Did you know February is International Correspondence-Writing Month? The letter-writing effort is called InCoWriMo (wink to NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month) and promotes sending hand-written correspondence each day in February. Don’t know twenty-eight people? Don’t have any news? Perhaps you could just make stuff up and send it to imaginary people—enter the world of letter-writing games.

Examples of Letter-Writing Games

This blog will review De Profundis, but if its style doesn’t suit, consider Epistolary: The Letter-Writing RPG and Quill: A Letter-Writing RPG. I haven’t played either, but a quick read indicates Epistolary relies on email, and the game mechanics involve dice rolls and scoring. Quill seems aimed at a classroom setting and also includes dice rolls and scoring. Additionally, players take on characters with statistically described attributes. 

What Sort of Game Is De Profundis?

De Profundis is:

• A roleplaying game (RPG). Participants create and act as a fictional character they have created.
• A horror-genre game. As it says on the tin, “Players create the narrative by writing each other letters in the style of Lovecraft.”
• A letter-writing game. Participants are so very socially distanced, they can’t even see each other on Zoom as they play.

De Profundis Player’s Guide

The De Profundis book is written as a series of letters, which is on-brand, immersive, and kind of annoying after a while. It takes over 100 pages to communicate, “write letters to other people in the style of Lovecraftian characters.” If you are familiar at all with the horror genre, you know how commonly authors from Mary Wollstonecraft to H.P. Lovecraft employed the epistolary narrative style. The De Profundis game book will thoroughly get you in the mood.

Key Points From The Guide

• Each participant needs a character: themselves, a minor character from a horror story, or someone they’ve dreamed up.
• The Society is the group of participants who know each other in real life and plan the game together. It is also possible to play a Network game, which involves writing to characters played by participants you don’t know. They might be friends of friends or people met on-line. The book even describes a way to play alone.
• The game creator recommends “correspondence psychodrama,” and included an appendix that delves into this roleplaying style.
• The game creator also challenges participants to enter De Profundis as an immersive experience. In addition to writing letters, you are living the dream/nightmare by looking at your mundane world through a filter of horror imaginings. Like making up stories about people on the bus or noticing the strange omens and portents offered by the behavior of clouds or birds.
• Respect the “call and response” aspect of roleplaying—avoid writing solely about your own activities, ignoring everything mentioned by the other players. 
• Plan at least the start of the game, which might be quite open ended or more detailed. At least know the time and place of the story, who everyone is playing, and how you know each other. Agree on a theme and style. A Society might settle on a specific scenario, for which the playbook gives some examples, or let the story goals evolve through the writing. The guide offers tables of key word prompts.
• Save copies of the letters you send and, of course, cherish all the correspondence you receive. 

. . . ‘action’ is as important as emotion—but ‘action’ is only a pretext for expressing thought.

De Profundis

An 1820 Letter-Writing Adventure

 I’ve been playing De Profundis with two other participants since shortly after the pandemic shut down started. My group choose 1820 as our starting year to avoid math—whenever we write to each other, it is the same day as our current calendar, just 200 years in the past. We each created a typical early 1800s person and established how we knew each other. Then, on to the letters!

Establishing The Mystery

No one is in charge of our De Profundis campaign, per se. In our game each participant is, or will, experience their own brush with the weird and report on it to each other. The game is very much an improv experience. “Yes . . . and,” as the actors say. As we spin our own yarns, it is important for us to pick up on what the other participants are putting down and meld that into the shared narrative. 

Letter-Writing Lessons Learned

I’m enjoying this form of shared storytelling—it’s a great chance to mess about with fountain pens, smooth stationary, and sealing wax. Receiving a letter has become a unique experience in our age of text message and email, and I savor each missive. We’re developing quite a tale, and I’m curious where it will go next (Siberia, I think) and how we will each end up (insane, most likely). I’m also a big fan of mysterious packages, and letter-writing games like De Profundis provide the perfect opportunity to fashion cursed artifacts and diabolic codes. 

Suggestions For Letter-Writing Games

• The ”fictive dream” is constantly as risk: that is, participants set down the storyline to deal with real life or other games and have difficulty re-establishing the mood. The De Profundis player’s guide offers some tips, such as “method acting” your character as you go about daily life.
• Participants need to be dedicated to the practice. Few tabletop players willingly do their “game homework,” and letter writing is the ultimate game homework. 
• Many short, frequent letters will keep the ball rolling more easily than rare, long letters.
• While participants can’t be expected to always write back immediately, the group might consider setting a reasonable deadline for responses. 
• We have three participants. More would be interesting and perhaps increase the frequency with which we receive letters as well as add complexity to the story. 
• One of our participants is interested in their character knowing what is going on between other characters. They suggest we include updates, for example, Col. Liam includes a summary of or even a quote from Miss Feldspar’s most recent letter in the message he writes to Baron X.
• Save copies of the letters you send. (I’ve made up lots of details that I no longer remember.)
• Be a good improv partner—respond to the plot hooks your friends throw out as well as describe your own character’s activities. Look for ways for clues and events to tie together. 
• One of our participants says they could see the wisdom of agreeing on a general plot in advance. 

How Can You Learn More?

De Profundis has been around for twenty years. First published in Polish in 2001 by Portal, Hogshead Publishing launched the English translation in 2002. The game was nominated for the Diane Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming. Cubicle 7 republished it in 2010. De Profundis is rules light (more suggestions, really), so the player’s guide concentrates on evoking the proper mood for horror psychodrama correspondence through creepy illustrations and example letters. The second edition includes an email alternative and is available from Drive-Thru RPG.  

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor

Like the blog? Subscribe (form at the bottom of my website) to never miss an issue. Want more? Subscribe to the random newsletters for exclusive content. And, of course, I’m selling books. In the spirit of the letter-writing season, St. Louis Writers Guild recently published Love Letters to St. Louis. This adorable letter-shaped volume of short stories, poems, essays, and illustrations included my first science fiction story, “Welcome to Earthport Prime: A Self-Guided Tour.” A perfect Valentine’s Gift, and profits benefit the guild’s young writers program. 

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