Ronin Art's "Athenaeum Arcane: Letters" covers twelve letters that you can include as treasure, or things you could pick-pocket, or whatever. By letters, I am referring to that age-old process of actually taking a pen to a piece of paper, folding it up, and delivering it by some mundane fashion. Yes, in this age of email, and message boards, it's hard to imagine. But, bear with me on this one.
This product is a 10 page pdf written by Carla Harker. Like other Ronin Art's products in this particular line, it features a really nice, full color cover. In fact, it's probably the best thing about this product. The 10th page is half open game license, and the first is the cover. The second page describes the layout of the product. So, you're really looking at about 7.5 pages of actual letters.
Now, I love adding realism into my campaigns. In fact, for me, filling a treasure horde with just gold and bland magic items is like a mortal sin to me. So, I always like to include bits of realistic pieces, whether they bit objects of art, or mundane items, I always enjoy including things that seem more real. I was excited to see this product, and I was hopeful that I could drop these letters into a treasure horde, or place them in various places. I was not only wrong, but quite disappointed.
While the letters themselves aren't bad, the presentation is totally off-base. What would have been a great concept, fails miserably because the letters are not hand-written, and they are not put together as handouts. Unfortunately, this product uses a familiar two-column layout, which means that none of these letters can be used as is. If you wanted to give them to the players, you'd have to take the text, and copy it into some other format, like Word, and then print it off separately. Secondly, the font used is just Arial, or some other typical font. So, they don't even look hand-written. It's just typical computer text. This totally detaches from the realism of the letters, and takes away a lot, in my opinion. Some of the letters are described as "archaic" and some parts of the letters are "[illegible]". For example, one of the letters contains the line:
"I sent it with [illegible], the royal courier." While I can appreciate the idea that some of the words are illegible, I'd rather see an illegible word, than just the word "illegible". The product doesn't mention what those illegible words are, either, which means if someone casts a spell to decipher them (I'm sure such spells exist), then the GM would have to make them up on the spot. Some of the instances of "illegible" don't even really make sense. Consider this line:
"The nights grow so lonely [illegible] on the plains." I'm not even sure what kind of word would fit in there. Nor how many words it might be. "without you" might work, but are two words allowed? I could just as easily stick in "without you, your mother-in-law, and that crazy ill-tempered donkey of yours" in there as well.
Each letter follows a typical format: appearance, date (how relatively old the letter is), type (whether it has historical value, monetary value, etc.), background (GM's information), and special notes.
While the letters themselves are generally good, I think many of them are over-the-top. And by that, I mean there are letters intended to be really historically significant, or some letters that detail nefarious plots. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I would have preferred to find more just completely mundane, trivial letters. Letters from soldiers away to their wives, or letters from one teenage girl detailing a crush on a boy to a friend of hers. This product is sorely lacking in that department. Another interesting approach might have been to include actual historical letters (which I almost thought it contained based on the product description), and that might have made for an interesting read, as well.
Several of the letters tie together, which is an interesting concept. And another letter is designed as a coded message from a thieves guild member. The letter seems innocent (description of a dance), but is a nefarious account of some murder. There isn't really anything about the letter, however, that players would automatically perceive as being coded. So, perhaps if it were laid out in a funny way, with staggering lines, or odd word phrases, it would be more likely to provoke a "why is this letter written the way that it is" kind of response. That would have made it that much more interesting. As it is, it's likely to get tossed by the wayside.
Conclusion:
This product is a waste. I would have gladly paid $10 (and still would) for a product of nothing but letters - 1 per page, each hand-written (hire a professional calligrapher) that I could hand out to the players. Words that are illegible should *be* illegible. Letters that include secret codes, should actually include secret codes. Lastly (and this is mostly a personal preference), write it in a period style with Olde English. I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. Include a GM section with behind the scenes information, and triple the number of letters in it.
Close, but no cigar.
Indeed, if interesting, puzzling notes are your thing, I suggest the following:
http://www.foundmagazine.com
