[Annalise] Needless Space Violence

[sirogit]

So I started first session of playing Annalise. Its a game I looked forward to for quite awhile as 'game-to-play-with-my-girlfriend' as its about vampires and she's into that and I'm kind of into that, its GMless, I was told it was pretty cool, and most importantly its two player as befits my circumstances.

Inititally we struggled somewhat making up a setting. Miel wanted a futury space setting of some kind, but was pretty fuzzy on the details in terms of how her character fit into it or any interesting aspects of the setting, and without any guidelines or more people to bounce ideas off of, it just sort of floundered. In the future, if I was playing another 1on1 game of Annalise, I'd push for a completely unambitious setting like modern day to allievate that issue.

Here's the characters we made:

Miel:
Name: Violet
Vulnerability: My parents were killed under mysterious circumstances.
(She's the pilot of a space-faring cargo ship.)

Me:
Name: Jared
Vulnerability: My dad forced me to take space acid as a kid to see if it would give me powers.
How he knows other characters: He's the mechanic of same cargo ship.

I was a little unsure about my character, because I wanted to base him off this off-the-wall crazy ADHD guy I know, but whacky crazy ADHD can be kinda tiring. In the first scene, I was kinda floundering and it wasn't that great. But after I got my secret, I became a lot more confident with the character, and it really showed in the next scene where I was having a lot more fun.

Note on secret generation method: I tried an alternate method designed to protect some neat aspects of the game in the 2 player version. It worked fine for me, but my girlfriend wasn't super enthused about the Secrets she drew for whatever reason, so I'm not sure if its a house-rule I'd continue to adopt.

Also, I think there should be a little more structure in creating secrets (Or more structure placed obviously so I don't skip over it.) Like, I'd think Secrets should either A) Be a big deal to the players or B) Be an obvious source of shame for the character. The first Secret I drew was about "Nun's crying when the character was born", which is something I have no idea what to do with, so I drew another one.

Note about Lines and Veils: I didn't get these. I never got these since I first read about them in Sex & Sorcery. I just don't see it as part of normal human interaction, that people can off the cuff announce stuff they want to be off-limits. I can't imagine anyone stepping up beforehand before a game and directly saying "Don't rape nobody" even if they're strongly against the idea. If people find something strong discomforting to think about, they don't want to think about it to the degree of bringing it up as an objection until it actually comes up.

Our discussion about lines and viels pretty much mirrored my expectations, which was some minor posturing about how its hard to make themselves uncomfortable followed by inconsequential viels. If anyone would want to bring up how a lines and viels discussion functions in a productive context, I'm all ears.

Moments were pretty neat! I had a lot more claims (Largely due to Miel being much more free-flowing with setting elements than me) so I got to toss a lot of weight around mostly.

I'm looking forward to next session. We've got abit of work to do in terms of building up the vampire but they are already some promising directions.

[sirogit]

We played a little bit of a second session, but by the middle of it was pretty much just Miel building this elaborate kooky setting in monologue, that by the end of it didn't have much to do with vampires or abuse or much of anything Annalise-y at all, and me being kinda confused towards what to do, to which I said "Let's do freeform or Univeralis or something where I don't have the impetus to display my character's vulnerabilty and secret shame admist punching bat-hookers and the evil space pope."

The text almost seems to suggest this as a somewhat common occurrence - for a game to sometimes drift away from a tight focus on its central theme and turn into more of a roundabout action/horror thing, possibly with fangs, ala Blade or 'A Stephen King novel'. I'd like to hear from the author or one of the play testers about these sort of experiences - Specifically, if they were still considered 'successful' in terms of generating a good time, and whether the system seemed more of a help or a hindrance in such an endeavor.

[GreatWolf]

Note about Lines and Veils: I didn't get these. I never got these since I first read about them in Sex & Sorcery. I just don't see it as part of normal human interaction, that people can off the cuff announce stuff they want to be off-limits. I can't imagine anyone stepping up beforehand before a game and directly saying "Don't rape nobody" even if they're strongly against the idea. If people find something strong discomforting to think about, they don't want to think about it to the degree of bringing it up as an objection until it actually comes up.

Our discussion about lines and viels pretty much mirrored my expectations, which was some minor posturing about how its hard to make themselves uncomfortable followed by inconsequential viels. If anyone would want to bring up how a lines and viels discussion functions in a productive context, I'm all ears.

Here comes my biases. Are you ready?

First, Lines and Veils are terms of art for game design. In my opinion, they don't belong in the text of a game. Nathan, if you're reading this, nothing but love, but that's my opinion. (You're also not the first person to do that, so I'm not just looking at you.)

Second, Lines and Veils are rarely discovered before play. Rather, they are usually discovered in play. Seeing the need for a Line or Veil is mostly a matter of reading the social cues from the other players at the table or already knowing where players prefer to have their Lines and Veils. For example, I don't usually come across Lines for myself, but I do generally prefer Veils over sexual material. My fellow players generally get this, so they know when it's time to have the camera "pan away" from the action. A group also needs to be open to an announcing of a Line or Veil in play and then be willing to modify gameplay to conform with the discovered Line or Veil.

When I wrote A Flower for Mara, I wanted to include my version of a "Lines and Veils discussion". Here's what I wrote:

First, you need to discuss Boundaries. A Flower for Mara deals with some very personal issues, and without a clear understanding of these rules, people can be seriously hurt. Boundaries allow the Troupe to address them safely, so make sure that everyone is clear about them.

During the game, anyone is completely free to state discomfort with the direction that the story is taking, or with a particular event that is being acted out. At that point, the Troupe must interrupt the play to have a brief discussion about how to resolve this problem.

The simplest solution is to move the action off-stage. The Troupe agrees that something happened, but doesn't feel the need to depict the action on stage. The classic example of this is the infamous "blowing curtains" in many movies which indicate that two characters are engaging in sexual activity.

At times, this will not be enough to ease the performer's discomfort. A topic may be so sensitive for him that it simply can't be included in the developing story at all. When this is the case, the Troupe must respect that performer's discomfort and look for other interesting directions where they can take the narrative that everyone is comfortable with.

Individual cast members do need to embrace developments in the story that might hit close to home, though. This play is supposed to be about issues and concerns that are close to the hearts of the Troupe members. People should be as open to these developments as they can manage.

As the Director, you must ensure that these rules are observed at all times. Any time you are concerned that someone is being pushed too far, pause the action and raise the concern yourself. You need to make the play a safe place for the Troupe.

In my opinion, this is what a "Lines and Veils discussion" ought to be: laying the social groundwork for dealing with the issues that arise in play.

[Nathan P.]

Wow, I just noticed this thread...sorry it took me so long to respond!

re: Lines & Veils - Obviously, this is going to be an artistry thing in terms of addressing fictional material that comes up in play. However, I think there's value in (a) setting hard lines up-front for stuff you just don't want to see, and (b) having a consciousness that this is an issue that may come up. If you talk about it at the beginning, even if you say "I don't have anything in particular that bothers me" or whatever, it will still raise that awareness.

I also find the terms themselves immediately clear and understandable, which is why I use them in text.

re: the game. Sean, it sounds to me like there just wasn't a lot of shared structure for play. The setting sounded pretty ambiguous, and it also seems to me that the two of you may not have been on the same page about how play should look over time (correct me if I'm wrong). Setting the game in something that already has easily recognizable tropes (like, modern-day occult horror or 19th-century central Europe or whatever) may indeed help with that. Also, not being really enthused about Secrets doesn't help. It's interesting to see that the alternate method didn't really work out - it sounds like kinds of Secrets you were each interested in for your characters didn't really engage the other person.

Page 19 of the PDF has some advice about creating Secrets. I would add that maybe its worth having a conversation about the kind of Secret that you think is appropriate for the game, to establish a baseline expectation for that.

My experience with the game drifting from the focus on Vulnerability has pretty much been that it's easy for that aspect to become more of a background aspect of the characters, with whatevers going on in the fiction becoming the primary focus for everything. Not that the game breaks or peters out, just that it becomes more about how the characters are positioned to adversity because of their Vulnerability, rather than they are always trying to deal with it consciously.

So, I'm sorry that the game didn't really work for you guys, but it sounds to me like the vagueness of the setup (not blaming you for this! The game certainly does not ask for a lot of front-loading!) ended up meaning that neither of you were very invested in the fiction, and investment in the fiction is really what drives play. Are you interested in talking about ways to more clearly define setting stuff at the beginning of play?

[sirogit]

Hmm. I wouldn't say that we wern't invested in the fiction. I'd say she was very invested in the fiction, and I was moderately so.

I think the main problem we had is that Annalise is that it seems to put a lot of emphasis on "fufilling promises" - Some of these 'promises', like revealing secrets, having your character's vulnerabilty comes out, etc, have really strong mechanical pressure on them, so they pretty much always come out (And did start to come out during our game). Other 'promises', like 'An interesting predator-figure rises out of the fiction', don't have really strong mechanical pressure on them, so they don't come out unless the group puts focus on them coming out (And we didn't have that). And without the predator-type dude, there's not really a solid engine for adversity.

Next question: Why wasn't the focus there? I can think of a couple reasons:

1 - The context of play. The second time we played was post-cleaning-the-house and uhh, 'medicinally relaxing', so that's setting up a less focused, more 'time to unwind' type of roleplaying session.

2. The lack of other players. When I play with more players, the game's focus takes on this more robust, tangential quality, in that if you're not playing to non-mechanical 'promises' like the vampire issue, someone is going to nudge you to do so. Nothing is stopping that from happening with a 1-on-1 game, but that means they'res only one other 'someone' and that person is already pretty busy being in the spotlight all the time.