Mail for the OSR?

15 Aug, 2025

My idea for a different kind of Play By Post

In my current Dolmenwood game, one of my players asked if their PC could send money back to his mom. I loved the idea, and made it an option for them to reflavour his charity Gold-to-XP action.

They then asked if he could send a letter home along with the money. I loved this idea even more, and improvised a rough cost of delivery based on travel time and hireling rates.

The idea stuck with me however, and I kept thinking about how to make a simple mechanic for corresponding with NPCs in the game over mail. I like the idea of taking a bit from Good Friends Society to the OSR to allow PCs to reach beyond their physical location to interact with the wider world, effectively getting to be in multiple places at once.¹

Correspondence:

To send a letter, you need a piece of paper or parchment and ink. If you want the letter locked as well, you will also need wax and a seal.

Letters can typically only be sent to known figures and locations, who are directly connected to you by a road network or by boat. The estimated time for delivery is the base time it takes a traveller to get there, plus 1d6 days to account for complications.

The cost of sending the letter is the base day rate of a hireling (eg. 1 gp/day), times the base travel time (x nr. of days).
If you want expedited delivery, you can pay double, with the base travel time being halved.
If you want to save money, you can send the letter as part of a larger bundle, at half the cost, but with an additional 1d6 of complication delays.

Correspondence Reaction Rolls:

Sometimes what you aim to achieve with a letter requires a roll. This could be impersonating an enemy, convincing a wizard to come to your aid, or just ensuring that your letter even gets an audience with the King.

Since I'm making this for Dolmenwood, I'm having the roll be a 2d6 reaction roll, similar to hiring a retainer:

The roll would modified by the following:

• -/+ 1-2 based on relative status or rank.
• -/+ 1-2 based on your local infamy/fame (if unacquainted).
• -/+ 1-2 based on existing relationships (if acquainted).
• -/+ 1-2 based on the recipient's temperament.
• A possible +1 or +2 if you go out of your way to use fine materials or sweeten the deal with a gift or promise.
• The PC writing the letter can also make a skill check, to try to directly improve their odds. This could be DEX for intricate calligraphy, INT for strong rhetoric, CHA for endearing wordplay, etc. If the check succeeds, the reaction roll gets a +1, or +2 if exceptionally good. If the check gets a nat one, the roll gets a -1.
• If a PC has some other feature that would benefit, such as a fitting background or knowing the recipient's native tongue, or leveraging a weakness of the recipient's, this could grant an additional +1 or +2.

You can expand the system if you want:

• Add a more risky option to send letters to more remote locales, with a risk of them getting lost.
• Add a chance of the contents of secret missives being discovered.
• Have censorship measures that limit what you can write about.
• Add technological or magical advances that make correspondence faster and easier, such as messenger pigeons, semaphore towers, or magical missives.
• Publishing your letters for wider distribution, or arranging for them to be read publicly, to target a community rather than a single person.

The main goal of this idea is to give the players the agency to influence the world beyond where they are physically, getting to have their fingers in multiple pies all over the map. I like this especially for osr style games, as it gives another mundane “out of the box” option for the players to make use of to to think of creative plans and solutions to their problems.

#Dolmenwood #OSR #mail system #ttrpg