[RPG-Review] Fiasco
Last saturday my The Sprawl group played Fiasco, because one player wasn't available.
A great chance to tell you my experiences with Fiasco.
Fiasco was on my list of games to play for a while now, but @lextenebris encouraged me to play it sooner, rather than later.
The group created the best bad spaghetti-western:
Location/Playset: Wild West City.
Cast:
- Sheriff (weapon collector – among other things he has a 12 pound howitzer)
- Deputy
- Eugene (Outlaw – had a short romance with the deputy … it's a wild west setting, so if their homosexual jig were up it's not good for both of them)
- Clayton (Outlaw – working with Eugene – they're thieves/robbers … He has been caught once by the Sheriff, but he escaped using the howitzer)
The outlaws (once again) tried to rob the bank at night (the bank they tried to rob several times before, without any success).
They tried to open the safe using dynamite, but the Sheriff wass already present. Clayton managed to get away, but Eugene got caught.
Eugene got locked up in the Sheriff's jail, but the Deputy was also present. The Sheriff decided to celebrate catching Eugene by drinking himself to oblivion, but the Deputy had pity with Eugene and freed him (and also got drunk afterwards).
Eugene and Clayton decided to use the opportunity of both Sheriff and Deputy being drunk-asleep, and finally robbed the bank.
Later they drove away in a stolen carriage – with no idea where to. So obviously they lost their way in the middle of nowhere.
The next day the Sheriff saw what happened, blamed the Deputy, and fired him (which he shortly after regretted).
The Deputy wanted to catch the thieves to redeem himself, and went out to find them – obviously he also lost way.
Lucky for the outlaws they were found by the Smiley-Gang (named after their leader), and were led to their camp.
The Deputy also saw this, and managed to get back to the city, and tell the Sheriff.
Weapon up! Prepare for a fight! Also organize some prostitutes as a distraction for the Smiley-Gang, so the Sheriff and Deputy had an advantage.
Of course this plan did not work out, and it ended in a big shootout, almost killing the whole Smiley-Gang, but Eugene managed to wound the Sheriff mortally. I shot the sheriff …
While Clayton had fun with several prostitutes.
The Deputy tried to save the Sheriff, without any success.
In the Epilogue, we saw Clayton dying of Syphilis.
There was also a new (corrupt) Sheriff (the Deputy wasn't happy about it).
The new Sheriff managed to catch Eugene again. And the Deputy freed him again. Eugene left the city (with no direction in mind) and ended up at a native American camp. They took him prisoner.
Conclusion/Thoughts:
- Very entertaining. We all had a good time.
- The Sheriff dying while the game was still running didn't work out very well. Especially in regards to the Aftermath.
- The Sheriff's epilogue was pretty boring: "His breathing becomes difficult" "He knows he's dying" "The vultures already circle him"
- Also doesn't work out very well regarding the prescriptive Aftermath result. It may say: "Nothing to write home about", but the character is dead? Hmm …
- We played a very linear story. Often scenes began with: "I want to establish: It's exactly where we left the scene!" or "I want to resolve!" "Okay, we continue where we left the scene, but …"
- It wasn't bad in any way, but the game gave us the possibilty for flashbacks/fast-forwards, which we only used it once.
GM-less play was a welcome change. No one knew where we would be 3 hours later, but we all had a load of fun, and were all happy in the end.
There also weren't a lot of rules to explain. The cheat-sheet (included in the book) helped explaining/reminding me (the facilitator) of things to do.
One of the players said he wants play Fiasco with his offline-group, too, eventually. That's pretty good, too.
I've played it twice, and had a hard time getting it to hum. The game text relies on you to fill in some blanks and I sort of like the procedures to be more complete. We definitely had fun creating some really evocative scenes and they tied together well into a story. But it was bumpy.
Learning how to make dead characters a continuing part of the story is one of the interesting challenges in Fiasco. It creates one of those situations where you have to focus on how other people are thinking about them, or use them in a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern kind of way, or be willing and able to construct flashbacks which comment on events that have just happened.
For instance, in your situation as described with the sheriff who died during the shoot out, I wouldn't have commented on the events of the death or the methods – but on a flashback to sometime before he caught Eugene in the first place, mounting up and telling his deputy, "I know exactly where I'm going," and riding off to somewhere else. With a slow fade as he rides away to his grave (as a sort of narrative meta-commentary on everyone else getting lost along the way and ending up alive).
That sort of thing takes time to learn how to push the images that you've played with around.
Once people get comfortable with the sheer amount of power that they have when it comes to framing scenes, you'll see people starting to play with that a lot more. First they need to know that they can do things and that those things will matter in the long run to the game, and then they will play with the toys you have in front of them.
Great to see that your GM-less gaming has gotten off to an excellent start. Sometimes beginnings can be a little rocky.
A lot of people seem to like this game, but I'm not much of a fan. The situation generation at the beginning works pretty well, but I find the mechanics for the actual scene stuff to be so mushy that they kind of don't matter (especially if people start doing things like "He got what he wanted, but what he wants is probably self-destructive in the long run, so I could say that's either a good result or a bad result..."). I think it also kind of depends on the players to bring in some understanding of narrative structure and drama, like the shifting in time thing you mentioned rather than just doing continuations of the previous scene. I find it uncomfortable to be trying to nudge people toward more movie-like choices. I'd rather the game itself took more of that load.
Fiasco is a GREAT game, if not for what and how it handles it, then at least as a new provider of ways how to roleplay. Yeah, it's mushy, yeah it is unorganized, but for how it can pull in new players, it is AMAZING. Unlike Lasers & Feelings (disclaimer: of which I only read reviews including yours, but never actually played it), Fiasco taps into whole lotta mechanics most people never heard of (referring to your D&D rant) and in an easy and popular manner.
Nicotine girls is another excellent game I'd recommend, but as an hour long distraction. Still, Nicotine girls manages to bring about its play much more aptly than Fiasco does.
And while on the topic, and it seems to be of your genuine interest, go read Sorceror RPG by Ron Edwards (10 pages I believe) if you already haven't, even if you never play it. That's one of the most famous RPGs, that any self-respecting roleplay afficionado ought to know and understand.
Cheers