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In any setting prior to the wide adoption of e-mail (and even moreso before readily affordable long-distance phone calls), correspondence with various NPCs is an incredibly natural form of bluebooking: When the PC writes to a correspondent during the session, you can encourage the player to write the actual letter (or telegram or trans-spectral synaptic encoding or whatever) before the next session. And then you can both reward the player, develop that thread of the campaign world, and encourage further correspondence by writing an actual response and giving it to them as a prop.

The great thing about correspondence — like any form of bluebooking — is that it allows the player to remain engaged with the game even when they’re not physically sitting at the table (or participating in the video call). It also affords them an opportunity to engage with their character in a different way, a more introspective and considered way, than they normally would. The benefits of this will often reflect back into how they play their character at the table, too, resulting in richer and deeper roleplaying.

Some games lend themselves particularly well to this dynamic. In Trail of Cthulhu, for example, the players are specifically required to create Sources of Stability during character creation — NPCs who are particularly important to their character and help them retain their grasp on sanity. Mechanically, the PCs must have meaningful interactions with their Sources of Stability in order to recover their Stability score between scenarios. For the globe-hopping Eternal Lies campaign, which naturally took the PCs far away from their Sources of Stability, I allowed the PCs to count each meaningful act of correspondence to count as an interaction.

The result was a rich set of correspondence which kept the PCs connected to a wider world, while also giving the campaign a rich multi-dimensionality that extended beyond the immediate circumstances of the current adventure.

CORRESPONDENCE TRACKER

From the GM’s side of things, however, it can be non-trivial to keep on top of all this correspondence. Particularly if you get a group who is eager and willing to really lean into things, starting up multiple missive chains with a wide cast of characters.

Keeping track of stuff is, of course, exactly what the campaign status document is for. So even if you hadn’t noticed which series this post belongs to, it probably won’t comes as a surprise that I often include a correspondence tracker as a module in my campaign status document.

Here’s what that can look like, taking an actual example from the campaign status document of my first Eternal Lies campaign:

LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS

• 11/17/1934: Robert to Julian (Session 4); response sent to St. Paul (arrives 12/1/1934)
• 1/3/1935 : Robert to Julian (Session 9), mailed from Athens around 1/23/1935, response sent to Allaghmore House on 2/20/1935 (arrives 3/15/1935)
• 1/15/1935: Robert to Rose (Session 9), mailed from Prague around 1/25/1935, response sent to Allaghmore House on 2/22/1935 (arrives 3/15/1935)
• 1/21/1935: Alice to Margaret (Session 9), mailed from Cairo, telegram sent to Allaghmore House on 3/1/1935 – Margaret was given a list of people to investigate
• 1/21/1935: Alice to Cora (Session 9), mailed from Cairo, response sent to Allaghmore House on 2/24/1935 (arrives 3/16/1935) – asked for news from home
• 1/21/1935: Jason to Kitty/Rachel, multiple letters from Cairo (including gifts of turban, Bast statue, and a racist doll)
• 1/21/1935: Jason to Rachel telegram [NEED DRAFT]
• 2/1/1935: Jason to William Dalton (attorney) , telegram sent in response 2/28/1935 – people have been making inquiries about Frankly Aviation
• 2/1/1935: Jason to National Geographic, telegram sent in response 3/5/1935 – National Geographic very interested, would also be interested in McCandalass’ accounts

RESPONSE SCHEDULE

• 12/1/1934: Julian to Robert (waiting in St. Paul)
• 2/28/1935: Telegram from William Dalton to Jason
• 3/1/1935: Telegram from Margaret to Alice
• 3/5/1935: Telegram from National Geographic to Jason
• 3/15/1935: Julian to Robert
• 3/15/1935: Rose to Robert
• 3/16/1935: Cora to Alice
• 3/16/1935: Kitty to Jason [NEEDS DRAFT]

There are a few things to note here.

First, of course, there are dates for correspondence. The utility here seems pretty self-explanatory. I was also indicating what session the correspondence was sent during, but you’ll notice I ended up dropping this. I think this was primarily because, when one of our players got a new job and was leaving town, we ran marathon sessions for two straight weeks in order to wrap up the campaign, so the sessions were really blending together at that point. The intention, though, was that it was easier to find my original notes on the correspondence (when necessary) if I told my future self where those notes were located.

Second, I used the [NEEDS DRAFT] tag to indicate a piece of correspondence which had happened in the campaign, but for which the player had not yet provided me the actual text.

Third, I track the NPC responses in a separate Response Schedule. This indicates when NPC letters would arrive. (Or, more accurately, when they would be available. With the PCs globetrotting and going on weird expeditions into strange corners of the Earth, it often take some time for their mail to catch up with them.) Although I refer to it as a “response” schedule, this list also includes NPC-initiated correspondence, and it would also act as a To Do list for my own letter writing.

Which, it should be noted, is another advantage of correspondence-based play: It also gives you, as the GM, the opportunity to explore your NPCs in a different way, often adding depth to their presentation in countless ways.

Next: Trackers

Campaign Status Module: Dungeon Status Campaign Status Module: Restocking Checklists Campaign Status Module: Event Fallout