Hundred Firsts

Hundred Firsts is a deck of questions for a table where the food has already arrived. Every question is about the first time you did something. Your first screen name, the whole thing, numbers included. The first compliment you have been living off ever since. A first already happened. Nothing is at stake in saying it out loud, which is why these work at a table of eight where not everybody knows each other. And yet every first contains the whole person. THREE WAYS TO PLAY The Round. One question at a time. One sentence each, around the table. Then the deck draws who tells the whole story and writes their name onto the card. Once you have told one you are out of the draw until everyone has. Pass left. The one sentence rule is the whole game. It keeps the fast talkers honest and it gets the quiet ones in before they can think about it. Three follow-up questions come with every card, so nobody gets away with one sentence. The Read turns it around. The deck picks one person and shows the card, and everyone else says what they think that person will answer before the person answers. It is a test of how well the table knows each other, and the wrong guesses are the funniest thing at the table. The Blind is the one people film. The phone goes around and each person types their answer in secret. Then the answers come back out in handwriting, one at a time, unattributed, and the table guesses who said what. KEEP THE ONE THAT GOT YOU Any card can be kept. The app draws it on the artwork, in the handwriting, and hands it to the share sheet as a real image. At the end of a night it will draw you one more: how many firsts, how many people, and the date. NOTHING IS COLLECTED No account. No sign up. No email. No analytics. No server. You open it, you play, you close it, and nothing about the night leaves the phone. That is not a marketing line, it is how it is built. Free to start, with thirty-six of the firsts and every way to play. The whole deck is one purchase, and nothing else, ever. Written and drawn in Charleston by a photographer who got tired of small talk.