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Dear Elizabeth... • 2018 rpg winner

Will C • no link

You are a heroine in a regency or Victorian novel. So is your best friend. Though apart, you write letters to each other. 

You will both need notecards, paper, pens - fountain or quill. Biros will Not Do. Tea & cake optional.

-: Create Your Heroines :-

Describe your personality. Pick a Virtue, a Vice, a Hope. Embrace those 19th century values.
Describe your family. What does Father do? What is Mother like?

How did you meet? Each describe a special moment you share. Why did you part?

-: Setup :- 

On notecards write one each of:
MEETING
GUEST
COURTSHIP
BIRTH
SCANDAL
DEATH
QUARREL
PROPOSAL

Shuffle, deal half to each player.

-: Play :-

Players sit in separate rooms. No interaction between players or their characters except by letter. Maintain the illusion.

An Event happened this Spring. Draw a notecard - interpret imaginatively. 

Use pen & paper to write a letter to your friend. Describe your event. Ask them questions about their life; answer theirs. Develop shared history & supporting characters. Channel your inner Austen, Brontë, Eliot.  

When done, post it under the door. Read the letter posted to you.

Repeat for Summer, Autumn, Winter.

SOLO VARIANT: You write letters, but never receive replies. You wonder why.

Author Comments

This RPG was inspired by Regency novels and dramas, and the tactility of writing letters by hand.

Judge Comments

If you like the idea of epistolary games, this is for you. The play experience benefits a lot if you already have some knowledge about the tropes and cliché of Jane Austen novels, but even without it the game is quite smooth. - Rugerfred

Dear Elizabeth is lovely as a correspondence simulator, a throwback to an age of longform text messaging, but what stood out most to me is the aching sorrow contained in the ten words explaining a solo variant. - Kelsey

Beyond simply being a prompt, this was a game where writing is actually controlling play, prose almost being like a game controller. It is an experience, one that can be game-y or not, funny or not, but that demands “role playing” in its most essential form. - Maxwell

I just, I like this so much. It’s doing something new with the epistolary game format, it’s exploring an underaddressed kind of story, and the addition of the haunting single player mode is just brilliant and adds a whole bunch extra wow factor in a single sentence. - Bronwyn

A subtle, clever game that rewards knowledge of Austen and of the epistolary novel. - Jessica

More Judge Comments Coming Soon!


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