Paul Tevis has created a story-game, and it is finally published and in several peoples’ hands, and I want to give him a big WOOT for getting it done.

A Penny For My Thoughts »paultevis.com.

This game’s official launch is an odd kind of moment for me. I’m planning to buy it as soon as I can get the scratch to do so, and I want to play it. Actually, it’s more that I NEED to play it. You see, I’ve long thought of this game as a dragon that I need to slay. Although I am pretty sure I don’t feel quite that way anymore, Paul’s game has nevertheless had an unmistakable effect on my roleplay over the past two years.

I shall elaborate…

Two years ago at GenCon ‘07 I went to the inaugural Ashcan Front booth, where three of my podcasting buddies – Jeff Himmelman, Jeff Lower and Paul Tevis – were participants. My intent was to purchase all three of their ashcans as a show of support, and I did so. I also participated in demos for all three games. One demo sticks out in my memory, though, because it featured a moment that has become indelibly burned into my memory – so much so that it became a turning point in my roleplaying.

Paul Tevis had created an ashcan of a story-weaving game called A Penny for My Thoughts about people with lost memories attempting to get them back. A central feature of the game involves one player setting up a very basic improvised starting point for some sort of memory-story about her/himself, then literally handing a penny to another player and saying, “a penny for my thoughts” – at which point the player taking the penny has to build on the original player’s starting bit and craft some sort of interesting story element to add into the mix about the originating player.

Well Paul demonstrated the game for Jeff Himmelman and me that day, he began by establishing a basic bit for his story, and then held up the penny, proffered it toward me, and said, “a penny for my thoughts…”

I froze. Totally deer-in-the-headlights-slack-jawed frozen. I stared at that penny in Paul’s hand, and suddenly, all that was in my head was that Paul Tevis, Jeff Himmelman, and possibly seven thousand other GenCon attendees were all waiting with baited breath for Mr. Harping Monkey, The Mythic Misfit Mick Bradley, to come up with some cool, interesting, nifty bit to throw onto the table.

And I stood there, dumbfounded, while the only thing that came out of my mouth was “uuuuhhhh…” and probably some slobber.

Then Paul – I imagine it was only a second or two later, but to me it felt like 90 minutes – he turned to Jeff, offered him the penny and said “Okay, in that case, you go to the next player and say ‘a penny for my thoughts’. And Jeff offered an interesting bit, and then Paul went on to explain how things worked from there. My memories are pretty hazy about the rest of it, but eventually we all chuckled about it and I bought the ashcans and went off wandering around the hall, still somewhat dazed. That moment was to become one of three that occurred at GenCon 07 where I was completely unable to come up with something interesting to add into the game fiction and froze up as a result. The other two involved PTA Star Wars and Vegas After Midnight (which I was RUNNING, for gods’ sakes).

For several days after I got home from Indy I mulled this stuff over in my mind. I realized that as badly as I wanted to play these crazy hippie games and employ all these cool collaborative-narrative techniques in my roleplay, I did not have a good grasp on the skills needed. My quick-thinking/self-confidence/just-trust-and-throw-something-out-there muscles were not developed and I decided that whatever it took I was going to develop them.

It became an obsession. I was determined to play as many games as I could over the next year that involved collaborative story-weaving and off-the-cuff player input into the fiction. And I got to do some of that with the Rolemonkeys – we played The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, Piledrivers and Powerbombs and one or two others as one-shots, and that got me started. But it wasn’t enough – in fact the most pertinent reason I decided to leave the Rolemonkeys was because I was so obsessed with playing exclusively those types of games and the other guys wanted to mix it up and play some more trad stuff along with the occasional hippie stuff.

Suffice to say, it was my own obsession that went overboard in that regard. The same thing happened with TGMS. I was fixated on developing my hippie-technique muscles and digging into hippie-technique discussion and I went way far out there with it. And it was pretty much all because I was obsessed with slaying those three dragons that had made me feel like a doofus at GenCon ‘07.

So, cutting to the chase, I eventually got in a groove with Canon Puncture and not only developed some of the muscles I needed – but more importantly I was able to feel more comfortable and far less anxious with Rich and the guys, and something clicked. When I got to GenCon ‘08, I felt prepared to slay dragons.

With PTA Star Wars and Vegas After Midnight, I was able to put my obsession to rest. I went after those games with relish and it worked. Mission accomplished, two dragons down.

I didn’t play any Penny for My Thoughts last year at GenCon, but to be honest, the success with the other stuff pretty much negated any specific need I had to conquer Penny anyway. Basically, I have proven myself to myself, and I’ve also realized that I was really the only person who was feeling I needed to prove anything anyway, and I needed to recognize that I could do with a bit of chilling out about it, too. That’s pretty much all good now.

Still, the fact that Paul has achieved his game-creation milestone, that my friend has made a game and it is real and gorgeous and is in peoples’ hands and getting good reviews … well, that gives me pleasure. I haven’t seen the fully-cooked version of the game yet, but I suspect that somewhere in the process of cooking it, Paul must have thought about some of the things that happened at GenCon 07 and massaged his text and his rules to address how to make the game soar even if there’s some knucklehead at the table who – for whatever reason – freezes up and can’t seem to participate in the collaboration as the game goes on.  And even though I believe I’m past my own personal speedbump in relation to all that – or maybe I should say BECAUSE I believe I’m past it, I look forward to playing Paul’s game and getting to experience his creation.

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