After a running my first session I'm now gearing up to send out the players' love letters. The first session went well, though I made a few slip-ups and poor choices, so I'd like to start the next session off a little better.
I admit my first question here would be why you are sending love letters after a single session. Is your intention to do these every session? Did a significant amount of time elapse? Do you want to skip over the immediate consequences of whatever happened last session, or does it feel like not enough things happened, or?
I am significantly less enthused than most MCs seem to be about the love letter technology -- I think that when they're good, they're pretty great, but that they should be deployed sparingly and in particular circumstances. It seems particularly difficult to come up with good love letters after only a single session, since there really isn't that much happening yet, and love letters generally excel at either fast-forwarding existing things to a point of crisis or resolving things that are well-developed but keep falling just outside the scope of an individual session.
But anyways, that's my bias, on to the letters.
Dear Saffron,
The market will be back on it's feet in the morning, but last night's disruption will have messed with your supply lines. Roll +hot to touch base with old suppliers and make new connections. 10+ pick 3, 7-9 pick 2, miss pick 1
-You resupply on coffee and drugs
-Some of your people don't get poached by water-slavers
-You fleece some sucker for 3 barter
-You show your face enough that those scuzzers don't think they can get away with selling the password to your place
-You pick up a hot tip (you get to ask one question from the read a sitch/person list for free at any time).
[That last option I'm not 100% on, but not sure of a better way to portray getting good gossip.
Well, more bias: I am not a fan of 'avoid a negative consequence that did not exist until I wrote it down as an option on this move' as an option on love letters. But everyone else seems to absolutely love them, so I can only plead for you to at least phrase them as a positive character activity or achievement rather than the passively-voiced suggestion that the hand of fate just randomly decided to spare them.
For example, instead of 'Some of your people don't get poached by water-slavers', something like 'You interrupt some water-slavers trying to poach some of your people.' By making it something the PC actually did in the fiction, you not only are more likely to get interesting consequences out of it -- you could start the session with the scene where the poachers are being interrupted, for example -- but you at least obfuscate the fact that you just made up a way to screw the player and then let them spend their hard-earned currency to stop you from doing it.
(Note that much of my dislike of this form of move does not apply if these are well-established threats -- things you have set up with previous moves and foreshadowing, and the player has consciously left unaddressed. It seems unlikely that this applies after a single session.)
The last option seems fine to me, another version could be 'take 1 forward to read a situation.'
Dear Lost Rabbit,
Well, that was a hell of a party last night and the chaos has opened up some opportunities. Pick whose toes you're stepping on for each of these then roll +weird:
-You fortify the warren [TRADERS or SAFFRON]
-You recruit new students [BABIES or SAFFRON]
-You wrangle 2 barter's worth of booze [BABIES or TRADERS]
On a 10+ pick 1 option that pisses off the group in question, for the rest you talk your way in/out of/around it. On a 7-9 pick 2. On a miss, they're all pissed off.
I actually just straight up can't figure out what this means, or how this move works. Is Lost Rabbit doing all those things, no matter what? Are they only doing one, that they're picking? When are they picking it? Why are you telling them all the things they are doing in a love letter -- did the player express an intention to do all these things? Aside from the confusion of how it is phrased I feel like this letter is really short on meaningful player choice.
Dear Spice Lion,
After last night's brush with the biker gang, it's time to work your magic and make some friends. Pick a group: BABIES; TRADERS; THE AUTHORITY; SAFFRON's STAFF and roll +hot. 10+ pick 3, 7-9 pick 2, miss pick 1.
-You Hypnotise an influential member of the group (I'll tell you who) with 2 hold.
-You don't draw attention from that group's enemies
-You ingratiate yourself to the group as a whole, ensuring they will be friendly to you
-You don't piss off the troublemaker of the group
-You get some dirt on another group, which you can use for leverage.
[Spice Lion came from out of town, so I want to get some connections going and setup some triangles]
This seems fine, though again 'you don't do a thing' or 'a thing doesn't happen' never feels like a particularly fun choice to me. These just seem like miss options dressed up as hits -- if I was the player I would basically never choose these options, especially if very little has been established yet about the group in question (does the player even know who the 'enemies' of each group are, at this point? Do you?)
Similarly, the 'on a miss, pick 1' thing for this and the first letter seems kind of meh to me. I would suggest rephrasing/conceptualizing it as something like 'On a miss, pick 1 and I'll tell you how it goes wrong.'
Dear Stinky Baby,
While the market knits itself back together, you need to get out there and get something to trade. Get 5 barter's worth and roll +hard. 10+ pick 1, 7-9 pick 2, miss pick 3.
-You get shafted by a scuzz trader, get -2 barter
-Happy baby and Slappy baby went and got treatment for their wounds, you owe the local doc 2 barter.
-A victim gets away, now they're out for revenge.
-The water you trade for is Nasty. You and the babies are bleeding from the eyes unless you spend 2 barter on upkeep.
[The Babies (his gang) get by raiding outside town and trading what they get at market. Nasty water is an affliction, but eye-bleeding isn't immediately harmful]
Barter seems to be much more relevant in the new edition, so can't really comment on this other than to say that the barter parts of these choices seem the least interesting. Luckily most of the options are solid enough choices on their own -- though the player is presumably guaranteed to pick the option where his gang members get medical attention before the one where he just straight up loses 2 barter. I would suggest adding something to the 'you get shafted' option -- a potential upside, or just interesting apocalyptica that makes it seem like a cooler option.
Dear Amiette,
Maybe it was the smoke, maybe it was the bodies, maybe it was the maelstrom, but now you can hear dead people. Specifically, you can use Deep Brain Scan on dead bodies. If the cause of death was beheading, you automatically get 10+.
[Amiette's player won't be able to make it next session, so I figured I'd give them a custom that'd get them excited to come back and use it]
Interesting option -- do we know, at least, that Amiette's player is interested in Amiette being able to scan dead bodies? This seems to potentially imply a lot about the Maelstrom and the PC's relation with it in particular, depending on how much has been established so far. Otherwise, sounds neat.