I Guess This Is It Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• How to Play
• Game End

Components

• 1 I Guess This Is It card, 1 Goodbye card
• 16 Story cards
• 1 Guidebook

Setup

Shuffle the Story cards. Deal 1 to each player face down and place 12 cards in a 3x4 grid face up.

Place the Goodbye card (with the last 2 Story cards underneath) to the top right of the last column of the grid. This is your Goodbye pile.

Place the I Guess This Is It card between both players.

Together decide:

• What is the nature of your relationship?
• Which one of you is leaving and which one is staying?
• Why are you saying goodbye?
• Where does your goodbye take place?

Random setup generator: bit.ly/3JSVfTD

For your first games, try out the Guidebook.

Person leaving: You wish you could stay a little longer, but you know your time has come. Express how you feel, but remember it's always harder for the person staying.

Person staying: You wish they'd stay a little longer, but you know you have to let them go. Express how you feel, but remember the guilt the person leaving might carry.

Spend some time envisioning this setting. Consider the time period, the scenario, and the overall mood of this goodbye scene. You can be as fantastical or realistic as you wish.

How to Play

The person staying starts the game. On their turn, each player must:

1. Draw 1 or 2 Story cards from the grid. The diagram shows the drawing order you must follow.

2. Play a Story card from their hand connecting to the previous card played. (On the first turn, it's the I Guess This Is It card.)

   To play a Story card, you must fulfill three conditions:

   1. One of the sides of your card must connect to an available side of the previously played card, in any orientation.
   2. The connected sides must show the same link type (MEMORY, WISH, APOLOGY, or RECOGNITION).
   3. Cards can never overlap.

3. Narrate what the person says, considering the link type, the prompt, and the image on the Story card they played.

   • Link types: the connected link type informs the nature of your narration and provides a special effect. See step 4.
   • Prompts: the written prompt on your card informs the theme of your narration. The word itself may be interpreted as literally or metaphorically as desired.
   • Image: there's an illustration that may be used as inspiration for your story too.

   Put yourself in the position of the person that you are playing. Understand how they feel. Revisit the decisions you made before the game started. Visualize where you are, the surroundings, the colors, the sounds, and let all that inform your lines. Say them in the first person, as the protagonist, or in the third person, as a narrator, however you feel more comfortable.

Game End

When no Story cards remain in the grid, it's time to say goodbye. The person leaving reads the Goodbye card words, then gets up and leaves.

After a short break, get back together. Reveal the cards left in your hands. Those are all the things left unsaid. Look at them together one by one, and silently reflect on their meaning, on how you wish you had just a little more time together.

If you both had the same number of cards in your hands, you at least feel you were on the same page, and your conversation was in sync, like the good old days. Otherwise, there's a nagging sensation that one of you was maybe a little selfish or negligent to the other person's feelings.

Now reveal all cards under the Goodbye pile. Those are also things left unsaid, and things you will forget about each other in the coming years. Look at them together one by one, and again silently reflect on how you will miss them.