[Annalise] questions about the pdf text

[Moreno R.]

Hello!

I recently played Annalise, and I wanted to ask some questions about some rules. I am using the page numbers from the pdf edition, the only one I own.

When do you get a coin back to the reserve after a moment? The text says different things in different pages: Page 23 "Every die showing a 2,3,4 or 5 that you assign to a consequence during a moment become a coin in your reserve once the moment is resolved". Page 36: in the table, you get a coin to the reserve when you assign a 3, 4, 5 or 6 to a consequence. At Page 54 "the active player places one coin in his Reserves for every consequence on the table".

Page 20: if your secret is at zero and you would lose a coin, you have to spend a coin to a satellite trait. What if it's your vulnerability that is at zero and you have to spend a coin from it? The text don't talk about this case.

Page 25: "if the scene guide decides that it's appropriate to the scene at hand, they may propose the consequences <you give in to the vampire> ". Page 61 "in every moment that involves the vampire's presence, there is a consequence on the tables that states <you give in to the vampire>". What is it? On the scene guide decision, or any time the vampire presence is involved? And in the description on page 61 that consequence doesn't cost any coins, while on page 25 it's one of the added consequences that cost coins...

Page 32-33: "in addition to making a new claim every scene (...) you can use your character's Reserves to strengthen your Claims. Spend a coin out of your reserves to place a coin on any Claim on a one for one basis". Seeing that this talk about making claims even in other people' turn as the active player, even the strengthening of the claim can happen at that moment, or you have to wait the beginning of your next turn as the active player to do so (like for the other uses of the reserve)?

Page 49: taking more than one claim in a single scene: in this page it seems that you can only move coins from the claims you already have to the new one, but in page 29 it's written "you can redistribute the coins on your Claims in such a way as to place at least one coin on the new Claim", making me think that it's possible to move coins between already-established claims during this action, too.

Page 53: each player can bring a single claim to effect a Moment and then he has to pass the turn to another player, as it seems from this page and page 37, or he can use other claims after the first one, as it seems from page 31?

Page 56: after the vampire got some holds on you, the scene guide can add new consequences during moments "as long as you have enough dice in the trait in question to add the consequence". This seems to me a leftover from a previous version of the text (with the use of "dice" instead of "coins") seeing that on page 25 it's written: "adding a consequence in this manner obliges the character to spend a coin out of his Satellite Trait if he or she has any left: if this is not the case, then they must spend a coin out of the linked core trait".

Some other questions not tied to a precise page:

- The game is for 2-4 players. I can see how it would become more difficult to follow more characters and the game length increase more and more with more players, but there is a specific reason you have discovered during playtest for avoiding playing it for 5 players?

- A player can claim a NPC as a Claim. A player can insert one of his claim in a scene if he want. This mean that I can insert a NPC in every scene I want (if the thing makes sense, obviously) an play it like it was my own character? Or I am limited to a "color or background" (page 49) apparition, until the scene guide or the active player decide to incorporate him in the scene (by talking to him, for example)?

- A claimed NPC, again: in our game, a claimed NPC was showed during a scene as dead (narrated by the scene guide). The NPC was claimed by another player before. The scene guide had to get the other player permission before using a claimed npc, or any story element? (another example: if someone has claimed "a gunshot in the dark", can another player, acting as scene guide, use a gunshot in the dark in his narration?

- The Hold of the Vampire: on page 56 there are some examples of holds that the vampire can get over the character. It does mean that these kind of events during the story can't happen without the vampire getting the character to zero coins in the vulnerability? (for example, "he has taken one of your loved ones as hostage". In our game we had the vampire get the mother of a character as hostage, but the character never did get to zero coins in the vulnerability in the entire game. We played this right? Or we had to wait for the coins to go to zero before narrating something like this? Or narrating something like this add the hold anyway, even if the coins did not go to zero (like disclosing the secret in the fiction drop the coins on the secret to zero even if there still were some)?

- The vampire drink you blood: we played this rather freely, even during the setting the foundation phase, for dramatic effect. Reading again the rules I began to doubt that this should be reserved for a "give in to the vampire" or at least a "the vampire get an hold on you" scene. The game don't talk about this. It's because what the drinking of blood means should be left to the individual fiction of every game, or because it was taken as a given that this should be avoided until a "hold" scene?

[Nathan P.]

Hi Moreno! I'm glad to hear you played, thats great. Other than the rules questions, how did it go?

When do you get a coin back to the reserve after a moment? The text says different things in different pages: Page 23 "Every die showing a 2,3,4 or 5 that you assign to a consequence during a moment become a coin in your reserve once the moment is resolved". Page 36: in the table, you get a coin to the reserve when you assign a 3, 4, 5 or 6 to a consequence. At Page 54 "the active player places one coin in his Reserves for every consequence on the table".

The table is correct. The Active Player places a coin in his or her Reserves for every 3, 4, 5 or 6 assigned to a Consequence. Arg, I thought I had caught all those errors, but apparently not - apologies!

Page 20: if your secret is at zero and you would lose a coin, you have to spend a coin to a satellite trait. What if it's your vulnerability that is at zero and you have to spend a coin from it? The text don't talk about this case.

If you need to spend a coin out of a Vulnerability at 0, nothing happens. Vulnerability hitting zero already has a pretty important impact, through the Holds, so I didn't think it was necessary to penalize the player further.

Page 25: "if the scene guide decides that it's appropriate to the scene at hand, they may propose the consequences <you give in to the vampire> ". Page 61 "in every moment that involves the vampire's presence, there is a consequence on the tables that states <you give in to the vampire>". What is it? On the scene guide decision, or any time the vampire presence is involved? And in the description on page 61 that consequence doesn't cost any coins, while on page 25 it's one of the added consequences that cost coins...

It's every time the Vampire is present, and if the Vampire is not present, but the Scene Guide still thinks it would be appropriate for the character to give in, he or she has the option to add the giving in consequence. Like, maybe the character has a scene that concerns whether he's going to drink the blood of his lover...the Vampire isn't there, but the Scene Guide thinks that it's totally possible that this is where the character gives in through his behavior, rather than through direct pressure from the Vampire.

Page 32-33: "in addition to making a new claim every scene (...) you can use your character's Reserves to strengthen your Claims. Spend a coin out of your reserves to place a coin on any Claim on a one for one basis". Seeing that this talk about making claims even in other people' turn as the active player, even the strengthening of the claim can happen at that moment, or you have to wait the beginning of your next turn as the active player to do so (like for the other uses of the reserve)?

Yes, all expenditures of Reserves happen on the your turn as Active Player, including strengthening Claims.

Page 49: taking more than one claim in a single scene: in this page it seems that you can only move coins from the claims you already have to the new one, but in page 29 it's written "you can redistribute the coins on your Claims in such a way as to place at least one coin on the new Claim", making me think that it's possible to move coins between already-established claims during this action, too.

Yes, you can move coins between already-established Claims while redistributing. This is so you can shift Coins away from that Claim that just isn't ever going to come up.

Page 53: each player can bring a single claim to effect a Moment and then he has to pass the turn to another player, as it seems from this page and page 37, or he can use other claims after the first one, as it seems from page 31?

You can use multiple Claims in one Moment, but you can only use one Claim at a time. So, you could bring in "Shattered Glass", then after everyone else has had a chance to use a Claim, you could bring in "Police Sirens", and so on. But you couldn't spend a coin off of both "Shattered Glass" and "Police Sirens" at the same time.

Page 56: after the vampire got some holds on you, the scene guide can add new consequences during moments "as long as you have enough dice in the trait in question to add the consequence". This seems to me a leftover from a previous version of the text (with the use of "dice" instead of "coins") seeing that on page 25 it's written: "adding a consequence in this manner obliges the character to spend a coin out of his Satellite Trait if he or she has any left: if this is not the case, then they must spend a coin out of the linked core trait".

Whoops! Correct, the word "dice" on page 56 should be "coin". Apologies for the error.

- The game is for 2-4 players. I can see how it would become more difficult to follow more characters and the game length increase more and more with more players, but there is a specific reason you have discovered during playtest for avoiding playing it for 5 players?

Handling time, mainly. I mean, if y'all can make it happen with more than 4, thats fine. Um, I suspect that you may need to have more coins in the Claim economy - after a couple of rounds in Laying the Foundations, I would check to see if people are running out of coins on Claims. If not, cool, but if so, I would say that new Claims come with 3 Coins instead of 2 from there on out.

It's also at least partly a marketing decision.

- A player can claim a NPC as a Claim. A player can insert one of his claim in a scene if he want. This mean that I can insert a NPC in every scene I want (if the thing makes sense, obviously) an play it like it was my own character? Or I am limited to a "color or background" (page 49) apparition, until the scene guide or the active player decide to incorporate him in the scene (by talking to him, for example)?

That's a individual group vibe thing. Some of my games have been more open to people inserting their Claimed NPCs whole cloth into scenes, and others have been more limited. There's no wrong way.

- A claimed NPC, again: in our game, a claimed NPC was showed during a scene as dead (narrated by the scene guide). The NPC was claimed by another player before. The scene guide had to get the other player permission before using a claimed npc, or any story element? (another example: if someone has claimed "a gunshot in the dark", can another player, acting as scene guide, use a gunshot in the dark in his narration?

Scene Guide does not need permission per se, but I usually ask the player who has the Claim if they had something in mind that I'd be messing up before doing something like kill off that NPC. In the case of more thematic/visual Claims, the Scene Guide can totally bring those things in without needing permission - I'll often do so to involve an Audience player who hasn't had much to do in the scene so far, or something like that.

- The Hold of the Vampire: on page 56 there are some examples of holds that the vampire can get over the character. It does mean that these
kind of events during the story can't happen without the vampire getting the character to zero coins in the vulnerability? (for example, "he has taken one of your loved ones as hostage". In our game we had the vampire get the mother of a character as hostage, but the character never did get to zero coins in the vulnerability in the entire game. We played this right? Or we had to wait for the coins to go to zero before narrating something like this? Or narrating something like this add the hold anyway, even if the coins did not go to zero (like disclosing the secret in the fiction drop the coins on the secret to zero even if there still were some)?

Those kinds of events can happen without a Hold being involved, but they are required to happen if there is a Hold. The Hold represents the real pressure on the character from the Vampire, but that pressure can also be present in the fiction without the mechanical backup. Narrating those kinds of events without the characters Vulnerability being at 0 does not add to or create a Hold.

- The vampire drink you blood: we played this rather freely, even during the setting the foundation phase, for dramatic effect. Reading again the rules I began to doubt that this should be reserved for a "give in to the vampire" or at least a "the vampire get an hold on you" scene. The game don't talk about this. It's because what the drinking of blood means should be left to the individual fiction of every game, or because it was taken as a given that this should be avoided until a "hold" scene?

...the drinking of blood should never be avoided in this game.

I hope that answers all your questions!

[Moreno R.]

Hi Moreno! I'm glad to hear you played, thats great. Other than the rules questions, how did it go?

Rather well, for a first attempt / training run. There are a lot of rules to learn and remember and one of the players didn't read the game manual, so I had to explain the rules before the game, and I could see his eyelids starting to drop after a while. This meant that we did a lot of errors too (most on all in the choosing of the claims, I think that more than two thirds of our claims were not valid by the rules) but after this rocky start we began to get used to the system and all ended well. I kept the cards we used for claims and moments and if I can find the time I would like to post some of the actual play next week.

Page 56: after the vampire got some holds on you, the scene guide can add new consequences during moments "as long as you have enough dice in the trait in question to add the consequence". This seems to me a leftover from a previous version of the text (with the use of "dice" instead of "coins") seeing that on page 25 it's written: "adding a consequence in this manner obliges the character to spend a coin out of his Satellite Trait if he or she has any left: if this is not the case, then they must spend a coin out of the linked core trait".

Whoops! Correct, the word "dice" on page 56 should be "coin". Apologies for the error.

Yes, but apart from the word "dice", which of the two pages is correct? If you don't have any coin left in the satellite trait you are using, the scene guide can't add new traits, or he can add new traits spending coins from the core trait?

[Moreno R.]

Yes, but apart from the word "dice", which of the two pages is correct? If you don't have any coin left in the satellite trait you are using, the scene guide can't add new traits, or he can add new traits spending coins from the core trait?

Oops, I wanted to write "If you don't have any coin left in the satellite trait you are using, the scene guide can't add new consequences, or he can add new consequences spending coins from the core trait?"

[Nathan P.]

Sorry...page 25 is correct, the Scene Guide can make you spend coins directly out of your Core Traits if you've maxed out the Satellite Trait. My brain totally focused on the way less-important part of that question.

I'd love to see your AP, if you manage to make it happen!