Doing a Bit of Actual Writing

I’ve been thinking about it and I decided I will skip doing the passphrases for the letter for now as well. I need a bit more specific use case for them because if I go the generic route it’s 12 x 11 = 132 passphrases for just the initial 12 nobles. Not doing them for houses that are not in direct alliance is still 12 x 5 = 60 passphrases which is a lot of passphrases to write.

So I’m going to continue with writing the letter templates today.

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I have written 11 templates. They are a bit dry, but I feel like keeping them concise and formulaic is important for this gameplay loop. I’m realizing now that I won’t be able to do very flexible storytelling via the letters themselves without compromising the pattern recognition aspect of the gameplay. Hopefully other opportunities will present themselves for that.

I also wrote out a set of rules which I plan to combine in making a couple of levels for the prototype:

1. The letter must be sealed with the sender’s house seal
2. Wax must be the official color of the sender’s house
3. The correspondence must be between known nobles
4. The greeting must conform to court etiquette
5. The signature must match the sender
6. Nobles are assumed to be at their estates unless otherwise stated in the letter
7. Direct statements about locations are permitted only for the sender’s own estate or province

And also a separate Court Etiquette section which will be on a different page: 

Every letter opens with a greeting.

The greeting depends only on the relative standing of the sender in relation to the recipient.

Message content, urgency, and subject do not affect the greeting.

The greeting states the full title and name of the recipient.

If the sender is of lower or equal standing the name is preceded by “Honored”.

If the houses are not in alliance the greeting just states “To the attention of” followed by the recipient's title and name.

Nobles communicate directly only the matters  within their own estate and province, unless the letter explicitly states that they are elsewhere or that information is relayed from another noble.

When mentioning other nobles by name, the form of address must follow the same etiquette rules and include “Honored” where applicable.

At the moment I feel like it’s all a bit bland and simple, but I have to start somewhere and I can’t afford to keep working on this while I don’t even have a simple prototype. There will be time enough to revise and polish later if the prototype shows potential.

Tomorrow I’ll start laying out how I’m going to work out how I’m going to organize these in the project itself.