Paper Trail- Introduction

Communicating, coordinating and networking in the modern world is hard enough with the help of phones, texts, and tweets. Even without these modern contrivances, the Victorians had it down to a science thanks to one simple innovation: The Visiting Card. These cards displayed the owner’s name and address in plain text, but for those knowledgeable of card etiquette, cards could convey intentions, social class, finances, age, and marital status. The quality of visiting cards displayed in the entryway of a home spoke volumes about a host. 

Such a vital and vibrant source of clues, plot hooks, and tactile storytelling is exactly what I look for in my own games of Victoriana. I love using paper props, and I’ve used visiting cards very successfully at my gaming table. To share this fun further, I’m creating forty-eight Victorian visiting and business cards and collecting them all into a single PDF named “Paper Trail”. When we’re done, Paper Trail will be freely available on this blog’s resources page ready to be printed, cut out, and used in your own games.

For the next few weeks, we’re going to look at visiting cards, their use in Victorian society, and how they can be used both as a narrative device and a physical prop in role-playing games using examples from Paper Trail.