I released a game! Over a month ago, actually.
Epistolary is a co-operative letter-writing RPG about solving mysteries. I wanted to create an experience akin to the feeling of reading a good epistolary novel or playing a great game of Eldritch Horror. That sense of grand mystery and adventure conveyed through small moments, discoveries and anecdotes.
Early iterations of the design had one player take on the role of a game master or coordinator, but I quickly realised that it would be more fun for everyone if both the mystery and its resolution were invented by the players throughout the course of play. The game makes heavy use of that human inclination to find connections between unrelated events: I could have called the game “Apophenia”, but I think “Epistolary” is both a nicer word and a better title.
One thing I decided quite early on was that I wanted players to be able to budget for the game ahead of time. Since it involves sending letters through the post, which has an associated real-world cost, I didn’t want anyone to feel unable to play because of uncertainty about how much it would end up costing them. This is where the stamps system came from.
In Epistolary, the sum of a character’s resources – time, money, health, and so on – are represented by a number of stamps. At the start of the game, each player has around twenty stamps. These are spent in order to send letters, and also lost on occasion due to unlucky dice rolls, representing the expenditure of those resources. Lost stamps can be recovered (they haven’t been used, after all), but a player can never end up with more stamps than they started with (so the player never has to go out and buy more stamps).
The stamps system means that before the game starts, every player knows how many stamps and envelopes they should buy, and can easily estimate how much paper they’ll need, too.
It’s also the reason why a character is out of the game when their player has one stamp remaining, instead of the more satisfying “you’re out when you run out of stamps.” That last stamp is required to send on the character’s notes and inform a contact of their fate.
The system isn’t perfect, and there are occasions where a player will need to buy an extra stamp and envelope. This can happen if their character is out of the game but one of their contacts is unaware of this and sends them a letter anyway. If players are concerned about this, they can notify the other players by email or through other channels, but usually players don’t mind buying the odd extra stamp or envelope.
This was my first time commissioning artwork for any project, and it was a lovely experience. The cover illustration is by Kira Smith, and the internal illustrations are by William Kerr. Both of them did incredible jobs, and I’m really happy with the results. Looking at sales, it’s going to take a long time to make back the money I spent on these illustrations, but I regret nothing. Just look at this:
Kira’s cover illustration is genius, too. She had very little to go off; just some vague mumblings from me about 20th century letter-writing and impending doom, but she managed to capture exactly the feeling I was going for. It was wonderful working with such talented people.
Epistolary is available on itch.io and on DriveThruRPG.