[Fiasco] Camp Machete Lake: Come for the drugs and fog-shrouded island, stay forever

jdarksun

What is Fiasco?
Fiasco is a GM-less storytelling role-playing game for 3-5 players that attempts to evoke small-time capers gone disastrously wrong. Think Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, or A Simple Plan.

How is it played?

First is the Setup. The players pick a play set. A bunch of black and white dice are rolled, then the players go around the table defining the characters and situation using those dice. At the bare minimum, each character needs two Relationships (one for each player's character on the player's right and left), a Need, an Object, and a Location. Sometimes more! The goal of the setup is to create intertwined characters with partly joint, partly opposing goals and a situation where it can all go wrong.

Remember the three rules of storytelling:
1) Who wants what?
2) Why can't they have it?
3) Why do I give a shit?

It's all cooperative for the players - there isn't really a "winner". The players win if an awesome story is told, even if some or all of them die. The dice are used to guide setup, but can be used in any order by whichever player wants them.

Want an example?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_903809&feature=iv&src_vid=WXJxQ0NbFtk&v=uuJizhyf-y4

After the setup comes Act 1. All the dice are gathered up and re-rolled, and the players take turns setting up and resolving Scenes. If a player chooses to set up a scene, they set the stage and determine the participants. And... action! Things happen. The scene plays out. At some point, the other players make a call: does it resolve well, or does it resolve poorly? The player then receives a white or black die (respectively), and finishes the scene. (During Act 1, that die is handed to another player. This is important! But we'll get to why later.)

What goes on during Act 1? Planning for the heist, character interaction, whatever, as long as it's building towards a climax.

After half the dice from the pool are handed out, things take a turn: it's the Tilt. The Tilt is Things Going Wrong. Chaos. Panic. Bad stuff. The Tilt is handled like the Setup, with dice rolled and used to guide what exactly it is that's going crazy.

An example of Act 1!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXJxQ0NbFtk&list=PL4F80C7D2DC8D9B6C&index=8

Once we've figured out what's going wrong (everything), it's on to Act 2. Act 2 is just like Act 1, except the players keep their dice instead of handing them away. What do we do with those dice?! We keep handing them out until... the Aftermath.

Roll those dice you got from the two Acts. Total up the like dice. If you've got different dice, subtract the smaller total from the larger, noting which color had the larger total. That final color/value combo is the outcome for the character. Low means bad things. Tragic things.

But tragedy is good!

An example of Act 2...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj7NcdDh-WM&list=PL4F80C7D2DC8D9B6C&index=9

How is it played here?
Let's try Play by Post. I have only done this once before. Safety not guaranteed. Must bring your own weapons.

Interested? Sign up in Bold Limegreen.

Players
jdarksun
vertroue
Grunt's Ghosts
Denada
Sir Fabulous

Events
Setup Begins!, and Setup Continues!
Setup Results!

Allocated Dice
Grunt's Ghosts: 0 0 (both from Red)
jdarksun: 0
Sir Fabulous: 0 0
vertroue: 0

Remaining Dice Pool
BLACK DICE: 0 0 0 0 0 0
RED DICE: 0 0
WHITE DICE: 0 0 0 0 0 0

Remember, when a RED DIE is used... someone dies!

vertroue

Interesting

Grunt's Ghosts

WIL WHEATON!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Denada

Interested

Sir Fabulous

I can do a thing.

bss

I want to play this so bad but I don't think I have the time. I'll be watching from the wings.

vertroue

Ok so...I hate you even more Jdark...because I went and got the game. I know some people that will love this.

jdarksun

It's like $10 vert. Which, true, is more expensive than Monsterhearts.

OK, I'll post all the play sets I can find tomorrow, then we can pick and start play!

Sir Fabulous

Okay after watching that game of fiasco...

Oh my god are they great at setting up these scenes.

I cared so much about the characters.

It's almost like 3/4 of them are in the film/TV industry.

Auralynx

You should put the playset to a bystander vote.

Grunt's Ghosts

Make sure to put Saturday Nights '78 in there too. Its free!

Egos

q:how to get people interested in a game?

a: Will Wheaton

Auralynx

Egos wrote: »

q:how to get people interested in a game?

a: Will Wheaton

The blonde on that episode did not hurt either. She was having a jolly time and it showed.

Sir Fabulous

Seems like it won't lend itself quite as well to PbP (Obviously, I guess)

A lot of those scenes end with people not really realizing what they are agreeing too in the heat of the moment, and then looking back on it and going "Oh that wasn't good for my character was it?"

Auralynx

Sir Fabulous wrote: »

Seems like it won't lend itself quite as well to PbP (Obviously, I guess)

A lot of those scenes end with people not really realizing what they are agreeing too in the heat of the moment, and then looking back on it and going "Oh that wasn't good for my character was it?"

I mean, BattleCon plays way different by post, near as I can tell, and we're having some fun anyhow. You guys might have to bend a few rules or tweak some stuff to make Fiasco play well by post - I think audience votes / arbitration may help if you're deadlocked - but I doubt it'll be unplayable.

Sir Fabulous

Oh I wasn't saying it was unplayable.

Didn't mean to come off cynical.

Just making an observation.

I'm sure it will still be tons of fun.

vertroue

I mean what is the worst that can happen we all blow up?

Grunt's Ghosts

I think if we have a good enough audience, we could have them vote somehow on white/black dies, but I'm unsure how that would work. Agree=white, bro?=black?

vertroue

I think having the audience vote also with the other players is cool

Grunt's Ghosts

On the though of us not thinking something was good for our character, it would be like any other RPG where you have to decide if stuff is good or not. If we just rp out characters and not think of this like a winnable game like Boonie did then we should be find.

jdarksun

Sir Fabulous wrote: »

Seems like it won't lend itself quite as well to PbP (Obviously, I guess)

A lot of those scenes end with people not really realizing what they are agreeing too in the heat of the moment, and then looking back on it and going "Oh that wasn't good for my character was it?"

My first game of Fiasco was via Google Hangout, and it worked rather well - though there was some awkwardness in letting ourselves just kinda free-form RP. I'm thinking that won't be a problem in PbP, though obviously not getting visual queues and potential player interaction lag are major setbacks.

We'll see.

Auralynx

Yeah, I'm curious to see how this plays out. My audience-participation suggestion was more related to streamling choices of genre and other things that'll take a million years do discuss by post; I don't think you should need to use us for resolution if you're doing it right.

jdarksun

Official Playsets:

Saturday Night '78

Disco With Death
New York City, 1978. Last year, the city endured the chaos of the blackout of '77 and the terror of the Son of Sam killings. This year, Studio 54 makes millions by giving beautiful plebs and dazzling celebrities a place to party at $20 a head. Condensed sweat rains from Studio 54's mirrored-laminate ceiling—sweat evaporated from the brows of celebrities, maybe—and falls back on the dancers below.

This is the year of Saturday Night Fever's public zeal and Saturday Night Live's last season with Aykroyd and Belushi—a year bookended by The Village Peoples' "Macho Man" and "Y.M.C.A." In New York, The Rolling Stones play at the Palladium in July (and Mick Jagger is likely seen at Studio 54) while Queen plays two nights on tour for their new album, Jazz, in November, at Madison Square Garden. Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?," a song of dance-club lust, appears at the end of this year.

This is a New York City that has recently discovered Star Wars, Annie Hall, Smokey and the Bandit, and Close Encounters. Superman, The Deer Hunter, and Every Which Way But Loose come out in December. The Warriors comes out next year but its inspiration is all around. Refer to real-world gangs like the Young Immortals, the Majestics, and the Dukes for some thematic verisimilitude. Organized crime of any stripe is apt in this age—and RICO was enacted just eight years ago.

This is a time of rock and disco, of reckless hedonism and casual sex, a time before consequences. Debauchees high on blow, poppers, or Quaaludes dance and laugh and lust and cry in swank clubs and dirty dives all over the city. Whoever your characters are in the daylight, come dark they transform into sordid stars or disco royalty, beautiful disasters or pitiable victors, ricocheting off each other into the glittering wreckage of imploded parties. Every Saturday night the city's alight with spectacular fiascoes.

1913 New York

The End Of The Beginning
Fin de siècle New York, 1913 - a city perched on the edge of the abyss.

Modernity is at war with tradition, and automobiles uneasily share the roads with horse-drawn carriages. Change - sweeping, terrible change - is in the air, and all of Europe is about to be thrown under the bus, dragging the world down after it. But tonight? For now? Cars that can go forty miles an hour, women not ashamed to show off a little ankle, and as much opium as you care to smoke. In the dirty places labor is organizing, anarchists are murdering plutocrats, and children are going hungry. But it's a pretty good world if you are on top of it, so find a way to get on top, fast...

This playset draws heavily on real New York history, and includes an additional section of notes to provide more detail about some of the more colorful locations and organizations.

Flyover

The Buckle On The Bible Belt
Flyover is all about Middle America - hard-working agribusiness professionals, construction contractors, Mexican drug mules and the people who love them. It's the God-and-country heartland, where high school football is the best bet for a Friday night date and everybody knows everybody.

With corn and soybean fields stretching for miles in every direction, the endless sky punctuated only by enormous grain elevators, things can get a little squirrelly.

Home Invasion

"We Love Poppleton Terrace"
It's a nice middle class neighborhood with a nice mix of professional families and a nice, powerful homeowners association. Good people who get involved and know their neighbors. People who aren't afraid to tell you that the shade of blue you are painting your house is not exactly allowed by the association covenant.

But lately things have been unsettled around Poppleton Terrace property values are falling, crime is rising, long-time residents have been less than receptive to the suggestions of the standards committee, and now new people are moving in.

People who are not like us. At all.

Last Frontier

Southeast Alaska
Adding some pitch black and blood red to the great white north… fishing villages and fishing village idiots, timber contracts and factory ships, State Troopers in floatplanes and the weird guys who hide when they fly over—set among the emerald forests of southeast Alaska’s vast archipelago, this playset drags an offbeat but familiar setting into the crosshairs.

Lucky Strike

France ... November 1944
This playset takes place at the United States Army’s Camp Lucky Strike Replacement Depot, near Le Havre, France.

By the fall of 1944, the U.S. Army was losing infantrymen faster than it could train new recruits. Poor planning and German tenacity combined to crate a deep manpower shortage on the front lines of the European theater. The ill-advised solution was the Replacement Depot, or “repple-depple”.

Nestled safely in the rear, the Replacement Depot was a temporary home for soldiers awaiting new units. Some were recovered from injuries, some were green troops directly from training known as “replacement increments”, and some were “otherwise displaced” for various reasons, often dubious. They were sent to whatever unit had a need, often without regard for their specialty—anti-aircraft gunners and tank destroyers were thrown into infantry battalions, and men who had never seen a tank were dropped into Shermans and told to learn fast. Men separated from comrades they had spent years training with were guaranteed never to see them again once they hit the repple-depple. Boredom and low morale led to crime and foolishness.

It was, in a word, a fiasco.

Touring Rock Band

“I Am A Golden God!”
It’s all about the music, man. It’s about becoming famous. It’s about the chicks, the drugs, the fans. It’s about burning bright and dying young, leaving behind a legend!

Or maybe it’s about paying for the hotel room once the stupid legend has left the building.

Touring Rock Band is an over-the-top collection of iconic rock and roll glories and unwholesome lunacy. It’s about golden gods rising to fame and falling back into addiction, stupidity and squalid failure.

Touring Rock Band 2

It Was A Good Run
You were supposed to live fast and die young. At least you lived fast. Now you are not so young. Not so famous. Not quite able to rise to the sybaritic occasion the way you did back in the crazy days. Back when you were the big deal, touring the world behind an album that could have—should have—one platinum. You had your moment and now it has passed. The band broke up, over sex and money and a lot of stuff that seems trivial now.

You’ve had to tone it down a little, accept a new sort of reality that involved trashing fewer hotel rooms and paying more bills on time and getting prostate exams that are actually prostate exams.

But the dreams never died, and lately the various anemic side projects have been less and less satisfying. And as bad decisions and old bridges burned come back to haunt you, the idea of revisiting past glory seems better and better. God knows you need the cash. And you still have fans on the Internet who would kill to see the band get back together….

Transatlantic

Mid-atlantic, Late December 1932
To be read aloud by the most aristocratic person at the table...

You are a week out of Southampton en route to New York. Your 42,000-ton vessel, Morning Star Lines' new flagship Leviathan, ploughs through these frigid waters at 29 knots. On this luxury cruiser's maiden voyage, the Captain has been directed to quietly contend for the glorious Blue Riband -- the accolade awarded to the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

Topside, you enjoy a salty Gibson while pulling the heavy double wool of your coat closer to your body. Friends make merry with lively talk amongst themselves -- it's a din barely overheard above the hammering engine and thresh of the ship's mighty propellers. Spray from the bow's cleave manages to catch your cheek even this far aft. You smile, playing the cocktail's onion lightly on your tongue. Your gaze draws across the dull, slate waters wondering at the marvel of it all: New beginnings? Maybe this time things will be different? Perhaps your dreams are within reach? What could possibly go wrong?

There's a 40 or so fan playsets also available, and five or six in the book itself (which I do not have on me at the moment, or I would provide a blurb for).

Sir Fabulous

I'm digging the Touring Rock Band.

It's one of the few sets that doesn't have a clearly defined time, which could be fun to play around.

All of them look interesting of course, but that's my vote.

Denada

In the book there's Main Street which is a fiasco in a nice southern town, Boomtown which is a fiasco in the wild west, Tales from Suburbia which is a fiasco in a suburban community, and The Ice which is a fiasco in McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

A couple ideas:

Since it's almost Halloween could do something thematic like Camp Death, Salem 1692, or Back to the Old House.

Since we're in Critical Failures we could go meta and do Dysfunctions and Dragons or Keeping On the Borderlands.

I honestly don't have a strong preference for any particular playset, though. I like the idea of an audience vote.

Matev

I could dig out my books for the actual play sets for you folks.

Boomtown is old west-themed.

Main Street is small town based

Tales from Suburbia is what it says on the tin.

The Ice takes place at an Antarctic research base (surprisingly good. I had a group of people go in expecting The Thing and it turned out to be a farcical rom-com with a twist at the end)

There's also a High School set, Las Vegas, a wedding, and one other one that eludes me.

i fucking love Fiasco

jdarksun

Wow, those five that you found are pretty dang awesome. Camp Death and Back to the Old House immediately made me grin.

I was thinking... how about the players nominate a few play sets they find interesting, and the audience picks from those?

@vertroue @Grunt's Ghosts any play sets you think look good?

bss, Auralynx, Egos, tzeentchling... watch this space.

Auralynx

Sounds like a plan. I don't get a choice-choice but I think Denada's on to something with the Halloween theme idea. Maybe shop in areas that seem workable for that?

Buddha73

Wow after just watching the Fiasco videos I'm glad i didn't join this. with my luck i would be screwed in every way including sideways. I'll just sit back and enjoy the chaos that is to come. Good lucks folks.

jdarksun

Feel free to stick around and vote on the chaos!

Buddha73

We get to vote?! on what?

Grunt's Ghosts

This is Halloween! This is Halloween!

jdarksun

Which play set we use. Also, I think we were talking about including audience feedback on if a scene for a character goes well or poorly.

Denada

I think it would be really fun to have the audience involved in the scene voting. Maybe Agree could be white and Awesome could be black (since they're kind of that color already)?

Sir Fabulous

Nominating my top 2 for votes:

Touring Rock Band
Camp Death

vertroue

Sorry just woke up. I say halloween themed horror and gore.

Matev

Camp Death. I haven't seen that one used yet.

Grunt's Ghosts

I wish they had a Fiasco Noir. Dames and Gangsters are always a recipe for a fiasco.

Matev

They do. Los Angeles 1936

Auralynx

Matev wrote: »

Camp Death. I haven't seen that one used yet.

I can get behind this one but I'd like to see some other suggestions if any of you actual players has some. :P

vertroue

I wouldn't mind the Camp, but then I like the campy bad horror movie type idea.