Letter Games
!Letter Games Written by Lisa Tomihiro
Introduction
The Letter Game (also called Persona Letters or Ghost Letters) has been around a long time. Some writers use it to increase their ability to create realistic characters. Caroline Stevermer believes that it originated as an acting exercise, one character writting a letter “in persona” to another. I first discovered Letter Games when I read “Sorcery and Cecelia” by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. The book was baised on a letter game they had played over the course of a summer. In the afterword they explained how the game worked and the rules. I was facinated and immediatly tried one with a close friend. We utilized regular mail, and e-mail. I discovered that having e-mail made the game go much faster (especially since we lived in seperate states). So the Letter Game transformed from actual letters to e-mails (sometimes written more than once a day), a sort of two person PBeM with no GM or with two GMs depending on how you looked at it. The letters tended to be long on characters and background and have much less of an overall plot. That’s actually how the game tends to work out. Read “How to Play” and you’ll se why.
How to Play
First you need two players (you can do more but two really works best). Either you can decide between the two of you what you want the setting/background to be or the person who writes the first letter can decide. It usually helps if both of you at least agree on a genra (fantasy, space, science fiction, spy stories, whatever). The person who writes the first letter is responsible for 4 things:
* They must begin to define the setting
* They must define their own character
* They must say/imply why the two characters must write letters rather than meet in person (or phone or whatever).
* They must say something about the interaction between the two characters (ie they can claim the other player as a sister, or they can just be sending mail to an unknown pen pal but some relationship needs to be defined).
The person who recieves the first letter is responsible for:
* Building on the setting
* Defining their own character
Both of you must develop an idea of what the plot is but you must never tell the other person your idea about the plot. This is why the letters can get long on gossip and short on plot. The fun part of not knowing what the other person is doing is that you can accidently help their plot along (or distroy it) with one of your letters.
Continuation
As the letter game progresses you both add more things about your character, the background, and the plot(s). Watching the background get built up and seeing the characters change (or just learning new things about them) is exciting. If your characters know each other you may discover your partner regailing you with things you did as a child that you didn’t even know about. This game requires two people who are very adaptable (both about the background, and their characters and especially the plot). It is very easy to throw something at someone and completely confuse them. In fact that’s part of the fun. It’s intresting to see how the other person will react, when you turn their fiancee into a dragon for example (I did that to my partner in the first game) or send six knights to rescue them from the war (that was my partners retaliation). It helps if one person has played before but it’s not necessary.
If anyone had additional questions or wants to ask how to write a good starting letter write to me at Tomihiro@aol.com. I’ve played in eight now (only four of them really got going) so at least I have experiance! (Originally posted June 1997)
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