"A Penny for my thoughts", We actually always say" for your thoughts ", but this time it's a bit different ...
Do you know what I'm going to talk about? I think by now you have understood that I look more to the past than to the future (no, I'm not a Sith), so today I'm talking about an old role-playing game distributed in Italy by Janus Design and born from the mind of Paul Tevis and published by Evil Hat Production, known to us above all for Blades in the dark.
This game, in 2009, won the award of Indie RPG Awards like Most Innovative Game of the Year. But what volume am I actually browsing? If you have read any of my articles in the past, you now know that I appreciate psychodrama. With De Profundis we had talked about the descent into the darker aspects of madness, through the Myths of Cthulhu, and with Death of a Hero I invited you to deal with the loss of a partner in the role-playing game.
With A Penny for my thoughtsInstead, players find themselves playing, creating, or reliving specific memories and, together, they are invited to build a shared story.
But let's analyze this product better which I hope will have, sooner or later, a new edition.
The One Penny Therapeutic Procedure for my Thoughts
The intimate nature of the patient is quite pertinent to the higher field of investigation of neurology and psychology, since they have intimately to do with the patient's personality, and the study of the disease cannot be separated from that of the patient. identity
Dr. Oliver Sacks
Who am I? I don't remember, I lost my memory.
What am I doing here and where am I? You are atOrphic Institute of Advanced Studies (it is possible to consult the website of the structure, it has not been updated for a while ... or maybe it is just a fragment of a memory?) and we are here to help you recover what you have lost, but before you start take this drug, is called Mnemosyne. It may seem strange at first, but you will see that with our help and with the help of other patients you will find the way to rebuild yourself and your memories.
So: there are no supernatural monsters. There is no creature that has stolen your memories. You are not a hero of a fantasy or science fiction tale. You are just a patient who, together with the other guests of the structure, wants to search for himself.
This game is one of many examples of a masterless system, with no narrator or game facilitator, in the classic sense of the term master. Before starting the "session" the participants must establish, as if it were a sort of declaration of intent, determined Reassurance e Fact data, to give credibility to the world around them.
After this first step, all players are required to write Mnemonic hints which will be subsequently extracted at random and investigated, time and again, by the patients of the therapy. This will happen through specific questions that will lead to the beginning of the Travel after a blurred memory is brought back to light.
The aim of all players is to work together so that three fundamental memories are reconstructed for each participant, and that the memory comes back to light.
The therapy also presents the possibility of being implemented through the expansion and deepening of the responses, inherent to the analysis of memories, through the exchange of coins between patients (a penny for our thoughts).
Posology of the drug Mnemosyne
Regarding this game, I need to make a couple of statements. I tried it several years ago and today I picked it up again because I needed to recover a memory.
I must also underline the fact that the game finds its absolute and magnificent representation as a one-shot, preferably with four players. The sessions should last about three hours and I leave you some specific tips for the game.
The first thing relax and try to write some Mnemonic hints intriguing and interesting (and why the refrain of a Johnny Cash song?). It is essential to focus on the feelings you have or think you have experienced. Be brief, be specific, ask obvious questions, be guided by previous memories.
By following these simple steps you can find the right way to create new memories or, perhaps, bring past and repressed memories to the surface in the depths of your mind. But, please, insert one X CARD and try to face safety at the table together to avoid unpleasant situations between the participants.
Conclusions on A Penny for My Thoughts
I have been trying to question myself for a few days about the meaning of memories and memory. The triggering reason for this is definitely a book that I am trying, again, to tackle and that I am unable to carry on. The volume in question is "Mother London”By Michael Moorcock, one of my favorite English writers.
In this novel the characters are patients of a psychiatric clinic who meet weekly to talk about their memories and their feelings. Yes, they all have some sort of psychiatric pathology, but they have something more than others, they also have powers. Who remains eternally young, who has the ability to perceive thoughts, who else ...
Here, however, things are more real and potentially more dramatic.
A penny for my thoughts it's the kind of game you think you'll never be ready to play. You could be people "normal“, But the additional appendices allow for additional possibilities. You could be secret agents who have to reconstruct their identity or, if you just can't help but play with Cthulhu (let him sleep every now and then on Ed), you could have witnessed an appearance of the Myths.
In addition to these scenarios, you also have the opportunity to play your reality. Sometimes it is necessary to face something that we keep inside, but often we are not ready to do it alone. Help is essential and why not find it using a game? By now it should be clear that certain games are serious business!
But above all, remember respect for the table above all else.
I leave one last appeal to the insiders of the sector: if you have a way to bring this game to light, know that I have a lot of pennies for your thoughts!
