A society of letters/Respublica Literaria

Sometimes it's nearly impossible to find people to play games with in-person. My father, an avid board-gamer in his younger days, would play Chess and Diplomacy by postcard. I'm sure people in earlier days did similar things through the post or telegram. 

But what if there were games that were meant to be played long-distance? That eliminates social contract issues that can arise in not doing things face-to-face. I'll admit that I've played essentially-zero long-distance games, message board or otherwise. I dislike long-distance games even more than long-distance relationships. But perhaps with a rules-set built for distance play would be better?

For thousands of years, long-distance communication was done through a mix of couriers and written texts. Both were a strategic asset - interference with mail remains a serious crime today, and impeding the business of an imperial courier could be a capital crime. Typically, international correspondence would be between rulers or their emissaries. Classical civilization made scholarly correspondence international, and Christianity and Islam further increased correspondence to clergy, who were often also scholars as well. 

Starting with the Rennaissance, letter-writing became a major pursuit of the educated elite, who would often be literature in a common language (e.g. Latin, Greek, or French) and created a multi-century network of correspondence that came to be known as Respublica Literaria (Republic of Letters). This informal, international fellowship was primarily male, bourgeoisie, or nobility, and remotely collaborated on various projects. The link goes to a site with visualizations of this network. While this "Republic" was concentrated in Europe, human nodes of the network, like Benjamin Franklin and Athanasius Kircher, maintained intercontinental connections. 

Letter-writing is becoming a lost art. Many arts are always endangered, but that is a blog topic for another day. I learned to write a decent letter to my grandparents, particularly my grandfather, who has earned the right to avoid what technology he can get away with. Hand-written thank-you notes are also a valuable tool in the arsenal of the grateful, or those who wish to appear grateful. Perhaps an RPG/storytelling exercise based around letters would allow the preservation of such things? After all, the most popular role-playing games take place in a pseudo-medieval world, where literacy is precious and communication can be slow without certain magic. 

Alternatively, letter-writing in the classroom can potentially be a powerful exercise. Students can practice their skill at description, persuasion, formatting, etc. Or make them role-play out writing a letter, either as a character in literature, or someone living through a historical event. Yes, much of it will be cringe-worthy, but it might reach a pupil that otherwise won't be by conventional writing exercises, and they'll learn how to write a letter to boot. 

I'll put down more about letter-writing in RPG settings in another blog entry.