itch.io

Hi, thanks for your feedback! I'm not quite sure what's going wrong for you but I see you sent me an email so I'll follow up with you there.

Hi Kuchenklau, I'm sorry this took so long. I have some good news, though: I found a solution to the issue.

You should be able to see a new version of the file named "Epistolary (Screen) (selectable text)" in the game's downloads section. With this version, you can search and select text as usual. I hope this helps, and good luck with your investigation!

Hello! Sorry I missed your comment. I've been without access to the Internet for a while.

It definitely isn't intended that you can't search or copy from the PDF; however, it seems to be a limitation of the software I use to create them.

If it would help, I could try and create a HTML version for you. It might not look as attractive as the PDF, but you'd be able to search it and use the copy function as normal. Would that be useful for you?

Hello, and thank you for your interest!

Writing initial letters is undoubtedly the most difficult part of the game, and I can understand your friends' concern. However, human minds are usually incredibly good – perhaps too good – at drawing connections between apparently unrelated events. For a fun game that illustrates this, try performing an image search for "stock photo" and choose any two adjacent images. Your mind will immediately try to fill in the blanks and tell you a funny story about why the two are related.

I'm confident that when you receive your first letter, the same thing will happen: you will immediately try to connect it to the letter that you just sent. And once you receive your first reply, you will then have information about three of the initial Intrigues that were presented (yours, plus your two contacts'), and you can start thinking about how they might be related.

You don't need to connect everything immediately, of course (and you shouldn't!) but your mind will naturally try to tie everything together. The investigation mechanic works to shake things up a little, to force you to reconsider ideas or begin new avenues of thought.

Here's some advice, though: I do think that it's important to establish the setting and tone of your game before you begin. Make sure that everyone wants to tell the same kind of story, and rule out anything that doesn't fit. There might be specific things that you can think of (aliens? time travel? ghosts?) that you want to rule out before you start.

And as always, set your boundaries and rule out anything that would be upsetting for any of your players.

I hope this helps. Have fun, and good luck!

Investigators are able to interpret any Evidence that matches their specialism, even Evidence they find themselves. So if you investigate and turn up evidence that matches your own specialism, that's a lucky result: you get a free Clue!

Many thanks for your question; I will make sure to state this rule explicitly if I publish an update.

I hope you have fun with the game, and good luck!

Yes, different Investigators can have the same specialism. For example, with five players, two Investigators would have the same specialism.

I recommend that if two Investigators share a specialism, they should not be in contact with each other at the start of the game.

Thank you for your lovely comment, I wish you well on your adventures!

Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you like it!

Thank you very much!

Yes, you are entirely correct. Initial letters can't contain Evidence, which means that you can include Evidence-like elements in them without them being mistaken as such.

And yes, the reason for character reputations is so that you can tailor your initial letter to its recipient.