It's Friday. I'm trying to wrap up a few things at work before I head down to LA for OrcCon when I see that my friend Judd has IM'd me a link. I click on it and see this on Twitter:

wilw: @ptevis are you running Penny For My Thoughts at OrcCon tomorrow? Can I play if you are? Please please please pretty please?

Now, a bit of history: Wil and I were both Guests of Honor at RinCon last fall, and we ended up spending a reasonable amount of time together1. Wil was interested in Penny because there was a game of it going on2 during a D&D game he was running, and "it sounded like they were having a lot of fun." Sadly, our schedules didn't mesh that weekend, so he wasn't able to play in the game I ran3. He did buy a copy, however, and asked me to sign it for him4.

Back to Friday. I see the Tweet in question and reply in the affirmative. I had planned on stopping at home before I headed down to the con, which was a good thing, as I didn't have my demo kit with me. I finally got out of work late, made a quick stop to pick it up, and drove to Los Angeles. Saturday morning, however, I wasn't quite sure when Wil would be there or how we would meet up. Fortunately, I ran into Andrew Linstrom, who had seen the exchange on Twitter and came to the convention to meet me and for a chance to play Penny5. I ended up demoing a game design I'm working on for him, and when I was done, who should appear but Wil and his friend Cal. We made arrangements to meet after lunch and play.

So, we sit down in the lobby, and Wil says (roughly): "I emailed Andrew Hackard to figure out how to get in touch with you, and he suggested I just post something on my Twitter feed. So I did. Then I pulled up your feed in a tab and kept hitting reload to see if you'd reply. It was weird; I felt like some sort of Internet stalker."

We all just let that hang in air for a moment, and then we played6.

 

 

1 This was aided by the fact that I was rooming with Andrew Hackard, Wil's friend and editor, whom I had met through my past association with Steve Jackson Games.

2 Run by the incomparable JD Corley

3 Which actually turned out to be three separate games but I digress.

4 Cue the cognitive dissonance.

5 Yes, my ego is going just fine at this point.

6 The game turned out to be insane, full of hunchbacks, and a lot of fun.

I've been overwhelmed by the number of positive mentions of Penny I've seen recently:

• Jim Crocker, manager of Modern Myths in Northampton, MA, calls A Penny For My Thoughts one of his favorite games of the year. I know Jim doesn't praise things lightly, so this means a lot to me.
• The Ogres over at OgreCave found room for Penny on their annual Christmas Gift Guide, in the Stocking Stuffer (i.e. less than $25) section. For the last seven or so Christmases, I've looked foward to this list. Finding my own game on it is an unexpected present.
• There was at least one game of Penny at MACE in High Point, NC, that sounds like it was both gonzo and fun. Later on in that thread, Andy Kitkowksi talks thoughfully about his experience of the game, using words that make me happy.
• And finally, the day before Thanksgiving, my mother called me and asked me to send her a PDF because she'd forgotten her copy at home. My parents were visiting friends in Plainview, TX, and on Thanksgiving Day they played Penny together and had a great time. This is pretty much the definition of win.

Robin Laws posted on his Livejournal that he (along with several other folks I've met) played A Penny For My Thoughts on Wednesday night, and that in said game he played a fictionalized version of Paul Tevis, the author of A Penny For My Thoughts. My mind boggled at the idea that arguably the greatest roleplaying game designer working today not only played my game, but played me. There are stranger things Horatio, indeed.

Once I got over the initial disorientation, I thought about what Robin had to say about the game. To wit:

The game follows the common indie approach of asking a GM-less group to weave a story in response to a very specific and detailed series of rules structures. We experienced some confusion in identifying and following the structure. It might have benefited us to more strongly bring to mind the game's fictional framework of its memory-challenged group therapy session.

I've talked with Robin before about story structure and games, so I see where he's coming from with his observation about "the common indie approach." One thing his comment made me realize is that I've thought of Penny as different from most indie/story games in that its techniques of play aren't intended to create story. Yes, story can (and hopefully will) emerge from the process of play, but to me the focus it puts on the moment-to-moment interactions between people at the table is more important. When I was designing Penny, I thought of it more in social terms than in narrative ones. I suppose once the book is out my hands, it doesn't really matter what I think; what matters is what people get from it.

The other thing that I discovered from Robin's (quite valid) critique is that I'm worried about being judged as a game designer solely on Penny. It was a deliberately experimental game. I wanted to see what it would take for me to put a book together. I also wanted to see what would happen if I made certain bold design choices and stuck with them. The result wasn't anything like the way we normally play on Tuesday nights, at least structurally. As I'm slowly working on More Questions Than Answers (the system we're using for our Delta Green game), I'm rediscovering how we play together, and for some reason I'm anxious to show it to the world and say, "See! This how I really play!" What I'm not sure at all about is why that is.

Stranger things indeed.

Jason Corley has posted a Prisoner-inspired playset for Penny over at Story Games.

Mike and Mitch from the Ninjas vs. Pirates Podcast were kind enough to interview me about A Penny For My Thoughts, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. The first half in particular makes me happy, because I finally figured out how to articulate things about Penny's design that I hadn't been able to before. The second half is fun, too, but it's mostly stories about things that happened to me along the way to publishing it. Thanks, guys, for giving a me change to get some of these things out of my skull.