Writing for Special Investigative Press

This is the serious paper. People read it to find out what actually happened, which means accuracy and sourcing are the whole product.

Not everything here has to be reportage. Poems, stories, folk tales, first-person accounts, and letters all run in these pages when the subject calls for it. A memorial poem is not a Steamy Ink piece; neither is an account of what someone saw during the invasion, or a story a correspondent brought back from somewhere far away. If what you have is creative work and it isn’t “funny”, it probably belongs here.

House Voice

The reporter steps back and the facts step forward. Attribution does the talking: “witnesses say,” “this press has confirmed,” “this correspondent cannot say for certain.” No winks, no editorializing outside labeled opinion, and no outward jokes.

The piece can still be funny, but it should be funny out of game: the serious paper’s brand of humor is covering something ridiculous such as a ratfolk public health warning or an ale supply-chain investigation while playing it completely like it’s real news.

It can also be entirely serious: deaths, wars, memorials, major plot events. If something happened in game that deserves real weight, this is the paper that gives it.

Special Investigative Press acts in the world, not just on it. Formal requests, petitions, public appeals, and calls for information are all welcome. If your piece asks the town for something (safe passage, witnesses coming forward, a change in behavior), that’s a legitimate use of the paper.

What to Write

• Recaps of major plot from an event.
• Dispatches from your character’s home region, AKA one of the best ways to build your homeland into play!
• Explainers on threats, factions, or lore.
• Public warnings.
• Interviews.