What is the Game of Letters?

The Game of Letters is a courtly game and communication service. It allows messages to be delivered publicly in order to demonstrate the skill and subtlety of the communicators. It also allows for plausible deniability. As names are not signed to the messages, no one can say with utmost certainty who is writing to whom. That does not always stop people from finding out, but it is Bad Form to break the polite fiction of anonymity. That anonymity lets samurai discuss topics--love, feuds, the Succession, etc.--that would not be okay to discuss in public.

The Game of Letters is not meant to be a way to arrange mundane meetings or to do preliminaries for negotiations. Everyday communications like those can be sent via PM.

How do I Play?
A Letter in this context is sent using Games: Letters/Awareness roll. This roll is used to determine how well you get your intent across. Please post the text of your letter (always a poem, traditionally but not always a 31-syllable poem in the 575-77 structure), your intent, where your note is sent, and how it is sent in your Personal Forum. Note that you need not indicate an intended recipient, merely a location or route for the letter to travel. Please see the primer below for some suggestions about the intricacies of the Game.

You may include rolls like Artisan: Poetry/Awareness or Artisan: Origami/Awareness to your Game of Letters post. We will, of course, post those along with your text (see the example below), but they should be understood to be indicative only of your character's skill at that element of the Game, not the degree to which the intent of the letter can be deciphered.

An Example of the Game of Letters

In the Mid-Evening, a well-dressed child of the Miya family, no more than 6 years old and beaming widely at the opportunity, carries a letter folded in the fashion of the Scorpion clan in the reign of Hantei Genji through the court, then out to the courtyard, where he presents it for inspection on the threshold of each of the delegation houses before returning to the keep and leaving it on a table in the Genkan.

Unfolded, the paper, a thin sheet of red decorated with a careful ink drawing of a cherry blossom, bears the following poem:

Loyalty's Vessels
Boast of Deepest Constancy.
How ephemeral.

When winter snows trail swift streams
What use for frail promises?

Game of Letters/Awareness Roll: 27 (You would link to your Sakkaku roll, of course.)
Intent: The Scorpion have been promising lasting loyalty, but we know that their promises are very fragile things.

If the Game of Letters roll had been botched, for example, a roll of 19 or less, a character might conceivably misinterpret the intent. That can lead to fun times.

So what is all this flowery, foldy, thickness of paper business?

Part of what makes the Game of Letters fun is that it is not just about the text of a poem. There's a whole universe of metatext that can affect the meaning of a Letter. These things can be almost anything you can imagine, but some formal choices and expectations are in place. Here are some of those:

The Language of Flowers
You can include an actual spring of plant-life, an illustration, or even just the scent of a flower to your Letter. These have meanings, many of which are discussed here.

The Language of Colors
Your paper or ink may be of a particular color. These too have meanings, some of which I have listed here:

Red: Protection, Strength, Peace, Power. Also Fire.
Yellow: Nature, Sunshine, Courage.
Green: Life and Growth
Blue: Humility
Purple: Nobility, Status
Pink: Romance, Cuteness
Brown: Tea
Black: Masculinity
White: Physical and Spiritual purity, and sometimes also Death.

Paper and Folding
A thick, heavy paper suggests serious matters, while a thin tissue conveys a light-hearted or romantic mood. The size of the paper relative to the writing is also significant. For example, using a large piece of paper to convey a short message suggests generosity or extravagance, while a small piece of paper crowded with writing conveys a subtle insult, suggesting that the recipient is not worthy of more paper.

Next, the courtier must consider packaging. Rokugan has several traditional styles of letter-folding, often quite elaborate, and some Clans have developed their own signature styles to show off their skills and discourage forgeries. Again, different manners of folding convey different things; a casually folded letter suggests a lack of care on who reads it, while an elaborate folding implies great significance to the contents.[Masters of Court]

Brushwork
the author must consider the brushwork. Like everything else in the letter, this conveys a message of its own, one that can be entirely at variance with the actual contents. An elegantly written mesage, each brush-stroke perfect and flawless, could symbolize love or other deep care, or could simply be a way of showing off the writer's skills and capabilities. Conversely, messy or uneven brushwork can suggest a lack of emotional control, or can be seen as an insult, suggesting that the author does not care enough about the recipient to offer his best work. [Masters of Court]

The Messenger
Finally, the choice of which person will deliver the letter is its own meaning. An important servant impllies that the recipient is also important, while a minor servant implies that the recipient is of little note. Naturally, letters are never delivered personally, since that would defeat the whole point of the game