To and Again

To and Again, the game, is based on the book of the same name by Walter R. Brooks, published in 1927. The book follows the adventures of a group of farm animals, from the Bean farm in central New York State; they decide that winter in the North is too tough for them this year, so they’ll migrate to Florida for the season, like the swallows. The book follows their journey to Florida, and back again. This turned out after the fact to be the first in a long series of books: the affable, clever Freddy the pig books, one of my favorite series as a kid.

This game is something of a board game, something of an RPG, and mostly a collaborative story game. It's a rules-light structure allowing 4 or so players (including a GM) to collectively tells stories as a group of animals taking a trip. Players can reenact the original book (character sheets for the original cast are provided, but the book isn't), or use the rules to generate their own characters and story ideas. My goal in designing it was to make a storytelling structure that allows for the cooperative inventiveness that is the main feature of the original book—and, since there is that series of future adventures somewhere in the not-yet-public, to make it open-ended enough that players can make up their own new characters and new adventures.

To and Again is a 40-page A5 booklet.