I set up an experiment to try playing A Penny for My Thoughts without any preparations, not even reading the book beforehand. The main point about this was to see if it would be possible to learn the rules of the game while playing.

Note! If you would like to do a similar experiment yourself (and happen to live in Finland near Helsinki), I'd be glad to help. I could borrow all the material needed so the only things you'd need would be a couple of friends and some time together. Contact me through this blog entry. And stop reading right now as it wouldn't count as an experiment if you would know how to play the game beforehand.

Truth be told I did make some preparations. I had read the book a bit so I knew what handouts and so on we would need. I had copied all the handouts and forms and I laso had brought enough paper, pens and pennies with me.

We started playing early in the Sunday evening at Simo's place. Ari-Pekka and Laku were the other players besides me and Simo.

Next I'll describe how the session went and what the game is like. Then we comment how it went: first me (Antti), then Laku and finally Simo. 

The Session and the Game

First I told everyone what the experiment was all about. Then we started to study the book and the handouts. I showed everyone the process of therapy chart and the explanations of the symbols used in the book to facilitate reading the book while playing. The symbols beside passages of the text tell the players which chapters are read aloud to the group, which chapters describe a procedure that is to be performed right now and when toskip to another part of the text.

We went through the game's starting situation: we were amnesiac patients in the Orphic Institute trying out a new treatment involving an experimental new drug mnemosyne. The drug enables sharing of memories between patients. As a form of group therapy we try to help each other recollect memories from our past and figure out how we lost our memories.

Then we read the handouts. There were two of them: the facts and reassurances document and the patient questionnaires. The fact document establishes the game's milieu -- the mundane world of 2000's in the vanilla version. The questionnaire gives a framework to the patients' memories. 

The game itself consists of series of metaphorical journeys to the patients' memories. One patient (the traveler) recollects one memory in one journey and the other patients assist her in the role of guides. Memory triggers form a starting point to a journey. Memory triggers are short descriptions of people, places, objects etc. created by players and randomly chosen by the traveler.

These starting points are then elaborated by the guides who can ask a yes-or-no question from the traveler about the memory. The traveler is restricted in her answer so he can only add to the assumptions presented in the questions, not block them.

After creating the starting point for the journey the traveler starts describing the memory in more detail. The guides help by describing the actions of the traveler's former self in the memory.

Comments by Antti

Every journey is played with the same system. The system is simple and elegant. We did not have any difficulties to learn the rules while playing. We only faced two challenges worth mentioning. First, reading aloud the passages of text and simultaneously translating them to Finnish was cumbersome. If the text would have been in Finnish things would have of course run much smoother. Anyway the consistent terminology used in the text lessened this problem somewhat.

Second, we had difficulties in interpreting one particular passage of the rule text. The chapter that describes who asks the extra guiding question in the memory starting point elaboration phase. The text points out that if one of the players has given the traveler a penny in the Choosing the next traveler phase, she can ask the extra question. We had trouble finding the rules for giving pennies in the Choosing the next traveler phase and for a while we thought if we had missed anything. After a short while we found the rule in question in a text box at the bottom of the same page and found out that it wasn't relevant to our situation at all. Our conclusion was that the pointer about the penny-giving guide receiving the extra question in the main text about the question rules was a bit misplaced and a better place could perhaps be a text box similar to the other one in the Choosing the next traveler section for consistency.

But all in all these were minor hiccups and didn't affect our enjoyment of the game much.

The system of Penny consists of modular elements that were reused throughout the play so our play became more fluent as the session went on.It was a pleasure to notice that the system was simple enough that we could start reaping the rewards and enjoying the gameplay right away. In many games getting accustomed to the system takes time, sometimes so much that the first session is all learning the ropes and very little fun and feeling comfortable with the game. Not in Penny's case; I was comfortable with the game right from the start, even though I did not have a holistic view of the game.

We played a full session, three memories for each of the four patients. The stories and events were quite varied. I was engaged with the stories of all patients for the whole time. On occasion the new memories brought quite interesting contrasting viewpoints to the life of the patients before amnesia and shifted the meaning of earlier memories. In the end three of the four patients decided to remember and only one chose oblivion.   

Mechanics-wise only the number of pennies accumulating to the patients during the latter part of the game seemed less than optimal. Most of the final memories were prolonged unnecessarily as a result of this effect. I was silently in agony because of it during my own final memory. I haven't double-checked if the intention is to use all the pennies you have to your memory or if you can stop after the required amount of pennies. I think it would be better to be able to coclude your final memory after using 4 pennies. That's a house rule worth considering for future sessions.

The experiment was a very pleasant experience for me. It was refreshing to bring a new game to a gaming group with no preparations and an open mind. Figuring the game out together was fun. usually I have the rules well rehearsed beforehand and an image in my mind about how the process of play should play out. One thing I certainly learned from this experience is the idea that I could try to bring this kind of attitude to any game where I'm in the facilitator role bringing the game to the group. If successful it could be a real win-win situation.

All in all A Penny for My Thoughts was a really great acquaintance. I would love to play it again. I don't doubt for a moment that anyone (with some English reading comprehension skills ;) could take the game and play without any preparations. I consider this a major accomplishment by the game's designer.

Comments by Laku

Comments by Simo

in my opinion the tension is created in these kinds of games by different visions that each player has and the transformation and breaking down of these visions. By this I mean that in the first recollection a certain image of a character and her background is formed, but this image can be completely reversed in the next one. In this sense this game has stronger contrasts than traditional long campaign games, where the character is largely fixed and in extreme cases this fixation is considered a crucial aspect of the game.

Contrasts are also formed on the memories sometimes having camp elements alternated with more serious elements. In this sense also the nature of the story transforms while playing and the fun is partly the product of changing between different registers and the dissonances resulting from that.

Briefly on the system: I join Antti and Laku on noting that the system worked surprisingly well. I was a bit skeptic because the concept seemed like an extreme experiment, but the structure of the game served the contruction of the stories very nicely.

I've got this experiment with A Penny For My Thoughts that I'm gonna try. I'll invite a group of players and we'll play the game completely unprepared - no one will even read the rules beforehand. Why, you ask. Well let me explain:

Many of the indie role-playing games (oh come on, you know the games I'm talking about, don't ya?) are advertised as games that you can play without any preparation. What is usually meant by that is that none of the players need to do prep for the setting or the events of the game beforehand. This is excellent but it is a long way from the way you can, for example, pick a new board game and learn it the first time you play.

In my own experience you have to read the average indie role-playing game at least twice before you can introduce the rules to the rest of the group and facilite the play to a group of fellow novices. In many occasions you have to parse the game text thoroughly before you can introduce it to a group. There's even a thread on parsing game texts on Story Games .

In an ideal situation every player would figure out the game's rules before gathering to play. This doesn't happen very often, at least to me. An important reason for that (in addition to the game texts to be hard to learn) is that the reasons to play are varied: not all are interested nd invested in learning the rules. Maybe learning the rules is not part of the enjoyment of the game to some of the players at all.

One way to overcome this problem is to play new games with people that have played them before. This is not always possible. Additionally it would be practical to be able to refer to a handy rules tutorial in the midst of the gmae while learning games this way.

I've pondered if the game text itself could be a solution to this problem. Wouldn't it be practical if the texts themselves contained a tutorial that could be used while learning to play by playing? As I mentioned before it is possible to learn playing board games this way. The same goes for video games which have tutorials that teach the user interface of the game to the players. It doesn't seem unthinkable to achieve this in role-playing games too.

I would think this function of the game text would be important especially if the designer has aspirations to reach new players previously unacquinted to role-playing with his/her game. This seems to be the goal of many a designer nowadays as well as other rpg enthusiasts.

This thought popped into my mind when I started reading A Penny For My Thoughts the other day. The rules of the game seem to be written in the order they are to be learned and used nd additionally the symbols that express how the rule text they refer to are to be read (read on, stop here and use this procedure now, return here shortly etc.) seemed to indicate that the game is written to support learning the rules while playing. Which is just what I had hoped to get in a game.

And I thought: "I have to test if it works!". So I stopped reading the rules and started drafting players for my experiment right away. The disadvantage of this kind of experiment is that one player can test one game like this only once.

My first (and only, for me) experiment will probably consist of players that have plenty of role-playing game experience. It would be interesting to test the game with players new to role-playing too if my experiment goes fine. Finding the players could be a hassle though so maybe that won't come true in the near future.

But, if everything goes all right we'll experiment with A Penny For My Thoughts by January 15th. I'll write about my own experiences after that. I'll also request other participants to report their views on it too.

Red November is a co-operative board game by Bruno Faidutti, published by Fantasy Flight Games. The premise is about drunken gnomes in their nuclear submarine. Everything is wrong -- the gnomes must try to survive for an hour before the help arrives.

Mechanics: Mostly Clear

Making co-operative board games is not an easy task. The game has to avoid becoming like playing solitaire with a group of people (which is, if you have tried it, pretty irritating experience). In Red November this is tackled by introducing two important decisions -- players can affect their odds by spending more or less time on specific repair tasks and by drinking grog. Drinking grog risks passing out and spending less time risks wasting the repair time used altogether. Individual players can surprise their comrades by succeeding against the odds (and saving time in the process) or passing out in the middle of action and thus causing more problems to others. This is all good and fine, I guess.

The fixing mechanic of rolling a ten-sided dice will undoubtedly divide the players.Some will like the random factor and the possibility to either take a chance or use enough minutes to have 100% chance of succeeding. And I imagine others would prefer other mechanics to dice rolling. In this case I fall into the latter category, but that's just my preference and the mechanic itself is sound enough.

The mechanic of drawing (ominous) event cards when you use up minutes is stronger than the dice rolling mechanic. There's some randomity like rolling for which room of the sub is flooded or in fire, but it evens out in time and the game stays pretty tight throughout in most games. The only weak part in that mechanic is the beginning of the game where I have found some bewilderment amongst new players as to why they should do anything because advancing time just gets them into trouble. Astute observation and I don't really have a good answer to that.

Presentation and Production: Sleet and Hail

The main weakness of Red November, however, is the presentation of the game which is lacking in a few key points. First, the game box is very small and it is almost impossible to pack the various chits back into it after playing. Second, the item tiles are small and contain only icons. That makes them difficult to shuffle and makes learning their use more work. Third, the game board is very small; Also the minute track that is on its edges is tiny and on my copy clipped badly on one edge.

All these things make the game a hassle to play. Packing and unpacking the game are not major parts of the gameplay experience but I have to say that the ridiculous mismatch of the amount of chits and the tiny game box has made me hesitate to suggest playing the game as I know I'll be the one doing the packing after.

As for the tiles I think that the only viable reason for using tiles instead of cards is the size of the game box. And considering my previous point this isn't a viable explanation either. If the items would be on cards there would be room to print the rules related to the items on them also, making the game much easier to learn. When you have two rule summary cards for a maximum of eigth players that is simply too few. Plus the cards would be easier to shuffle and stack face down also (yea yea I know that you don't need to stack all the tiles on top of each other but turning them all face down is a hassle nonetheless).

As for the game board I would go for a larger one with ample room for the minute track. A larger board would allow for rule explanations for each of the special rooms of the submarine too, removing the need to consult the rule book.

All in all I really cannot understand why Fantasy Flight Games had to publish this game in such a small box. It isn't like you could play this on a train or the back seat of a car as you'd only lose all your numerouschits in the process. I guess price is a factor here. On the other hand this kind of usability problems have ruined this otherwise pretty good game for me. In short I'd rather play Pandemic which is performs admirable on production values and usability. Drunken gnomes and nuclear submarines is a great premise but it is spoiled by the execution - surprisingly not the game mechanics itself but the presentation.

So as of today I'm officially 33 years old. To celebrate I'll post a tip on how to make use of your old World of Darkness supplements for material to the excellent sword & sorcery rpg In a Wicked Age.

This idea stems from a short story game I run a couple years ago in Jyväskylä. The term short story game (novelliroolipeli or noverope in Finnish) was coined by our group; we noted we were too busy with life to complete long campaigns and opted for a story now! kind of solution -- cut to the chase and keep it short. No grinding, you want to play a master assassin, you play it now. No in-play setting of situations -- you want to play a guy with wife and children you don't have to woo, marry, build your housee etc. in play, just set that up pre-game. Et cetera. This was a couple of years before we even heard of Forge-style games.

But the game in question was based on the World of Darkness Hong Kong sourcebook. I had bought that game a hile ago for another short story game. At that moment I just wanted to see what other gamers thought interesting in Hong Kong, the setting of that other game.

For the Midnight Dragon (which was the name of the WoD Hong Kong inspired game) I ripped the situation straight from the sourcebook, photocopied the major NPCs and gave them to players to choose as their player characters and run with that. It worked great.

The point being that most of the old World of Darkness sourcebooks seem to have a situation ready to explode and all the main characters (NPCs of course) that are related to the situation. This is exactly what an IAWA oracle brings to the table (and more).

While it isn't necessarily less work than choosing a random oracle, I think that prepping the sourcebook material into a IAWA starting situation is very painless. Just select a couple of characters to include, let each player choose one as their player character, leave rest to the GM and set up best interests as normal.

It is important to decide how much of the oWoD canon you want to adhere to in your game. For most, I would suggest making an agreement that any setting fact not coming up while setting the best interests is not set until handled during play. This will make the play more fluid in my opinion and negate the need to start browsing WoD sourcebooks in every scene. With a group consisting only of WoD enthusiasts you are of course free to make a different agreement.

A couple of words about why I think this is a good match. First, I think that IAWA and WoD share a similar attitude: Individuals are more important than the society is. At second thought this is probably only true for the NPCs in the sourcebooks, oWoD player characters created by the rules presented in the rulebooks are pretty much mooks only.

The other thing that makes this a good match in my opinion is the graphic and active nature of the powers of different character classes (ha!) in WoD games. The exchange of blows mechanic of IAWA is pretty compatible with it.

So that was the advice, now go play vampires and werewolves if you still have the books rotting in some shelf!

image: Satanica by BATH0RY (creative commons -licensed, attribution, share alike)