We played A Penny for Your Thoughts last night at the Baker household: Meg, Vincent and myself. This was their first time. I had participated in a demo at GenCon. I fell for the game right away, so was looking forward to playing with my local peeps.

Error 1: We started late at night. The game is quick and punchy, so I figured it wouldn't be a problem, but the unusual narration style took us a little while to get the groove in, especially since we were a bit less than energetic.

I gave Meg and Vincent the run down: we were psychiatric patients who had lost our memories. We had volunteered take part in an experimental treatment, Mnemosyne, which would allow us to better retrieve our memories by psychically connecting with eachothers' memories.

The response was: trippy. Wierd and cool.

We put our memory scraps in a cup and started playing. Meg went first and pulled "pineapple" for her pleasant memory. She narrated smelling ripe pineapples growing in the field outside her home on the plantation in Hawaii. It was the day she went to the mainland for the first time. She wanted to bring a pineapple to the people who would host her: did she?

I said: You take pineapple to the airport, but then see the signs about not bringing any plants etc. You run to the ladies' room, and cut a slice that you savor, then leave the rest there.

Vincent said: you don't pick a pineapple. You just breathe in the smell deeply and bring that memory with you.

Meg picks Vincent's, of course. :)

We played a bit fast and loose with the penny mechanic. I forgot to mention that we should simply have the person with the highest take a turn, and for some reason we ended up with people not having enough to do memories. We adapted by trading pennies in between rounds, which worked fine, and we all got our turns. Vincent ended up doing his unpleasant memory before his pleasant, which was fine and interesting. But we'll go by the book next time, when we're less sleepy.

Error 2: On my unpleasant memory turn, I narrated what was happening based on the word I pulled before I'd asked V&M questions. It was terrible. They were frozen and didn't know what to ask. Or rather, all the questions just narrowed down what I'd already described and so seemed superfluous. It was so awkward I was very glad it happened. It made me realize how important the order of doing things really was.

When we started to wrap up our game, with the final questions, we had an interesting surreal thread creep in. I'd done mine: I lost my memory during a small car crash that involved my partner being with someone else. The Meg did her scene. She was in Paris, met a woman, had a drink and then either: (my suggestion) drugged and mugged by the woman, or (Vincent's suggestion) she came to the realization that she was just a figment of this other woman's imagination, a splinter personality, that she did not really exist.

Meg chose Vincent's and we started to weave in that I was another reflection as well. Several of my scenes had been sort of shadowy reflections of Meg's. But we stopped short at pulling in Vincent's character. It was seeming too contrived.

Vincent asked if we could do more scenes before the end. I don't see why not. I'm not sure how the penny economy adapts. Meg asked if we could play with more people. I forgot to read that in the rules. I'm curious what the range is. 3-5? We definitely noticed that the suggestion with the stronger punch was often the worse outcome for the character. What was more interesting was often harsher and got the penny. Good dynamic. Good for the story.

Thanks for the great game, Paul. I look forward to playing more.

best,
Emily