itch.io

Hello, and thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, producing physical copies proved too expensive last time I looked into it. It is something that I would investigate again if I were to publish another edition. Until then, I'm afraid it's digital only.

That's an excellent idea! Character reputations are intended to help you write your first letters: "I write to you because your fine work in Ireland distinguishes you as a scholar of great merit" and so forth. Once character introductions have been made, the Mystery usually takes precedence.

However, if anything happens during the game that the other Investigators might reasonably hear about without requiring letters to be sent, feel free to let the other players know. If you like, you could create in-world artefacts to communicate this information. For example, if you roll a 79–83, you could write a newspaper article mentioning that your character has been arrested.

Investigators can interpret Evidence that matches their specialism as often as they like. The once-per-day limit is only on investigation, i.e. rolling on the Investigation Table.

The limit is also not a strict rule. If you wish to play by electronic mail or instant message, I don't recommend following it.

Whenever Investigators wish to communicate with each other, they must use stamps. If you are using a method of communication that does not require stamps, please keep track of how many you would have remaining were you using stamps.

Hi, thanks for your feedback! I'm not quite sure what's going wrong for you but I see you sent me an email so I'll follow up with you there.

Hi Kuchenklau, I'm sorry this took so long. I have some good news, though: I found a solution to the issue.

You should be able to see a new version of the file named "Epistolary (Screen) (selectable text)" in the game's downloads section. With this version, you can search and select text as usual. I hope this helps, and good luck with your investigation!

Hello! Sorry I missed your comment. I've been without access to the Internet for a while.

It definitely isn't intended that you can't search or copy from the PDF; however, it seems to be a limitation of the software I use to create them.

If it would help, I could try and create a HTML version for you. It might not look as attractive as the PDF, but you'd be able to search it and use the copy function as normal. Would that be useful for you?

Hello, and thank you for your interest!

Writing initial letters is undoubtedly the most difficult part of the game, and I can understand your friends' concern. However, human minds are usually incredibly good – perhaps too good – at drawing connections between apparently unrelated events. For a fun game that illustrates this, try performing an image search for "stock photo" and choose any two adjacent images. Your mind will immediately try to fill in the blanks and tell you a funny story about why the two are related.

I'm confident that when you receive your first letter, the same thing will happen: you will immediately try to connect it to the letter that you just sent. And once you receive your first reply, you will then have information about three of the initial Intrigues that were presented (yours, plus your two contacts'), and you can start thinking about how they might be related.

You don't need to connect everything immediately, of course (and you shouldn't!) but your mind will naturally try to tie everything together. The investigation mechanic works to shake things up a little, to force you to reconsider ideas or begin new avenues of thought.

Here's some advice, though: I do think that it's important to establish the setting and tone of your game before you begin. Make sure that everyone wants to tell the same kind of story, and rule out anything that doesn't fit. There might be specific things that you can think of (aliens? time travel? ghosts?) that you want to rule out before you start.

And as always, set your boundaries and rule out anything that would be upsetting for any of your players.

I hope this helps. Have fun, and good luck!

Investigators are able to interpret any Evidence that matches their specialism, even Evidence they find themselves. So if you investigate and turn up evidence that matches your own specialism, that's a lucky result: you get a free Clue!

Many thanks for your question; I will make sure to state this rule explicitly if I publish an update.

I hope you have fun with the game, and good luck!

Yes, different Investigators can have the same specialism. For example, with five players, two Investigators would have the same specialism.

I recommend that if two Investigators share a specialism, they should not be in contact with each other at the start of the game.

Thank you for your lovely comment, I wish you well on your adventures!

Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you like it!

Thank you very much!

Yes, you are entirely correct. Initial letters can't contain Evidence, which means that you can include Evidence-like elements in them without them being mistaken as such.

And yes, the reason for character reputations is so that you can tailor your initial letter to its recipient.