James Herbert Brennan

Irish writer (1940–2024)

James Herbert Brennan (5 July 1940 – 1 January 2024) was an Irish lecturer and the author of over 100 fiction and non fiction books for adults, teens and children, as well as several role playing games.

Brennan was born to grocers James and Sarah Brennan and grew up in Gilford, Northern Ireland. He became interested in mysticism at an early age, an interest that would remain with him the rest of his life. At age 18, he became a journalist with the Belfast Telegraph. In the 1960s, he moved to Dublin to become the editor of a weekly magazine titled Scene. Brennan started to create his own Roman themed role playing game called Arena. In his 2014 book Designers & Dragons: The 80s, game historian Shannon Appelcline noted that this game was noteworthy as "the earliest notable RPG to really take a solid look at historical roleplaying." Applecline also pointed out that Man, Myth, & Magic was "one of the earliest RPGs to provide truly serialized adventures" and that "Man, Myth & Magic went further, providing tighter connections between adventures, and even cliffhangers at the end of each supplement." Brennan followed this with another Yaquinto RPG, Timeship (1983), in which the players play themselves as time travellers. Notably, this was the last role playing game published by Yaquinto before it went out of business. Brennan wrote a number of other adventure gamebooks outside of the Grailquest series, including two published only in French – Aztec Quest (1997) and Egyptian Quest (1997). In all, Brennan wrote five books in The Faerie Wars Chronicles, which sold a combined 7.5 million copies. In 1998 he published Martian Genesis an ancient astronaut book which claimed the human race is of extraterrestrial origin.