emails to VOIP chats, ro old fashioned phone calls, texts and social media posts. If someone has an online presence, you can reach them.

- Information: Along with the ability to connect with anyone, anywhere, the internet has brought the world's knowledge to the palm of your hand. Your cellphone can access vast libraries of data, knowledge, and literature, from all over the world. You just need to know where to look, and how to look.

- Business: We live in the age of capitalism, where a modern businessman can run their entire life from the comfort of their cellphone. From keeping track of your finances to actually paying for goods and services contactlessly, But even before our cells became such versatile tools of commerce, we're familiar with credit and debit cards, loans and overdrafts, and paying for goods with plastic.

- Weapons: There is an entire supplement, Mythras Firearms, which looks at these. Guns, guns, guns. Something which would make fantasy settings far more interesting, and the fight scenes all too brief.

A Look At All Things Modern

This is the start of a series, looking at all the different options available to Games Masters of Mythras who want to adapt the Core Rulebook to a modern setting. In the coming weeks, we'll be looking at modern backgrounds, modern skills, modern Passions, and a good long look at the supplements Mythras Companion and Mythras Firearms.

Then we'll be looking at different kinds of modern settings, and presenting ideas for different kinds of modern scenarios and campaigns to whet your appetite.

So settle into the driver's seat of your favourite car, turn on your entertainment centre, and listen to your favourite tunes as you set off on a long trip through all things Mythras Modern.