While writing Love letters for some upcoming sessions of Motw I got wondering, is there any rescources on creating good love letters? Or even just an anthology of different love letters that people could use as templates?
While writing Love letters for some upcoming sessions of Motw I got wondering, is there any rescources on creating…
While writing Love letters for some upcoming sessions of Motw I got wondering, is there any rescources on creating…
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ive only seen some as examples in published games like AW and Urban Shadows.
I cann’t recall seeing any, but I do have mental template I tend to follow. It usually goes:
Thing happen that’s tied to recent events
Roll a stat
Choose a number of things from a list based on roll
I try to make the list of either cool oppurtunities with risks or potential drawbacks, or complications that could probably be dealt with. I try not to mix and match. I like to leave it so they always make at least one choice, but they can never get everything. There are sometimes I break this formula, if the event sounds cool enough.
Fraser Simons I think i might collect those in a doc along with any i make that i’m particularly happy with.
David Rothfeder I always just create them from scratch and obviously haven’t put enough thought into the underlaying formula. Really helped me seeing it put out like that. Might search out LLs with different structures and write out their formula.
Some times I break it by making success much better or failure much worse. It could be:
event
on 10+ this
On 7-9 choose1, on miss choose 3
Alex Prinz I think that’d be super helpful! There’s a lot of great ones in the advanced fuckery for AW.
Of course one of the best things about love letters is giving somebody one that breaks the pattern:
“The puppies! They’re everywhere! YOu can hear thier whispers! They Want Your Blood!
Love,
The MC”
For me, the main thing is to include something cool and something terrifying (they might be the same thing). Whether it’s a roll and choose, or a choose one of these, or just tell us what the story is, make sure that it’s going to be really compelling for the player (and to a lesser extent everyone else in the game).
I only made them once since I’m pretty knew to mcing but I followed this:
1. Tie the love letter to a front that I need to advance between downtime;
2. Make the choices double-edged: a good thing comes with a complication;
3. Choices are linked and the more you choose the more you complicate the outcome.
Hmm, good call. I’m making a new category for love letters, hopefully that will bring them out of the woodwork and into discussion.
My biggest thing is to let time pass. So we ended last session in the spring with a couple things brewing – let’s jump to summer, use love letters to sort out what happened, and dive into the juicy aftermath! I also like to use love letters to examine off-screen stuff PCs have going on, to draw on their Hx, or the other named NPCs on their sheets, or push those relationship triangles in interesting directions.