We started a Dogs in the Vineyard game a couple of weeks ago with a character creation session.

This was the first time I played RPGs since Senja was born.

Matti (being the GM) explained the game briefly and then we went through the character creation process. By my suggestion we then proceeded to talk a little bit more about the game and our expectations before creating the characters. We read bits of text from the rulebook and the introductory one-page pdf and we talked about the tone and style of the game we would like to play.

After that we started the actual process of character creation. We had agreed that we all wanted a colorful group of Dogs with some variety and difference of opinion in it. We ended up choosing different backgrounds for each one. Each player bounced his ideas of character concepts aloud at first. Then we kind of went through informal question rounds of 1) what kind of character I'm thinking about and 2) what kind of Dog this character is (each one adding a different viewpoint for his character's dogness and saying how it differs to the others characters).

After that we started to fill out the sheets. This was also quite collaborative as we asked for second opinions on stat allocations and trait naming quite a lot. After we had filled out the details each of us presented his character briefly.

The final part of the evening was playing out the initiation conflicts of the characters. That way we got to try out the conflict system in action. What we found out that the initiationconflicts were pretty tough; I think no-one won his conflict. The other thing we figured out was that losing 'just talking' conflicts was in fact mostly advantageous as the character got experience but there was really no danger of major fallout. We immediately decided to look for conflicts to lose in our game :)

Our group of Dogs turned out pretty interesting. There is one half-mountain folk dog, a sullen goth-type dog with a great legacy and no social skills to fill the boots of her mother (!), a former street urchin with a lot of repressed hate and one quarter-back type youngster that is ready to make the world a better place for everyone (that's my character).  

We've now played one session of the game; I hope to be able to write a little about the actual play later.

Roughly a year ago we played a game about the conflict in Gaza as it happened and was all over the news. It's a game I've returned in my thoughts right through the year (and in here, sorry about that :). Something ticked; all the players knew what the game was about, the discussions were lively after the games. And now I'm thinking if this could be a pattern that I could try to reproduce.

There are many global news stories capturing the attention of the global population each year. Last year it was the Gaza, the downturn of the economy, Obama, Afghanistan was and is still in the limelight, the climate talks in Copenhagen etc.

For me playing games about these news stories would be a way to understand and to explore viewpoints of the narrative that we consume through media. I personally often have hard time grasping the systemic view of these kinds of events through news. Instead I feel some kind of anxiety and frustration and the need to go on with other things. But I think something valuable could be learned by exploring these news events through story games.

I've started a thread on Story Games where I ask what kinds of news event people would be interested to explore with story games and what games would they use and how. You can also comment here.

Ps. News Gaming is not a new idea. Gonzalo Frasca launched the website newsgaming.com in 2003. The site contains two browser games, MADRID (about the terrorist attacks in Spain in 2004) and September 12th.

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.