#kyarn meeting

[lettersfromtheashesgame]

LFTA July Update

Well. This month has been interesting.

Some quick numbers:

Total Letters in July: 39

Most Sent by one person: 10 (Mills Golden)

Most Received by one person: 7 (Rust Falls)

Starting with July I sent all the players a summary letter in character as the founder of the Inter-Regional Courier System, mostly as a way to entertain myself, since as the GM I actually don't interact with much of the game, I'm here more as an adjudicator. But I had a player reach out asking if I could include a flyer they had designed in the mail drop. This is the first in a string of interesting ways players have been interacting with the game so far.

A couple of people sent positive responses. I have no idea if the Rust Falls player is planning to mail actual cassettes, links to a Spotify playlist, or what, but I know they're planning to send something.

The next really interesting development happened when a player sent a letter directly to the IRCS! I hadn't expected this at all. I invented the IRCS mostly as a means to frame the monthly resource drops and to summarize events. I was delighted to receive a letter that I could respond to!

Naturally, the IRCS responded, explaining the founder's backstory that I totally didn't just make up on the spot. And I also awarded that player a new achievement that I had to make up on the spot as well.

Otherwise, players are also starting to decorate the resource slips! I had been looking forward to this sort of thing from the beginning, so it makes me really happy to see this happening now. Some are really simple, but some are more elaborate.

I'm loving these so much. It's so good.

As far as events, Kyarn Meeting has formally defeated Meadows, and due to a combination of events, knocked Meadows out of the game. That player can of course come back whenever they want with a new community, but Meadows as we know it is gone. I expected something like this to happen eventually, but not this early.

Otherwise, it seems like a lot of the communities are reaching an equilibrium, and we're really in the "finding out about each other" phase of the game. Secrets are bound to come out soon! I'm really excited to see where this goes in August.

[lettersfromtheashesgame]

June Launch

Letters from the Ashes launched its first playtest in June of 2024, and there were some interesting things that happened. One of the first things to note is that I was actually late sending out initial Resources to people, which meant that the actual things that made people need to interact arrived late, so letters didn't start being sent out until about halfway through the month.

The second thing is that I noted immediately that there was a lot of "Hey, message me if you want to make contact" in the "Mail Coordination" channel of the discord server, and far fewer people willing to make first contact. I, in hindsight, should have foreseen this. I love my friends dearly, but many of us are introverts, after all. That did not stop me from being frustrated with the slow start, though. I had hoped that there would be a flurry of letters immediately, and for a few standout players there were! Kyarn Meeting (the Mothman Cult) earned a secret achievement for being the first person to send a letter to every single other player within a 3-month span, and he did it in 2. Granted, most of these letters were shitposts, but I found them extremely on brand:

In addition to the wild nonsense being sent out by the Grannies at Kyarn Meeting, they also declared war on two people immediately. Mostly as a way to get feelers out there. One of those players left the game basically immediately afterwards, so I haven't included them in the player listing, but the other is on my list of "Extremely Inactive", and so I've actually had to add a rules hotfix to prevent turtling from being a viable defensive strategy in my rules. We'll see how that goes.

One very fun thing from the end of June is that Hazelwood Farmstead (the totally normal farm that is definitely not doing Cannibalism) has itself in what is honestly a very fun conflict triangle. Hazelwood and Rust Falls were slotted together as adversaries before the game started to give some immediate tension to the game, (everyone got these rivalries, but they're not super relevant, to be honest). They decided that it would be interesting if, before game start, a person from Rust Falls had gone to Hazelwood Farmstead and been missing since then (you, know because of the definitely not Cannibalism). This has been having some very good back and forths that I'll probably cover in more detail at some point. But the fun part is that off to the side, Mills Golden has been allied with Hazelwood, and Hazelwood sent the Mills some food, which is just food (for now, because the Hazelwood player informs me of every time they send Human Steaks to other players, and I cackle every time), but I'm just waiting for the time when Hazelwood sends Lars Liverwurst to Mills Golden and for Rust falls to find out.

This is a compounded funny situation because at the end of June, I got a monthly update from Mills Golden in character, which included a decree from their leader saying "Cannibalism is now forbidden."

It's gonna be so funny when they all find out. I know the Hazelwood player is extremely excited for there to be consequences to their actions.

[lettersfromtheashesgame]

Dramatis Personae

My friends have all done some incredible work coming up with fun and unique characters and communities that really run the gamut of Post-Apocalyptic settings, and I'm excited to see how these relationships change over time. Each community starts with friendly relationships with 2 other communities, so for the sake of brevity, I've arranged this list in order, so that the communities directly above and below them are friendly (with ends wrapping together).

Some secrets are spoiled in these descriptions.

Here we go:

The Meadows, lead by Absydee Rainwater, a mostly hippie place with some culty vibes.

The Pharm, lead by Evelynn Harrington, holed up in an old hospital and actually able to still manufacture some good stuff.

The Neon Mausoleum, lead by Alastor, some neon goths in the old ruins of Salem Massachusetts who may or may not be a death cult.

The Kibbutz*, lead by The Professor, a mostly idyllic community based out of the ruins of Yale University, with access to their old moldy books in the library.

The Feathered Perch, Lead by Maggie Veruna, Airborne Flightsmith, who may or may not be actual birds. it's a little unclear. Definitely bird themed!

Blia, lead by The Moogan, extremely bureaucratic people who constantly are at war with each other over an old airtraffic control tower at Logan Airport.

Hazelwood Farmstead, lead by Alena, on the surface the most idyllic pastoral community in the bunch. Definitely no secret cannibalism here.

Blackwater Park, "lead" by King Kobold, these are the Mad Max raider faction, and their leader is barely able to string words together, so the advisor is there to translate.

Rust Falls, Lead by Sheriff Abernathy, Built into an old factory district, they are rich in metals, but poor in arable land or potable water. Also the Sheriff may be hiding something.

Kyarn Meeting, lead by The Grannies, an Appalachian Mothman-Worshiping Cave-dwelling Cult.

Mills Golden, Lead by Sir Margrave Current, able to scavange basically anything you want, and are very prideful about it.

And there's the cast! Next I'm going to get into some shenanigans that have already happened, and maybe share some of the cool stationary designs that I've seen.

Edited 7/8/24 to add:

Carnivale, lead by Admiral Conrad "Conner" Hershal, an old-world cruise ship being dragged around by a pair of tugboats.

*The player for the Kibbutz is Jewish, and also my mom, so don't be giving me (or her) shit over this. She can name her community however she likes.