ghostbox & the dead letters jam

ghostbox is a card-based solo epistolary game of abandoned postboxes and the dead letters inside them. when you play, you choose which sets of prompts you interact with for letters to write. in the base game, you can choose from The Forlorn, letters about love and abandonment, The Sleeping, letters about duty and honour, The Left-behind, letters about friendship and drifting apart, and The Opportune, letters about life and relationships.

wait, but how do you actually play?

ghostbox is a story game built on top of a lightly-adapted version of the solitaire card game Osmosis. cards are played into rows from hands drawn from a deck, or directly from face-down stashes. when that happens, the suit and rank of that card gives you a prompt for a letter to write, to be posted – and so lost forever.

the brief

make a new set of prompts for ghostbox from a single suit in a deck of playing or divination cards.

in ghostbox, a suit represents a different type of letter lost in the postbox, from a different sender. like a series of letters in a museum, only one side of the conversation is presented.

here's an example, taken from the ashcan edition of ghostbox:

Hearts is The Forlorn. From the hand of a lovelorn writer over many weeks or even months, these are love letters written, sent, never received, never read. They might deal with relationships, sexuality, rejection, jealousy, infidelity, obsession, coercive control, and other forms of abuse. They might also be very sad and empty.
When you choose this sender, answer: Who is the sender? Who is the recipient? Why are they apart?

for an example, check out The Wishful by Marx of High Water, a set of prompts about letters from children to Santa (CW: kids, parenthood), and a guided template for your own ideas.

to extend this, the submission should include this paragraph, which breaks down as:

• its suit, including what kind of deck it's taken from if that's not obvious
• its Name, which is usually The + Adjective, like The Forlorn or The Outside
• some themes and ideas about what the set of prompts is there to talk about
• the timescale of the letters, which is the unit or units of time between each letter (e.g. days, weeks, months, years etc.)
• any trigger warnings or content warnings which your suit might deal with, either directly or indirectly
• the emotional undertone of the letters, which is a hint about whether to write light-hearted or serious pieces
• three questions to answer about the sender and intended receiver before you start play
• a list of ranks and their prompts, broken down into:
  • text: what the writer address directly through the letter
  • subtext: what deeper emotional question the writer wrestles with in writing the letter

deck formats

beyond playing cards, you might also look at a completely different card game: uno, for example, or happy families, risk cards, brian eno's oblique strategy cards, or some other card game. there's no real limitation!

playing card formats

ghostbox uses the most familiar deck format: four french-suited suits of thirteen ranks (hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs; ace through ten, jack, queen, king). but, here are some more unusual playing card formats:

• suits
  • german-suited - hearts, bells, acorns, leaves
  • swiss-suited - bells, shields, roses, acorns
  • italian- or spanish-suited - swords, cups, coins, batons/clubs
  • mamluk egyptian-suited - swords, cups, coins, polo-sticks
  • persian- or arabian-suited - coins, clubs, jugs, swords
  • marseillaise tarot - coins, cups, swords, clubs
  • rider-waite tarot - wands, cups, swords, pentacles
  • thoth tarot - wands, cups, swords, disks
  • chinese money-suited - cash, strings, myriads, tens

• ranks
  • six cards
    • euchre - nine, ten, jack, queen, king, ace
  • eight cards
    • french piquet/german skat - ace, seven through ten, jack, queen, king
  • nine cards
    • swiss piquet - six through ten, jack, queen, king, ace
    • lenormand cartomancy - six through ten, jack, queen, king, ace
    • chinese money - one through nine
  • ten cards
    • italian primero - ace through seven, jack, queen, king
    • spanish ombre - one through seven, jack/page, queen/knight, king
    • primiera bolognese - ace through seven, knave, knight, king
    • tarroco bolognese - six through ten, knave, knight, queen, king, ace
  • eleven cards
    • chinese tens of myriads - twenty through ninety, hundred, thousand, myriad
  • twelve cards
    • spanish moorish - one through nine, jack/page, queen/knight, king
    • portuguese - one through nine, queen, jack, king
    • persian / arabian one through ten, vizier, king
  • thirteen cards
    • mamluk egyptian - one through ten, second, viceroy, king
  • fourteen cards
    • marseillaise tarot - ace through ten, jack, knight, queen, king
    • rider-waite tarot - ace through ten, page, knight, queen, king
    • thoth tarot - ace through ten, princess, prince, queen, knight

there are also dozens of other really cool variants, particularly in japan. i chose not to go down that rabbit hole when writing the above.

other stuff

licensing

ghostbox is CC-BY-SA 4.0 licensed, but your content doesn't have to be (because you're not really making a derivative work of ghostbox). so, feel free to sell it if you want to, or give it away for free, or whatever you want.

ghostbox itchfunding

there's no obligation to buy ghostbox but it would be cool if you can. it's on offer during itchfunding and you'll get future updates to the project such as revised text and updated layout, as well as other project updates like when the physical edition launches.

social media

please share your content with the tag #DeadLettersJam so that i can find it, share it, and also buy it because your content is cool. i'm @IAmPhophos on Twitter or @Phophos on Mastodon if you want to find me and tag me in, or Marx of High Water on Itchio.

unicode and typefaces

unicode has not only the major french suits but also the playing cards themselves for french-suited decks and four knights. check out the wikipedia page for more info, and fileformat.info for fonts supporting these unicode characters. also check out dicier by speak the sky for a typeface with multiple ways to represent suits and ranks, and a handful of other weird esoteric english suits.