Letter Larping - designing for success

#1

I recently came across this website: https://letterlarp.home.blog/ which really intrigued me.

I’ve played in a failed game of De Profundis and I think I know some of the reasons it failed, players mis-estimating their available time for long-form letter writing and early letters getting lost in the post that killed the momentum.

But a letter larp remains my great white whale. I’d love to know what ideas everyone has on how to make something like this a success - in terms of player momentum, asynchronus play and all that stuff. There is a section on the site I linked to about running such things but I don’t think it really digs into a lot of the reasons why such games fail.

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#2

I’m just starting to organize some playtests of an epistolary RPG myself. So this is definitely of interest to me. Unfortunately, I don’t have any useful answers on how to keep players engaged. I’m hoping that keeping the game length short (6-10 letters) and making you directly responsible to one other player (it’s a 2 player game) will help. But I can’t say for sure until we test it out.

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#3

There’s two things that spring to mind when thinking about a letter-writing LARP:

  1. I believe setting a timeframe (10 letters over the course of a year, at least 2 done by X date) helps not only define the game, but also puts a pressure on the participants to keep their end of things. It allow allows for the out of game conversation about “hey I can’t meet this commitment because Y reason, what can we do about it?” to occur.
  2. Much like @Ren_Neuhoff 's microgame about the mars rover, I feel that you should include some sort of way to gamify the lack of a response, whether through missed post or missed schedule. I think you can get some value out of that.
  3. since we love having our laser like focus on what we are emulating for most games, having a set list of subjects that gets randomized for each participant to use like in Dear Elizabeth helps keep a tight focus and gives each player an “out” when their juices are dry I think.

I love the idea though, especially if you can also incorporate the medium you’re using. Maybe it has to be made of cutouts from magazines? Can only be written on coloured paper? Only in pencil that you can see when something was erased?

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#4

That is great! Thank you. Lots of ideas in here and I definitely take your point about gameifying a lack of response. Or storing photos of the letters online somewhere as a back up in case they don’t arrive.

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#5

The game I’m making has you mailing Tarot cards to each other, as well as small mementos (photos, newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, pressed flowers, bird feathers, doodles, maps, anything that can fit in a normal envelope).

Taking advantage of the physicality seems like a good avenue to explore, if you want people to actually write letters to each other. If you don’t force players to do that, then people will just send emails back and forth in character. Which is also cool, but not really the same.

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#6

Thanks @RedMagus77 for the mention. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: I definitely think having a prompt of some kind makes letter generation easier and also helps reinforce the themes you want showing up in play. You could even do multiple prompt lists for tone, event, etc. or different prompt lists for each character.

I think letter larping has a ton of potential, but obviously it has some shortcomings in execution bc of busy schedules and just generally putting writing the letter off. What might be helpful is reminding players that this is an rpg, and even though it’s not in a standard format, that time should be set aside for this commitment.

Hopefully this helps and I’m excited to see where this thread leads you :slight_smile:

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#7

I could really see horror mystery work well with letter larp.
This is very inspiring!

At the same time, based on my experience with Play-by-Post, the real experience may be quite sobering. Already with PbP, the engagement level drops rapidly in a short time usually. With offline paper mail, the barrier is even much higher.

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