Wayward Letters are real letters mailed to you giving you a fresh fantasy letter, with a corresponding one-shot adventure, a map, some stickers, and a piece of Scottish lore or mythology, all neatly packaged in a wax sealed letter.

For GMs
These letters are written to give you inspiration and to be used as a prop in game that you can hand to your players as a piece of evidence, or background ahead of their next quest. The letters will take a different shape with each edition where they can be a simple letter, field notes, or a journal entry...the creative possibilities are endless.

For Players
If you simply play TTRPGs these letters can serve as character back story or as lore for your next character for play at the table. It can be a prop that you keep to share with another player or even hand off to your Game Master to give them a prop for future play to add into the game. Also, if you are comfortable with solo-rpgs these letters will come with a related one-shot and map that can be played in your solo adventures.

The corresponding one-shot and map will be written to be able to be pick up and play and will be one to two pages long, depending on encounters and any creature stat-blocks required. I will try to keep the writing, "system free", so it can be incorporated into the RPG you are playing, but where necessary I will be using 5/5.5E to give rules on Difficulty Checks, etc. I also want to ensure the difficulty of the one-shot is scalable or not necessarily 'set', so these one-shots will be more about setting up the adventures, characters, lore, with encounters and situations proposed for you the GM to decide and use.

The adventure and letter in this image are only prototypes and are not the final product!!!

The fantasy letters began as an idea to get readers away from screens and to have a relaxing read for a couple minutes. That core idea still holds true in the fantasy letters that will be sent out in this project. The letters will be a completely self contained fantasy letter set in fantasy world, that will not contain anything like system rules or game 'speak' - that is why I am including the one-shot separate; that is where the game part of the letter can be contained.

I am always looking for suggestions on how I can make these letters as accessible as possible. Please feel free to get in touch with me if you have an idea of how the letters could be more accessible to readers who don't want the gaming side of the project. 

The design principle for these maps are they should be pick up and play and should fit neatly onto a A4 sheet of paper. Some will be in full color and others will be a more classical black and white dungeon style found in rule books. The aesthetic for that months letter will be decided in line with what works best. Some maps will also be double sided if possible to give you more resources. 

In this example you can see where I have tried to keep the aspect ratio correct so that minis can be played on top of the map at the table.

Hi, I'm Jason.

For the last few years I've run Top Table Productions, publishing TTRPG supplements funded by thousands of backers across more than fifteen successful campaigns.  Recently, I’ve felt the pull to return to creating physical items: things people can hold, use, and experience at the table. 

Wayward Letters is a smaller, more personal project that’s been living in my notebooks for the past year.

It all started with a question: what if the world-building I love came to you in the post, one letter at a time?

 Now, I’m finally bringing Wayward Letters to life.

I write, edit and design the letters, one-shots, maps and lore. The wonderful artwork is all created by my amazing friend Nate who you can find on Instagram: @closeenoughnate

I plan to have the first batch of letters sent out in June and from there it will be every month.