Love Letters

So we've played our first session, and are doing our second one tomorrow, with 2 weeks in between. One of the players can't make it, so his guy will be off on a quest of his own. A new player will be joining us, and the other two original ones will be there, with a week or two of game-time having passed since.

So my first questions is how often do you use love letters to begin a session, and what criteria do you use to decide?

Second, I was going to write the following letter to the driver, who spent the first session looking for work and not having any luck. But I'm not sure if this is being fair or not, since it doesn't give him a choice about taking the job.

Dear Gearshift,
Since we last spoke, you picked up a package delivery job for Hugo that took you somewhere you haven’t been before. Please roll+sharp.
On a 10+, good job, you made 1 barter and got to test out your machine guns. Mark one experience.
 On a 7-9 choose 1. On a miss, choose both:
•   You didn’t think you’d need your truck, so you took the sedan. That was a mistake. It takes 1 harm and needs some cosmetic repairs now that you’re back in town. At least you got paid enough to cover it, but you’re not really ahead now, are you? Mark one experience.
•   You didn’t spot the ambush in time to get away clean. You still got away, but you missed the deadline and the recipient was already gone when you arrived. You’ll need to return the cargo to Hugo now. He’s not going to be happy. Mark one experience.

Love and kisses, your MC.

So, is this mean? On a success he gets a barter and an XP, which seems ok. Anything else gets him semi-screwed, but at least he gets XP to compensate.

For my 8 player campaign I write love letters every time someone has missed a session. I see loveletters mostly as a tool keep the rarer players integrated into the environment (because if they miss two sessions alls their cool NPC relationships might have been terminated by other players shooting mind bullets or real bullets at them) and let the player choose some budding relationships. If I want to give them more resources I usually make them aquire something they can sell or bargain with during the session. So the savvyhead that had missed the session had spent her time could choose stuff like having spent her time cooking 2-barter worth of meth, having the local bigshots son as an apprentice or being offered a sweet business deal selling specially bred curry turtles to a NPC resturaunt if she promised not to sell any to the Maestro'D's establishment (triangles triangles triangles! especially fun if they are so out of the loop they don't notice them right away).

Also being poor is as fun as being rich in AW, don't be afraid to just take away their stuff like crazy between sessions. As long as they get something cool like a relationship (which doesn't have to be a nice thing it can be something like you have compromising photos of someone) the players are super happy.

I think that Love Letter is spot-on. It provides immediate history to play off of, and it explains why that character wasn't around last time.

I think that Love Letter is spot-on. It provides immediate history to play off of, and it explains why that character wasn't around last time.

I probably wasn't very clear, as I wrote the post in a hurry. The character I wrote that for was indeed at our first session. The events described were just a little something to get us back in the mood of the game.

I went ahead and gave it to him, and he aced his roll, so he got a barter and nothing bad from it.

I posted the love letters that our MC handed out during our game here

I don't think you're in danger of being too mean ;)