I finally got my copy of Story, Please – An Adventure-Building Deck for No, Thank You Evil! last week. I never got any alert to redeem my copy from the Kickstarter and because of the craziness of life didn’t realize it until around Christmas. But emailing any company during the holidays is pointless, so it was a bit before Monte Cook Games had time to solve my issue which they did with much graciousness. Then even longer for me to get around to redeeming it once I got my redemption codes all worked out.
But this weekend, my daughter, age 6, and I got to take out the expansion for a test drive. We loved it. For her, she could look at the pictures and pick places and stories that looked cool or cute or whatever metric a 6 year old uses to pick things. While I the parent had simple guides to help narrate a story. One of the problems I found with playing No, Thank You Evil! with such a young kid is that they need lots of guides and prompts, and that is hard for me as an adult to remember to give them. I have spent so many years working towards collaborative storytelling, that it’s hard to go back to basics and run a game where you need to give the player(s) more information and options. Add this to the enthusiasm of a kid who has dragged me out of bed before I’ve even had coffee to play, and it’s rough to give her the best experience I can. So I was ultra excited when I heard about these cards and story prompts, and even happier now that I’ve seen them in action.
In the box you get 100 cards of various types: Story cards that give you dilemmas and problems to solve, Place cards that give you three locations based on a picture, People cards that have many of the characters from Storia, Map cards, Handout cards, Stuff cards, and Twist cards. I’m most impressed with the Story and Place cards because those are the tools I needed the most as the GM. Each comes with a beautifully illustrated pictures and three options of either story or place based on that picture from simple to detailed. My daughter absolutely loved the People cards because she knew them from the stories and some of the adventures from the base game that we’ve ran. For her they were almost like old friends.
So on a grading scale of 1 to 5 dice – Story, Please is hands down a 5 dice product. It enhances the main game without distracting from the fun, which is rare in a supplement and I really needed them to help run the game smoothly and quickly. My only experience with the game is for running it for a young child, but I can totally see new gamers (10-12 years old) using these cards to help create their own stories. So if you own No, Thank You Evil! this is a must buy supplement!
