A Penny For My Thoughts
So, we played a game of A Penny For My Thoughts last night and I enjoyed it immensely.
APFMT is another story-centric game from Evil Hat with a twist – you don’t play any characters, but rather a group of amnesiacs going through an experimental drug/group therapy system to regain their memories. The game plays rather like an extended group character generation session, but with an emphasis on story-telling. There are no dice, no stats: it’s a complete departure from traditional D&D style games.
I’ll admit from the start that running the game (so much that any one person can run it, giving there is no GM, per se) was a sort of test for my group. I’ve wanted to run a Dresden Files RPG game for a while which is also very story-centric with a large focus on group decisions, shared narrative control and collaborative story-telling. Dresden Files falls in between the traditional style and this more story-focused, collaborative one. I wanted to see how my group would react to this very different style of gameplay and so ran this quick one shot game to expose them to it.
Overall, it was a success. One of the players made up their minds almost immediately that they didn’t like it and decided to make a bit of a nuisance of themselves so we eventually suggested they leave since they weren’t enjoying themselves to save themselves getting bored as us getting distracted.
In hindsight, I think running the game slightly differently could have made it more fun for everyone – the player who left is very much an action-focusrd hack’n'slash type of guy and if I’d used the example facts and assurances in the book, which set the premise of us all being covert operatives, it might have been more enjoyable for him than the entirely mundane setting I established (which didn’t preclude being a covert operative, but didn’t encourage it either).
Given the lack of familiarity with the system and the fact that many of the players weren’t well practiced at improv we didn’t finish everyone’s questionnaires. However on of the players did, so I’ll quickly summerise it now.
The first memory was a pleasant one and the memory trigger he selected was one by our unruly player: “The sound of screaming”.
Guiding questions turned the scene into a childhood visit to a fun fair with a long time friend and the memory started with the two entering a haunted house. The first decision was about actually entering it or not and who paid. He entered the house after making the friend pay for them both and they wandered through until they reached a corner, where another decision was made. The guides made some suggestions and he chose to shout Boo! behind the friend. They both ran out of the house and the memory ended on a kiss.
The next memory was an unpleasant one and started with the trigger of “falling down the stairs”.
The guiding questions established a large time gap, setting this memory in adult age. The setting became a busy, overcrowded hospital and he was feeble, patient zero in some kind of epidemic.
The next decision points resulted in him spilling chemicals everywhere as he tried to sneak out of the hospital, getting a hypodermic of an unknown substance embedded in his knee when he fell, snapping the needle and accidentally injecting himself and feeling very sick and disorientated.
The final memory was of how he came to be it the institute where this therapy session was taking place and started with the memory trigger of a grazed knee on concrete.
This memory continued directly on from the last, following his escape from an ambulance whilst being returned to the hospital after his last attempt. He was gong to see the friend from the childhood memory.
Each decision led him to wander through the streets in a confused state, until he began vomiting blood when he then became desperate to see his friend before he died and stole a car to drive there. However he crashed and as he lost consciousness he remembered he’d been confused and his friend had been at the hospital all along, ill like him and now he wouldn’t see her again before he died. Then he woke up with no memories at the institute.
Some other memories were tragic or bizarre. One pleasant memory was of sinking into the oblivion of unconsciousness whilst drowning, mine was of assassinating a tennis player at a championship match for al-Qaeda as a demonstration that they could get anywhere and reach anyone!
We’re going to finish the session next week, and in a lucky coincidence both the person who finished their character and the player who didn’t enjoy it are absent next week, so no-one is going to cause any problems by being absent.
On the whole, I really enjoyed playing this and look forwards to pjayibg at again as a sort of palate cleanser between longer games if not for a dedicated session. Fun stuff. Being designed as a one-shot game, it also works well for playing when key people are absent from another game or if people just want a quick break from a longer campaign of something else. Also, its a great way to create characters for stories and the writer in me definitely wants to try it on a future work.
I’ll write up the whole game properly when its finished.
On the whole though, highly recommended.