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.