Met up with my group and ran the introductions and first foundation round of Annalise today. It was a slower start than expected, but the game is promising.
First, of course, everyone had to get on board with what was going on. One of the things about Annalise is that no one’s the “one” game master, but everyone takes turns, and some people really got tied up in knots about that, having not gamemastered before. It required a lot of prompting for people not to tell the whole story, or to make the story go somewhere. Once people got into the swing of it, it started working out.
The next issue, which still needs to be worked out, is that people weren’t claiming enough. In Annalise, you get extra points by “claiming” people, places, or things that you want to repeat in the story, and using the points while weaving the claim into the story to manipulate dice rolls. I warned them that this could be a problem like Our Last Best Hope, where you might not have enough story points to make it okay to the end, but people I think don’t yet realize the raw power of claims. I went last in the round, and I owned the heck out of a die-rolling challenge using points off my claims, so hopefully for the next session people will get it.
As far as I can tell, no too-crazy secrets. You know I was worried.
Unserious Gaming 