if the game has heavy multiplayer interaction, i totally expect players to converse with one another. this is kind of weird, because they'll be using the internet for social interaction and limited to physical mail for interaction within the game. i'm fine with the contrast and will play with it, if possible!

how interested are you in, directly or indirectly, ...

a) competing with other players?

b) cooperating with other players?

Cooperating would be amazing! I envision some sort of context where you build friendships over mail, like our ancestors did once upon a time. Physical mail gives off a sort of ARG vibe just by being involved, which I love.

That's something else I was wondering - are your plans to only do player communication via mail to the central entity (game master, uh... you), or to also have the players sending mail to each other?

I... I guess I never considered that players would want to do that! But that would be amazing.

Considering sending players some kind of unique token that they need to mail back in order to use? If two players want to trade, they need to physically send those tokens to one another.

Would love to encourage crossplayer mail, and see no need for that to be done through me!

If sending mail to each other was part of the gameplay experience, I think that could be really cool. Creates a sense of being part of something bigger, of a community, of discovery (depending on game theme) and sharing. Don't know how it would be done, though!

I could encourage people not to share any online handles/information, but there's also the problem of players knowing one anothers' addresses o_o; a little worried about troublemaking there...

other than that, though!

Metacommunication could be done in something like a #sealed IRC channel (where addresses could be shared or something, I don't know), depending on how you'd like to see that be done, and still allow for some sort of game communication via mail. Hmm.

Physical tokens. I can't imagine any other way to encourage physical mail!

Getting geocaching Travel Bug vibes, a bit.

i like the idea of both competing and cooperating... but not always knowing which

I don't think sharing physical addresses is that big of a deal. I'd love it if there were elements of the game that involved getting mail from and sending mail to strangers. Even on a limited, opt-in basis.

I've not understand a thing but I'd say both! I agree with tomtl.