Magic is a Heady Wine: unsorted ideas for a Regency letter-writing RPG
2020-06-08 ✢ Play-by-Post ✢ Campaign Pitch ✢ Short posts ✢ Magic is a Heady Wine ✢ Ideas
Anna & Elena Balbusso
Had some ideas over quarantine for a letter-writing RPG in a Jonathan Strange + Mr Norrell-type setting. You play as Regency-era occultists. None of the play happens in meatspace, it’s all play-by-post. Literal post, as in tree-corpses letters. Each turn takes a month. You can write multiple letters in a turn, to the GM and other players.
The world is split into three Realms:
- Society. Regency England: glittering lights, letter-writing, fox hunting, political intrigue
- The War. The battlefields of Europe: artillery, naval combat, mud and smoke and blood
- The Other Side. Faerie: brambles, dark wine, summer madness
Things that happen in one Realm affect the other two. New developments in the War will change Society gossip; happenings in Society affect the Other Side (because of meddling occultists, and also because Faerie is strangely fascinated by the human world); Faerie politics change the battlefields of the War in strange ways.
By default, players can only influence Society at the start of the game. It’s a big deal to send letters to the other two Realms.
Maybe the Referee distributes a Gazette or something. All the players get the latest issue every three turns. It’s full of updates on what’s happened in the three Realms since the last dispatch.