Monthly Archives: April 2016

Pirate Laws

Started thinking about some pirate laws today. For reasons.

  1. Be ye not on fire
  2. Pillage before ye burn
  3. Possession be more important than ownership
  4. If I licked it, it be mine
  5. It be Cap’n, not anything else
  6. No doublin’ up on monikers
  7. Dying your beard to get a new moniker be acceptable
  8. Swords be better than guns
  9. Thar be no pirate laws
  10. The pirate code be more like guidelines

Lost Letters

I may come up with a better name than this, but I like the alliteration of Lost Letters.

Letter-writing roleplay is something I had never really considered to be it’s own thing until recently, having set it firmly in the category of “assisting other roleplay” in my mind. The idea I had was that letter-writing made other games better – writing letters between characters enhances roleplay. I’m not sure when I changed my mind about that and determined that the act of writing letters on its own could be more than enough roleplay to be getting on with without needing the structure of an external game to support it.

And so, my concept of “lost letters”. These are letters or emails which while addressed (correctly) to the recipient[1] seem to be impossible or out of left-field, encouraging the recipient to respond and between the two of you create a new world of roleplay.

The first example of this I did was crafting a letter from a shady laboratory to a replicant[2] offering assistance with maintenance and upgrades in exchange for the opportunity to study them. This was well received, and it’s been in the back of my mind ever since.

Tonight it came up again, and I came up with the concept of letters that are replies to letters that were never sent by the recipient. Exactly how the chain of letters came to be is up for decision by the participants in it, depending on how they craft their letters and responses. It could be that the letters are travelling in time somehow ala The Lake House, or perhaps the original letter came from an alternate reality. Perhaps a doppelganger has been pretending to be you and sending letters on your behalf, or perhaps you aren’t who you think you are. It could be that it’s all an honest mistake but you find yourself enthralled by the contents of the letter.

There are no rules to this game except those you apply yourselves. You need only someone to roleplay with and a chosen medium to do so in. I doubt the concept is entirely original, but feel free to attribute me if you want to, or link to this post – I appreciate a bit of traffic now and then.

Footnotes   [ + ]

1. not “to the occupier” or “to whom it may concern”
2. a cybernetic entity capable of mimicking human form and behaviour