The Innsmouth Papers is a role playing game written and published by Malcolm Harbrow. It is described as a Lovecraftian letter writing game.
The supplement is available as a 15 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one the Table of Contents and one an ad.
The Introduction explains that this is a Lovecraftian letter-larp which is played by participants writing letters to each other. At least two players are needed and if there are more than two, someone to act as a postmaster to coordinate the game. Each participant will need a way of writing letters. A sidebar explains this is rules-light and the rules provided are about safety, encouraging genre and improvisation.
The Setting states that the game is set in a similar setting to the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, but other settings can be used.
Improvising Content explains that this is an improvisational game; the participants write things in their letters which are facts. The recipient can accept these as true, expand on them or decide they are untrue.
Safety: Lines and Veils covers the safety techniques. Lines are hard and are not crossed; veils are things that players are happy to say happened, but not go into the detail. How these are determined by participants is covered.
Characters has an 11-step process for generating a character. The following lists of Professions and Puzzles help in this process.
Writing Letters is about how to write them, with suggestions on playing it solo.
The Postmaster explains how the coordinator can run the game.
Inspirations gives those, and how the initial test of the game worked.
The Innsmouth Papers in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and has enough sections that they would have been useful. The Table of Contents covers the sections, but isn’t hyperlinked. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a single column format and appeared to be free of errors. Bar the cover, there are no illustrations. Presentation is plain.
This is an interesting format for a game, though it might work better than doing it in the physical, letter-writing manner it’s primarily aimed at. For one thing, that can easily rack up cost, and for another, it’s even more difficult to play internationally. The expense and difficulty of running the game through the post looks high enough to cause problems. However, it does look like a game that would work well in other mediums; play by forum, play by email, on Discord, and it would also be easy to adapt. The safety measures included are useful. The Innsmouth Papers is a decent little letter larp and it can be found by clicking here.
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