De Profundus – Letters from the Abyss

De Profundis, an English translation of a roleplaying game from Poland, is a 32-page booklet containing a set of rules for epistolary psychodrama—a sort of roleplaying by letter—in the world of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Psychodrama, as explained by an article in an appendix, is a diceless, game-masterless method of roleplaying, in which the course of the narrative is decided by the course of conversation among the gamers. It seems very similar to the freestyle form of roleplay used in MUSHes and other on-line roleplay environments.

Most roleplaying games contain rules, play examples, and game-world fiction. De Profundis somehow manages to combine all three of those elements into the very same text.

That text contains a tale that actually works on several different levels. Not only is it a set of rules and instructions explaining how to play, it is also an example of how to play—the rules are laid down as a series of letters from Michal to one of his friends, becoming more and more erratic as he approaches the end of the book. And thus, it is also itself a work of fiction—an enjoyable pastiche of the Lovecraftian milieu.