# Dead Letter Society *Created:* 2026-11-02, *Modified:* 2026-11-02 ![[Dead Letter Society (cover).jpg]] Two immortals, a correspondence, and an institution neither of them understands. **Dead Letter Society** is a game for two players who write to each other — literally, in letters — and find out what their vampires have become in the gaps between the post. It is not a table game wearing a letter motif. The letter *is* the unit of play: one player writes, the other reads and answers, and the fiction accumulates the way a real correspondence does, at the pace of whoever replies. ## Setting The premises are stated up front and everything else is the group's to decide: you are a supernatural creature who consumes blood — or something equally undesirable derived from humanity — you exist in proximity to humanity, you can interact with it, and **the motivations of the Dead Letter Society are unknown when play begins**. From there the world gets built collaboratively, in order: **what is a vampire** (yours to define, not the book's), **the human world**, **vampire society**, and then a summary of what the two players have agreed on, so the setting has a shared canon before anyone writes a word. For groups who would rather start playing, the book ships **playsets and pre-generated characters**: Lovecraftian London around 1878, Rome from Republic to Empire, the modern day, the Tea Time Detective Club, and a Gothic set — each with its own pair of characters to write as. ## Mechanics ### Three phases Play runs through a **Letter Phase**, a **Society Phase** and a **Chronicle Phase**, and the two players start *out* of step, which is the engine of the whole thing: **Player A** begins in the Letter Phase, writing and sending the first letter, while **Player B** begins in the Society Phase, having their first interaction with the Dead Letter Society and resolving a **Society Event**. From then on the phases cycle — write and send; receive a letter and chronicle your unlife; interact with the Society — and that asymmetry is what makes the correspondence feel like something happening at a distance rather than a conversation at a table. ### Characters and assets A character is admitted through an **Application Fee**, then defined by what the rules call **assets**: developed over time, and forfeited when something has to be given up. The book gives asset types and inspiration rather than a fixed list, so the things a vampire holds — and the things they lose — carry the character's history. ### When the two fictions disagree Because both players are narrating the same world from different desks, the rules give real space to **resolving conflict**: what happens when there are conflicting statements about the world, conflicting ideas about assets, or conflicting ideas about a player character's outcome. There are also rules for **character death or retirement** and for **ending the game** — a correspondence between immortals ends eventually, one way or another. ### Prompt decks The book includes **card prompts** built on tarot — **Major Arcana**, **Wands**, **Cups**, **Swords** and **Pentacles** — for when the next letter needs a subject and neither player wants to invent one cold. ## Editions - **Dead Letter Society** (v1.11, May 2023) — 140 pages, published by **Montford Tales**, written and illustrated by **Rori Montford**. *In the library* — held as the pages build, a spreads build for print, and the EPUB. The release also carries character sheets in colour and greyscale, and a guide to the game's Discord bot for groups running the correspondence digitally. ## References - [Montford Tales](https://www.montfordtales.com/)