Annalise: Neither Sanctuary nor Salvation, part 2

Well, that went downhill.

content warning: cannibalism, gun violence, murder, mutilation, violence toward and murder of children, bird fetuses THERE ARE LOTS OF WARNINGS OKAY

Colin drives back to the hardware store with Billy. It's closed today, and he's robbing the cash register when he hears a tapping on the window. It's Quentin Drake. Colin pulls a gun on Quentin and tries to rob him of what's in the briefcase. Quentin sets some jewelry and cash aside, but suggests that Colin might be interested in some of the odder items. He offers Colin a jar with a pickled bird fetus, which he claims is a fetus. He tells Colin that if Billy eats it, then it will bring the life back into Billy's eyes. Billy seems possessed by desire at the sight of the bird fetus. Billy eats the entire fetus, and he seems momentarily suffused by a red glow, before his pre-death appearance is restored.

Colin shoots Quentin. Quentin only laughs and pulls the bullet out of his chest. Colin grabs the briefcase and he and Billy make a run for it.

Georgia hides under the porch of the old house for a few hours, until she hears a familiar humming outside the door. It's Quentin (who looks perfectly fine now, though there's a black stain and a hole in his shirt). He offers to sell her some rope that she recognizes from the hardware store -- if someone is killed with this rope, no magic and no tricks involved, then the curse will end. She refuses to trust him and runs for the door -- only to trip over the rope, which has appeared in the doorway, and see Billy and Colin inside the house, with the open briefcase and its merchandise spread out.

Billy is surprised to see her and greets her. Colin is suspicious and pulls a gun on her, while she tries to explain why she's in this house without revealing the mob after her or that she was responsible for Billy's death. (Georgia is not a great liar, but fortunately, Colin is not very observant.)

Things escalate when she overhears Billy whispering to Colin: "I'm hungry. Can I eat her?" Georgia tries to run for it, but Billy chases after her. She realizes that he's still cursed and tries to strangle him with the rope but fails, and Colin shoots her. He gets Billy to tie her up with Quentin's rope.

The sound of the gunfire brings the cops, who call for Colin to come out. Colin tries to negotiate with the town's cops, using Georgia (who is going into shock) as a hostage. He's just convinced the cops to let them leave when Billy's hunger gets the better of him. Billy reaches toward Georgia's gunshot wound and starts ripping off pieces of her to eat.

The cops raise their guns again, witnessing this cannibalism/assault. Colin, realizing that taking a hostage isn't going to work if they EAT the hostage, nudges the door and commands Billy to run for the car in the back, using Georgia as a hostage (without eating her). Then, he takes some strange, silver-grey bullets from the briefcase (conveniently the right bullets for his gun), and as Billy makes a run for it with Georgia, Colin holds up his gun to shoot.

He doesn't realize until it's too late that his mother Lorna had come up to speak with him on behalf of the cops. He shoots her dead and then massacres the other cops, his aim preternaturally accurate and fast. Colin's secret is that he fantasizes about murder (even of his mother), and that in this moment, he feels good. But as he aims for the last cop, the bullet jams in the gun. The deputy shoots him dead.

Billy gets Georgia to the car, but he's stopped by the neighbors, the Evans. The Evans rescue and untie Billy, only to realize that the hostage is Georgia, who they think is a witch She tries to appeal to their history with her mother, to no avil. As they reach for her, she panics and taps into her power, grabbing them and freezing them from the inside out. (She flips two traits here: Eager to Please to Not Gonna Take Your Shit, and Afraid of Men to Men Are Afraid of Me).

Drunk on death magic, she commands Billy to follow her. They're going back to the house. She guesses that Quentin will be there -- or at least, that he'll come back for his briefcase. Before they go, she eats the ghosts of the Evans and uses that power to heal her wounds.

When they reach the house, she sends Billy ahead to scout, and he reports that the cops are still in the house and the salesman is hanging around outside. She commands Billy to lead the cops away so that she can confront Quentin and agrees to let him eat. As he leads the cops away and the sound of screaming comes from outside, she heads in to confront the salesman.

As Georgia uses her power, ice creeps up from Quentin's feet to cover him, but she's getting tired and he has power of his own to resist her with. Desperate for more, she drains the ghosts of those who have died around the house, and when that isn't enough, she begins draining the power from the magical items in his briefcase. For the first time, Quentin loses his temper.

As she reaches for more power, her hand brushes against a mirror, which drains her of all of her power. Quentin calls a knife into his hands and approaches her. She may have ruined his merchandise, but fortunately, a witch's tongue has power...

In the Aftermath, Billy is feeding on the cops he's killed when Quentin emerges from the house, no worse for wear. Billy finds himself helpless to resist as Quentin shrinks him and places him within the briefcase, promising that he'll become full-sized once they reach their next destination...
With Lorna and Colin dead and Billy's body missing, Colin's other siblings are sent to orphanages outside of Sanctuary. They bury Colin in the same plot Billy was buried in, since they can't afford a new one.

They find Georgia's mutilated body hanging from the rafters of the house the next day. Her tongue and every other part of her that might have magical value have been cut off. Her death drives her father even deeper into alcoholism and there are rumors he's haunted by her ghost, until one day, he snaps on the way to the liquor store and murders someone.

It was the first incident among many, as violence continued to haunt Sanctuary for generations to come.

Actual Play - Annalise: Neither Sanctuary Nor Salvation

Or the "well, that escalated quickly" game.

A. and I did a two-person game of Annalise, using the At the Crossroads of Sanctuary and Salvation scenario. It took two rounds of scenes before we started using Moments...but once they came, they came fast and furious.

I play Georgia Stevens, a morbid, eager to please girl with an abusive, alcoholic father and a crush on Tommy Mather, the captain of the local baseball team. A. plays Colin Ellis, the eldest of five children, who dreams of a life away from Sanctuary instead of working in a failing hardware store.

Everything started innocently enough. Colin meets Quentin Drake, a salesman new in town who comes into the store to buy fishing tackle. Georgia's crush asks her to the bonfire on Saturday night.

Flash forward to Saturday night, with Georgia in her mother's makeup and black dress. When she heads outside though, Tommy's friends drench her in ice cold water, and all three of the boys laugh at her. Tommy never wanted to date her after all (and in fact doesn't even know her name); it was a dare.

Humiliated, Georgia hides in the house, but there's soon a knock at the door, asking for the lady of the house. Georgia meets Quentin Drake, who sells her a human heart that will grant her whatever she wishes for...as long as she gives up Tommy.

Colin is minding the store and managing fighting siblings until his mother comes in, in tears. As Colin shoos the younger kids out of the room, she tells him that the sheriff told her that Billy had died in a car accident earlier -- along with tree other boys (Tommy, Jimmy. and Jack).

At the joint funeral for the boys, Georgia tries to offer her sympathies to Bobby (who she knows from the bookstore), but is then rebuffed. Spotting a familiar hat in the crowd, she chases after it and confronts Quentin Drake on a hill, forcing him to admit what she has suspected all along: the accident was her fault all along. She traded Tommy away in exchange for a wish. Angry, Georgia makes her wish: she wishes to bring the dead boys back. Back in her room, the heart glows a brilliant blue... as below, the funeralgoers begin to scream.

When Colin hears banging on the caskets, he opens up Billy's casket and sees his very much dead brother (his face is bloodless, his skin is cold, and his eyes are filmed over). Billy is blind, but he calls Colin's name and reaches for his brother's hand, and Colin defends his brother against the other funeralgoers, stealing first a gun. He ushers his family to safety, but Lorna sees Billy's resurrection as the devil's work and refuses to have anything to do with him or Colin. Colin steals the mayor's car and tries to leave Sanctuary with Billy, but Billy has a seizure as they approach town lines -- which only gets better as the two of them turn back.

When Quentin explains what she's done, Georgia runs down to the funeral. She sees Tommy supported by his family and starts to head toward him, but her father intercepts her and tells her they're going home. Finding her courage, Georgia invokes her dead mother and shames her father into standing down. She runs over to Tommy and tells him that she's sorry. Tommy's mother, overhearing, accuses her of being the witch who did this to Tommy, and the other townsfolk begin to remember the stories that Georgia's mother was a witch...

The townsfolk quickly turn into a mob, and the scene ends with her crawling under the porch of an abandoned, haunted house near the church.

This was fun, but also INTENSE -- I felt a little grossed out by all the dead people. At one point we had to have a discussion about whether Billy had blood or embalming fluid. Also, it touches darker real life stuff than the other Annalise games I've played: Georgia's relationship with her father and the way Colin stubbornly clings to his dead brother are poignant and disastrous.

It was cinematic and had the feel of a Southern Stephen King novel. We both agreed that we would watch this as a movie. It's a lot more quickly paced than our other game, and the game seems narrow in focus: there's Quentin, there are the dead boys, and there are Georgia and Colin dealing with the burdens of family legacy and learning to take a stand...and making seriously questionable decisions in the pursuit of already questionable goals.

What I like about this game (and I think, this scenario in general) is how the story has a certain momentum to it. I think this is partly because A. and I play a lot, and we are both in the habit of saying "yes" to things. But this game also invokes a lot of genre tropes. Once a humiliated Georgia opens the door to a salesman, you know an unwise deal with the devil is going down. This started early, really, with Tommy asking Georgia to the dance, because good things do not happen to Georgia. As soon as the banging started on the coffin, Colin was going to make a choice, and it was pretty obvious what the choice would be.

Actual Play - More Annalise: The Wake of Zenas Quantum

This time we're playing The Wake of Zenas Quantum. It's not very GOTHIC HORROR and a lot more... superheroes of questionable heroism doing questionable things.

I was a little unsure at first if the system could handle this, but once everyone got a feel for it and once we switched to more psychological play, it worked out. Instead of pupil-less eyes and drowned men crawling on the hulls of the ship, we have golden glitter, strange seductive scents, alien trinkets from Banner's homeworld..and donuts. There's kind of a homey, old-style American comics feel about it: alien trinkets and really special donut shops just have a vintage twentieth century feel. It's shaping up to be tragedy by way of the Silver Age, and the most monstrous thing so far is probably...well, honestly, us.

Isabella breaks and enters, but it's fine because she bought out the cops! Banner tried to steal from a journalist and kidnapped him (Isabella helped, and is really more concerned about the PR than the kidnapping). Barry covered up an accidental killing and then tried to take over the Heroic Agency. Kelly is the only one of us who is actually nice.

Everyone decided in the first scene that Zenas Quantum is the Vampire. The question, of course, is if it really is Zenas.

Zenas is plotting something in the background, but we're all too busy fighting each other. Barry's jealousy of Banner's heroism and superpowers motivated him to get Banner kicked out of the Heroic Agency. Isabella sort-of-accidentally gassed Banner with fear gas (someone replaced her tranquilizing gas system with fear gas!). Writing this made me realize that all the terrible things happen to Banner.

Also, all of this is building up to a fascinating...something. Why are there mirrors everywhere? What are the weird properties of Zenas's blood? Where's that seductive smell coming from? What does Banner's homeworld have to do with anything (and why was Zenas's blood inside a trinket from there?). What does the kitsune home/afterlife have to do with any of it?

And whatever the hell is going on with Zenas gloating in everyone's head?

Actual Play - Lady Blackbird, part 2

Second half of Lady Blackbird!

This game ended with a bang.

They infiltrated the hunting club, and Naomi successfully persuaded into getting the sky-squid hunter, allowing her to free the sky-squid...but not before Snargle, Cyrus, and Lady Blackbird end up a fight with a merchant over a badly treated servant, Cyrus and Lady Blackbird get detained by security, and Snargle sets a fire to allow them to break free and rescues more sky-goblins from servitude.

When they get back to the ship, they discover that Kale has been possessed by a ghostblood, so Lady Blackbird casts a spell to free him.

We find out more about the crew in the refresh scenes. Lady Blackbird and Cyrus agree to get along and put his unfortunate crush behind them, but nonetheless continue to bicker. Snargle and Naomi shake their heads over it. We discover that Naomi has never met Uriah, but despises him... because she's secretly in love with Lady Blackbird! When Cyrus finds out, he and Naomi end up getting really drunk together and bonding over their unattainable love (who is inexplicably in love with some sketchy pirate).

Also, all the sky-goblin passengers decide that they want to become pirates, since they're sick of capitalism. Naomi teaches them how to fight, Lady Blackbird teaches them how to walk like nobility, Cyrus grooms one of them to command, and Snargle teaches them to be pilots.

Once they get to Nightport, they track down a pirate king named Treebeard -- a former noble turned pirate, so named because of his green, algae-like beard (due to a magical accident). There's a problem with former nobles turned pirates in this 'verse. Presumably because all the nobles are jerks anyway. Treebeard welcomes them and Lady Blackbird convinces him to set up a meeting with Uriah Flint in three days.

Treebeard also drops some hints that Uriah is working on a "project" in the Remnants, and the crew decided to investigate. At this point, I threw my hands up and was like, "OKAY, WHAT IS URIAH UP TO. EACH OF YOU TELL ME ONE THING."

The group decides that Uriah had a portal to another dimension, which was giving him access to aether and summoning monsters from other dimensions. There are also hints that he wants to create his own fiefdom. IC, they discover this via lots of spying and rescuing two scientists (who join the crew, because OF COURSE).

After their investigations are done, they meet Treebeard...but it's a trap! Treebeard has made a deal with the Empire, which will restore his title in exchange for Lady Blackbird. They fight a group of pirates and a Voidblood noble -- Naomi takes Treebeard hostage, neutralizing the pirates. The Voidblood is trickier because of the counterspell and phasing abilities, but Lady Blackbird eventually manages to turn the noble's disintegrate spell back on her and partially disintegrates her.

When they reach Uriah's ship, the Flint, (which is disguised as an asteroid), he's busy with the project but seems reasonably delighted (if wary) to see Lady Blackbird here. Lady Blackbird and Naomi wait for him in his chambers, while Cyrus and Snargle chat up the crew with varying degrees of success.

Then, everyone hears a scream. It comes from behind a locked door, which Naomi breaks open. Inside is Uriah, a scalpel in his hands as he vivisects a crocodilian biped. Behind him are cages and beds with more victims, and the magic of the portal hums -- and because Cyrus is a Warpblood, he begins to phase in and out.

Uriah tries to justify himself to Lady Blackbird -- the portal is to a dimension of magic. He's been driven mad by the portal and is harvesting magic from that dimension's inhabitants to distribute magic among the masses, bringing about true equality. Lady Blackbird does not buy that bullshit and accuses him of doing this for his own power and abandoning their ideals of equality. In addition, she thinks it's completely unnecessary -- the noble houses are producing so many illegitimate children that the aristocrats no longer have a monopoly on magic.

Uriah pleads with Lady Blackbird but unable to persuade her, at last pulls a gun on her. She and Naomi team up to knock him unconscious.

Meanwhile, Snargle frees the prisoners, and Cyrus gains enough control over the dimensional portal to realize that he can close it with a sacrifice. He resolves to sacrifice himself to close it and says goodbye to Snargle, but Lady Blackbird intervenes and substitutes Uriah instead. As part of the spell, she links herself with the other three members of the crew, reading their minds - and thus learns of Naomi's hidden affection for her.

Uriah dissolves, and the portal disappears.

In the end, Lady Blackbird and Naomi take over the ship, which terrorizes the Imperial Navy. They also start dating, but decide to take things slowly!

Cyrus gives The Owl to Snargle and moves on, eventually settling down, going through a lot of character growth, and finding love and belonging.

Snargle becomes the leader of a group of sky-goblins and frees more, helping them establish their own home. Eventually, he grows tired of the responsibility and sneaks off onto the Owl, along with a loyal crew of adventurous sky-goblins.

Lady Blackbird's prophecy turns out to be true -- in the years that come, the increase in magic among commoners (along with the attacks on the navy and the sky-goblin rebellion...) produce a more just society within their lifetime.

And in the meantime, the Owl and its crew sail on, always working to make a better world...

Notes:

- I think the game started out with some pacing issues as I tried to figure out how to resolve the sky-squid plot thread and keep the party from splitting up too much, but that ending was great.

- This session ended up being really low on narrative control on my part, and I think it ended up better for it. I felt very much part of the system instead of the primary narrator...which was good, because I was very low on creativity. There's also an interesting sneaky component in asking for player feedback: it was preeetty obvious the party wanted Uriah as an antagonist once they started taking turns narrating the details of his vivisection chamber. (Vivisection is definitely on the top 10 list of things a relationship cannot recover from).

- Naomi/Lady Blackbird took me (and I think everyone else) by surprise because Naomi's feelings were VERY well hidden the first session, and I came with the advantage of knowing that Naomi/Lady Blackbird is a common ending romance. Interestingly enough, while the game teases Lady Blackbird/Cyrus (and Lady Blackbird/Uriah), the game feels biased away from both of them -- Lady Blackbird discovering that what she wants is not what she needs (to paraphrase John Yorke) and the game actually having a final arc villain is much more satisfying story-wise, and Lady Blackbird/Cyrus feels very infatuationy. On the other hand, Lady Blackbird/Naomi and Kale/Cyrus aren't explicitly part of the setup, but they come with a lot more history for the characters that can be used to feed a romantic longing.

- This was definitely a great ensemble cast.

Actual Play - Lady Blackbird

This was my second time running Lady Blackbird today with a group entirely new to the game. We had no Kale, unfortunately. The twist I didn't expect in this game was that Naomi was pretending to be a noble lady and Lady Blackbird was pretending to be her servant.

Naomi busted them out of the cell (they were planning to do something with a ventilation shaft, but unfortunately got caught by the guards). The crew set off the alarm, but managed to disguise themselves as soldiers and make it to the hangar by claiming that Captain Hollas had sent them to destroy the Owl. Snargle's trick piloting got them out, but the ship ended up leaking fuel with no way to reach Haven.

They hid from the Hand of Sorrow in the Lower Depths for a bit, where their ship was attacked by a sky-squid. Cyrus (taking Secret of the Sky-song) realized that the sky-squid was a baby whose mother had been captured near Haven. He convinced it to tow the Owl to Haven in exchange for finding its mother.

This was somewhat hilarious, because Naomi and Lady Blackbird did not trust the sky-squid Cyrus claimed to have talked into hauling the ship. There was a big argument. It didn't help that the sky squid kept jerking the ship around. Favorite line from Naomi about the squid: "Don't worry, if I see one hole in the hull, I'll go out in a suit and eat it."

Naomi and Lady Blackbird were not very happy when Cyrus insisted that he needed to go rescue the squid's mother instead of finding the route to Uriah.

The gang got their ship repaired at Haven, won a lot of money by having Naomi fight in an illegal pit fight while pretending to be a delicate lady, promised to rescue a group of sky-goblins from the illegal slave trade on Haven, and learned that a group of young merchants had formed a club for hunting dangerous monsters.

The gang decided to disguise themselves as wealthy folks with a goblin servant (Snargle). This required buying clothes, during which Lady Blackbird met her second cousin's wife, Lady Bluejay, who recognizes her. Naomi followed Lady Bluejay to a mansion, where Bluejay informed Count Carlowe of Lady Blackbird's presence on Haven.

At this point, they're all prepared to infiltrate the club, which is where we will begin next session!

Naomi, Lady Blackbird, and Cyrus were almost always at odds. Everyone (except Snargle) was very bloodthirsty. Snargle and Naomi saved each others' lives early and became blood family. Cyrus completely failed at flirting with Lady Blackbird, who was very nasty to him in response, and gave up his Key of Hidden Longing (in favor of Key of the Vow -- to help make the world a better place by helping people!). Lady Blackbird revealed her secret identity to the crew and bought off her Key.

So this session (mostly!) worked.

General comments:

- The group was really great about helping with the worldbuilding and what happened next and took a lot of the heavy lifting off my shoulders. There were a lot of scenes where I just sat there while folks argued, and they had some wonderfully creative solutions.

- I had trouble figuring out what to do with Snargle - but hopefully there will be more opportunities for piloting/sneaking/trading in the future.

- I decided to let players award up to 3 XP for cool things in a scene. I think this was used three times in the group? My hope was that it would encourage good feelings and good roleplaying (this was a Meetup, with folks who mostly hadn't played together. Not sure if it worked.

- In hindsight, the squid thing might have been a mistake, since Naomi and Lady Blackbird didn't really care. The only reason they're doing this is because Cyrus declared that this was his ship and they were going to SAVE THE SQUID first. I'm going to try to wrap that up quickly next session.

- Desperate Housewives of Ilysium is apparently the soldiers' show of choice.

Actual Play - Annalise, the Mystery of the Auspicious: Part 2

It's been about a month so I honestly don't recall all the details of the end of the game. The Captain and the Doctor decide to explore the Queen Anne, meeting the Beast, a giant white wolf-like creature.

The Doctor's possessed hand tries to kill the Captain. The Captain lost control of his fire powers and saw the Beast, which recognized him as a brother.

At this point, undead creatures (including Sailor Godfrey) begin crawling up the sides of the ship and filling the water.
The two of them manage to escape the ship in a rowboat, where the Doctor turns out to have one sentimental feeling on seeing a vision of his fiancee Annalise.

As the two escape, the Captain resists the tempting call of the Beast and uses all of his power to set the Queen Anne on fire, ending (almost) the menace of the Beast.

The Doctor isn't so lucky, however. He wakes up the next night to feel his possessed hand across his throat. He amputates himself with a scalpel, but when the Beast calls to him to give in and to serve it, he succumbs. His secret, revealed, is that he once poisoned a hospital on the command of a foreign power. (A: "Your secret is that you're a MASS MURDERER, not that you're a traitor.")

The Captain continues sailing, now a better man who has come to peace with himself and taken command.

The Doctor disappears, until a decade later, a handsome young man - a widower, who seems surprisingly young for the job - signs on as the doctor of a new merchant vessel...

And so the curse persists.

This was a good game, but the ending was less fun that Laying the Foundations. I think we dragged on the Confrontation a bit too long and didn't put high enough stakes -- there were a few too many rolls. I think this would have been served by faster confrontations.

Still, I love the way the story came together, even if I didn't get to play with the Doctor's secret that much.

Annalise: The Mystery of the Auspicious

The Game:

We're playing the Mysterious Voyage of the Auspicious. A. plays Captain David Merrylees, whose vulnerability is that he is unwilling to take command when it matters (but nonetheless wants to maintain the appearance of being a great captain and liked). I play Doctor Thomas Billingham, a young doctor and man of science to get into that during the Confrontation!)

We started hitting our stride during the second scene, when the Doctor is called during a storm to tend to Godfrey, a sailor having a seizure. While the Doctor succeeds in stopping the seizure - Godfrey is still sick, his eyes now white and pupil-less, and apparently has lost his senses. The Doctor is intrigued and excited to discover a new malady, already envisioning the papers he will write, and takes Godfrey to his cabin for further.

Later, the Doctor hears the Captain banging on his door. The crew, troubled by omens and Godfrey's sickness, has decided to toss Godfrey overboard. The Doctor requests the Captain's help to save a [s]valuable test subject[/s] innocent crew member. When they enter the Doctor's cabin, Godfrey is mumbling from the Book of Revelations: "And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name." [1]

When Godfrey notices the Captain, he points to him: "The beast! Who is like the beast? Who can wage war agaisnt it?" The captain is enraged.

Zachary Hicks, a grizzled old sailor, remembers the last ship he sailed on - Queen Anne, which was terrorized by a Beast and white-eyed crewmen. He and one other were the only survivors, barely escaping in a lifeboat after they burned the ship. Convinced that whatever was on the Queen Anne is after him, he tries to toss himself overboard, but he is stopped by a mysterious fire that springs up in front of him (and is quickly controlled). To no avail - the next day, he kills himself.

To quell the crew, the Captain throws Godfrey overboard. The next morning, he wakes up and, looking himself in the mirror when he shaves, discovers that his own eyes have gone white.

Despite the loss of his test subject, the Doctor attempts to study what he is convinced is a new disease. He stumbles upon a Indian boy stowing away on the ship and attempts to gain the boy's trust, speaking to him in Urdu and hinting at a shared acquaintance in Calcutta. But his attempt to inject the boy with blood he drew from Godfrey (to test whether the disease is contagious goes too far) - the boy bites him and the syringe cracks, spraying blood over the wound. He is also discovered to be aiding a stowaway by the crew.

The Captain, who has decided to stay in his cabin affliction, is summoned by the first mate, after spending hours smoking opium. Adam Fitch to deal with the Doctor and the stowaway. He attempts to disguise his white eyes with a low-hanging hat, but lurching toward the deck, he loses his balance. The hat falls off his head, and his eyes are revealed to the crew. However, he manages to convince the crew that it's only a disease - unlike Godfrey, who has full command of his faculties. He decides to put the doctor in the brig, on half-rations (with provisions made so that the doctor can continue practicing on patients).

When all of this is agreed, a sailor comes running up - there's a burning ship sighted on the horizon, approaching them. It's the Queen Anne. Before the Captain can respond, he loses consciousness. The Doctor determines that it is not, in fact, his sickness but the result of too much opium. First Mate Fitch takes control and suggests, quietly, to the Doctor that natural deaths happen. The Doctor, reluctant to lose a possible protector and a test subject, convinces Fitch that they should keep the Captain under sedation instead.

As they're taking the Captain to the medical cabin, the Captain dreams that he is exploring a ship. Seeing white eyes in the darkness, he hears a voice, low and inhuman: "If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me." That jolts him back into consciousness.

The Captain quickly takes control of his ship again, regaining control from Fitch. Fitch had turned the ship back toward Calcutta, but the Captain restores their original course. Still, the Queen Anne follows them...

That night, the Captain takes a rowboat toward the Queen Anne, no longer burning after some rain in the afternoon. Parts of the ship are miraculously intact, including the captain's cabin. Opening the door to the cabin, he sees a shadowed face that looks much like his own. When he speaks, he hears a faint echo of his own words.Then a shadow in the shape of a beast of some sort flows past him, toward the Auspicious.

Returning to the Auspicious, he is spotted by the sentry, who is convinced that the Captain is in league with the Devil. He bribes the sailor to keep quiet.

The Doctor wakes in the middle of the night to find that his wounded hand is pointing toward the burnt ship. As he turns, he finds that his finger remains pointed, unerringly in the direction of the Queen Anne. Hiding his hand in his pocket, he goes out onto the deck and spots the Captain conversing with the sentry. With a surprising grace and stealth, he sneaks closer to eavesdrop, attempting to learn what the captain is up to. To no avail [2], but the Captain spots him and discovers what is wrong with his hand.

They hear a tapping upon the side of the ship, as if something is skittering up and down.

The Doctor, alarmed, asks what it is. The Captain states that the men believe that it is Godfrey, the man they tossed overboard - or perhaps the Devil himself, come to toss them overboard.

The Doctor protests that surely the Devil has better things to do: corrupting maidens, bargaining for souls. What have they ever done to deserve the Devil's attention? The Captain suggests that all their souls on the ship are claimed. The Doctor doesn't deny it.

Thoughts:

I was once a skeptic about Annalise. It took me two months to finish reading the rulebooks - there were just so many terms! Different rules for each stages! It all seemed a little unnecessary. Finally, I reluctantly finished reading the rules so A. and I could play a two-person game.

We got partway through the game (just about finishing Laying the Foundations), and now I think Annalise may very well be the apotheosis of using mechanics to create story games.

The mechanics started clicking very quickly, and the crunch of the Moments was actually pretty satisfying (in much the same way that D&D combat can be). But, unlike D&D combat, losing was often more fun than winning and the crunch always added to the story.

Annalise just works. It incentivizes dragging the other players to hell, and it makes it fun to drag your own character to hell as well. The point is to get to the Confrontation and to reveal what the Vampire is, and you can't do that if the darkness never shows up.

And the atmosphere! There's the horror and evil beyond the comprehension of mankind. There's the way people tear into each other, the isolation of a ship and the way going to sea creates its own laws. But also, surprisingly, there's a sense of cosmic justice - that the troubles that come upon the Doctor and the Captain are perhaps not completely undeserved. The Captain is ruthless enough to throw people overboard. The Doctor is a piece of work - a racist, ruthless man who attempts to infect a child in the name of science and doesn't see anything wrong with that. And yet, I pity them: they deserve to be judged, but they don't deserve the Beast.

We struggled a lot with remembering to set up Moments and with Consequences - the second to last scene ended up being several scenes worth, in truth, because we spent far too long on atmosphere. (But how amazing was setting up the atmosphere! Negotiating the nature of the Beast, describing in detail the characters' reactions and the bleakness of their surroundings).

The last scene was my favorite - such a perfect ending to the night. I got chills.

[1] Playing online makes quoting Revelations easy.
[2] Despite THREE attempts to fix this via claims, on both of our parts.

Lasers and Feelings

We played a one session game of Lasers & Feelings on Friday this week.

I GMed, with no prep and barely any familiarity with the rules. This was my first time and I'd only made it about twenty minutes through an AP.

Our cast was Dr. Roboto (played by M), an Android Doctor and our acting captain (he knew all the protocols); Willis Turner (played by J), an Intrepid Explorer and junior officer; Hey, You (played by A), an Alien Envoy from the Hivemind, going around seeking converts like a military recruiter. Hey, You’s name is unpronounceable by human vocal cords.

The ship had a Cloaking Device, Superior Sensors, and a Grim Reputation. All three of those turned out to be totally justified.

This was fun and giggly and not all that serious. They traded their captain for freedom from pirates, murdered and spaced their previous acting captain, fled from the cops after a public brawl, turned off an evil AI Alpha Computer making cyberzombies, prevented a war by saving the Vogron-Consortium treaty within the Ancient Space Ruins from pirates that wanted to destroy it, killed the Vogron leader’s son (just because), bridged the gap between organic and synthetic life, and then destroyed the universe by causing a spatial paradox.

Yes, I stole Vogrons from Vogons in The Hitchhiker’s Guide, Alpha Computer from Paranoia, and everything else from somewhere. I was not particularly trying to be original and names are a weakpoint of mine (serious play basically requires name lists…).

As far as I can tell, everyone had fun, even though we went off the rails and only got back on within the last hour, and I obviously and merrily ripped off every single cliche and story I could think of. Also, the “introduce complications on 1 success” style of play is WONDERFUL. It’s how we got the cyberzombie/Alpha Computer plotline, which was never actually supposed to happen, and also the source of a Gleeful Evil GM moment. When the party found out that there were actually two factions of pirates kind of working together (and that they were led by Clyde and Regina-formerly-Bonnie who had broken up due to a misunderstanding involving Regina’s clone), the party decided to try to reconcile Clyde and Regina. 

They succeeded with one die. While they were congratulating themselves on winning the game through relationship therapy, Clyde and Regina made up and decided to admit that they still loved each other - and they would destroy the treaty ~together~. That was a really fun “oh shit” moment.

I am also a ridiculously relaxed GM, considering that I, er, let one character kill 20 people with one dice roll. But I mean, not the most serious of games.

Also, L&F is really not designed that well for PVP. Which we found out after I infected the hivemind with cyberzombie, OOPS.

So lesson learned?

Don’t fear the improv - even if it ends up being ridiculous and inconsistent. And even in this game, we got some good stuff - there were some bits of lore coming out that I loved: an empire that had fractured into the Consortium and other forces fifty years prior, a garden world turned graveyard planet called Mausoleum, a troubled Hivemind which had absorbed many traumatized soldiers from the war,  and an alien culture that takes original copies very seriously. It was weird and mostly offhand or made to explain game stuff, but also rich and breathing and kind of cool.

Also, WOW you can get a lot done in three hours with minimalist rules and a lazy GM.

Also, er, don’t use the word “rake” when “scratch” will do, because it is VERY EASILY MISHEARD IN A CROWDED CAFE. :/

We’re back to playing Fiasco soon - we’re down one player, but I’m thinking of running something short next week. As far as next plans, I’m thinking of running something a little more crunchy and traditional fantasy right now, so I’m eyeing Dungeon World and similar systems…

* The Vogrons take original copies and treaties Very Seriously. At one point, the party killed the Vogron leader’s son (just…because?), which caused Vogrons to stop trying to help them defend the treaty.

Fiasco: Tales of Accordia

We played Fiasco with the Tales from Suburbia playset.

Our scene begins in the suburb of Accordia, Oregon, the Accordion Capital of the World.

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Our cast:

Steph: Pronounced Steve. Owner of Accordion to Steph, an established accordion store. Rival with Fred.

Fred: Accountant/owner of the Squeezebox, a new, hip accordion store across the street from Accordion to Steph. The Squeezebox is actually a money laundering front for the Cioppino family, and there are $500,000 in South American bail bonds in the back room (formerly $1,000,000).

Sophia: stepdaughter of a now deceased mobster of the Cioppino family. Works at the Squeezebox and embezzles money there. Also a Pastafarian cultist.

Frankie: the cook at an Italian restaurant, in the same cult as Sophia. Cousin to Steph, the accordion shop owner. Frankie and Sophia share a secret: at her request, he poisoned her stepfather with his cooking.

Need (we messed up and had two):

Sophia needs to commit a crime that is actually justice done.

Fred needs to stand up for himself.

Object: $1,000,000 in South American bail bonds

Location: a gun and surplus store

Tilt: fear that ends in failure

ACT ONE

Steph plots with Frankie to avenge himself on his business rival Fred by seducing Fred at a city event at the restaurant Frankie works at. Fred, noticing Steph creepily watching him across the street (while playing the accordion), goes to confront Steph with a gun in his waistband (urged by Sophia, who calls her mobster ex Dan to provide backup). The two trade words about the state of the accordion industry (Steph prefers vintage, Fred sells hip, electric accordions), and Steph’s name is mispronounced multiple times.

Steph challenges Fred to an accordion duel, dubbed the Squeeze-off, which Fred accepts.

Frankie and Sophia conduct an occult ritual in the restaurant where he works. The sauce churns and bubbles, and a single meatball rises to the surface -- a sign from the Flying Spaghetti Monster!  He convinces her that the Flying Spaghetti Monster wants them to take down the Cioppino family and run Fred out of town. Sophia has reservations because Fred is like a brother to her, but she agrees.

Later, a fire occurs at Frankie’s restaurant - and Frankie is fired by his boss Guido.

Back at the Squeezebox the next day, Fred gets advice on the best way to prepare for the Squeeze-off from Sophia, who advises him that the best way to win is to focus on image instead of technique - if Fred wants to win this accordion duel, he needs to look the part: spiky hair, leather jacket, tattoos, and piercings. They try to settle on a song -- originally, they decide to go for Metallica, until a visitor to the store mentions that Metallica has recently been accused of racism against the Danish. Black Sabbath is also vetoed for similar reasons.

Sophia calls her ex Todd from the Giuliani family, asking him to come to town and take over from the Cioppinos. There’s an awkward moment when it turns out that Todd’s bodyguard is also Sophia’s ex. Todd agrees to make his move at the Squeeze-off.

Frankie goes out drinking at a bar, fails to flirt, and talks to the bartender about his feelings for Sophia. Sophia and Todd walk in -- things get tense between Todd and Frankie, while Sophia slips off to the bathroom.

ACT TWO

The Squeeze-off arrives, which is attended by a grand total of twelve people (and can no longer be held at the restaurant that burned down): Jerry Springer emcees as the two accordionists play. Fred reveals his new piercings and his new moniker: he is now Fierce Freddie, and he plays a song of his own devising! Steph pulls out an antique accordion...which falls apart in his hand. Before Jerry Springer can declare a victory for Fred, Frankie pulls out a gun and tries to shoot Fred.

After the Squeeze-off, Steph is ruined: his cousin tried to murder everyone and he lost the Squeeze-off. Hanging out at the bar, he sees Fred and successfully seduces Fred with their mutual love of accordions. They spend the night together.

Fred discovers that Steph only slept with him for revenge. Steph pleads with him: it originally began as just revenge, but it became something more. Steph fell in love.

Back in the shop, Fred then gets a call from Boss Cioppino: he wants the bonds now, all $1,000,000 of them. Counting, Fred realizes that Sophia has been embezzling and confronts her. As they’re discussing what to do, an IRS auditor comes to visit and tells them to contact him in three days, based on some irregularities in Fred’s tax returns. Afraid of both the mob and the IRS, Sophia and Fred ponder what to do next.

Steph bails Frankie out of jail, and he and Fred confront Frankie for his actions. Sophia shows up as well, expressing her betrayal that Frankie would try to shoot her only friend, and Frankie says that he wishes he hadn’t disappointed her. Sophia suggests that there’s a way to redeem himself and slips him the tax auditor’s card -- maybe he could make some pasta for the man, the same way he did for her stepfather.

Steph prepares to sell off his accordion store and move to Mexico -- maybe he can share the love of the accordion with them. He asks Fred to go with him, and Fred agrees.

Fred arranges a meeting with Todd (Sophia’s mobster ex from another family) and arranges to lure Boss Cioppino to a gun store, where Todd can shoot him down. The two of them notice Sophia walking hand in hand with a man. At Todd’s distress, Fred assures him that they’re brother and sister. Sophia begins making out with the man. “That’s just how they greet people in their country,” Fred claims.

It actually turns out that Sophia was making out with her girlfriend, Rachel -- who had been mistaken for a man from the distance. Todd arrives and asks her what the meaning of this was. Sophia claims that they’re just friends. Rachel agrees - they’re sleepover friends! Naked sleepover friend! Sophia, trying to hide her relationship with Rachel because she wants Todd to kill Boss Cioppino for them, claims that Rachel is just flirting with Todd (“she likes threesomes”) and persuades Todd to kill Boss Cioppino for them, not realizing that Fred has already done so. Once Todd leaves, she and Rachel return to making plans to go to Brazil.

Frankie walks out of his apartment, wondering at the mess that he’s made of his life. Sophia doesn’t care about him, he’s gone to jail, his restaurant burned down and he’s jobless… He sees Todd, but as they begin to talk, a black car drives by. “The Cioppinos send their regards,” someone inside the car shouts, as a spray of bullets hits Frankie. He only has enough time for a last  text to Steph - “Have fun in Mexico, LOL”.

EPILOGUE

Steph and Fred go to Mexico, but their relationship suffers. The accordion business never takes off. Fred is happy and fulfilled, after surviving mobsters and winning an accordion duel, and he abandons the accordion in favor of the guitar. Steph is less fortunate -- he dislikes Mexico and finds that the relationship loses the spark after Fred takes up the guitar and leaves.

Sophia and Rachel escape to Brazil. When they land, Sophia sees her ex and stepbrother, Tony Cioppino, in front of her. “You killed my father,” he says. A gun presses into Sophia’s back. Behind her, she hears the voice of Rachel, the only person she has ever truly loved: “You didn’t think I really loved you, did you, darling?”

When Steph reaches Accordia, he visits Frankie’s lawyer. He is Frankie’s designated heir, and he inherits Frankie’s meager possessions: some bric-a-brac, an Amazon Prime account, and $128...just enough to cover the trip back to Accordia.