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Fun Stuff => CHATTER => Topic started by: Game and Watch Forever on 25 May 2013, 10:53

Title: Fiasco - A Roleplaying/Storytelling Game
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 25 May 2013, 10:53
Hey guys! So I had been thinking about the RPing people have been doing in mafia games and I came to a conclusion... I totally want a game in these forums that focuses more on this. Something where everyone's goal is to play the part of a character and collaborate to tell an interesting story.

Enter Fiasco -- a storytelling RPG inspired by movies where ambitious characters make (often illegal) schemes to get what they want and then watch it fall to pieces (ie Office Space, Burn After Reading, Blood Simple) There's no GM and no preparation ahead of time apart from choosing the playset. It's for 3-5 people, so I may facilitate two games at once if enough people care to play (and assuming that's cool with the mods).


Basic Rundown of All the Rules:

Setup:
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Act I:
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The Tilt:
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Act II:
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The Outcome:
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This game is a lot of fun since you are guided to come up with some ridiculous things and there's a lot of free material we can make use of. I have the actual book with the rules and the above is pretty much a brief synopsis. My goal would be to create a fun forum variant using the free material and anyone that ends up enjoying this will hopefully buy the full manual and play with their meatspace friends.

A post below now has the scenarios I'm thinking of using. If you are interested in playing, rank them in the order of your preference and we'll see which we go with. I'll post the full playset once we're ready to get the game going.


Description of how a scene would go:
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YouTube videos of the game being played (more or less correctly?):
Setup (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuJizhyf-y4)
Part 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXJxQ0NbFtk)
Part 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj7NcdDh-WM)

Links to Bully Pulpit's Fiasco site where it can be purchased to be posted later.

Title: Re: Fiasco - The Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control!
Post by: Masterpiece on 25 May 2013, 12:04
I'm interested, but I want to learn about the scenarios first.
Title: Re: Fiasco - The Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control!
Post by: Loki on 25 May 2013, 12:46
I second the motion of the previous speaker.
Title: Re: Fiasco - The Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control!
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 25 May 2013, 22:21
Four scenarios that I think would work well:

News Channel Six - When the News Breaks, We're There to Fix It!: Times are tough at Action Six News. We’re last place in an already small market and losing ground all the time. It’s not like much news-worthy stuff happens in this crappy little town anyway, and those bastards over at Action News Eleven always seem to be one step ahead of us!

The Beast of Sucker Creak - The Beast Lives On: Is it a madman? A crazed bear? Something strange and wholly new to science? No one knows, but those who have crossed paths with it are convinced of one thing—the Beast of Sucker Creek is real, and you don’t want to make it angry.

The Zoo - Go to the Zoo: The zoo keepers grow desperate. Money is tight. Other, more successful zoos in other cities sniff around the place, looking to take away animals and staff. A proposed expansion project might drum up new interest in the zoo... if the city approves the new zoning plan. But rumors persist that a multiplex is offering more money to buy up a chunk of the zoo land, displacing animals and staff forever.

The Manna Hotel - An Oasis for Weary Travelers: The Manna Hotel is a twenty-room motor lodge with its own in-ground swimming pool, now unused. The hotel burned down and was rebuilt in the fifties. Wood paneling and window-unit air conditioners were installed in the seventies, and it looks like that’s the last maintenance anyone did to the place.

Anyone interested, rank the four in order of preference. Keep in mind that each of these may have some unusual possibilities. For example, one of these could potentially involve someone finding pictures of disemboweled corpses surrounded by hooded figures. No, of course I'm not going to tell you which one that is.  :angel:
Title: Re: Fiasco - The Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control!
Post by: Loki on 25 May 2013, 23:59
Forgive me my density, but I am still not sure what the interaction at the player level would entail.

Let's say we pick the Zoo scenario (I suspect this is the one with the corpses by the way). What would I, as a player, do? Is there anyone who acts as the game master telling the basic story? Basically, could you describe exemplary three or four posts that players+GM would make in the situation?
Title: Re: Fiasco - The Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control!
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 26 May 2013, 13:14
Okay, I deleted my previous post and modified my first post to run down the whole game and explain it as simply as possible. Look over it. If you're still on the fence, PM me and we'll talk. I'm going to post some videos of Wil Wheaton and others playing the game that might illustrate how fun it is way better than I describe it, so that may also help.

Hope to get a game going with a few of you!
Title: Re: Fiasco - The Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control!
Post by: de_la_Nae on 27 May 2013, 16:16
I'm definitely interested, but not certain I can commit at this time. Sorry. :/ I will be paying attention, though, and seeing if my schedule clears up enough in the near future.
Title: Re: Fiasco - The Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control!
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 28 May 2013, 21:02
Posted videos of the game being played. It's watching them that got me interested, so hopefully the same happens to you. No need to watch the whole thing to get the idea, though I was certainly entertained enough to do so. Twice.

De la Nae, thanks for posting your interest at least! You bring up a good point I should probably touch a little on.

For anyone wondering how big of a time sink this will be: I don't expect this to be as big of a commitment as say... a play by forum game of D&D or something. There's no deadline in posting. Go at your own pace. The level of RP here isn't "1 post = 1 chapter of a novel" so no need to worry about that either. Post what's appropriate for the situation. Only time I would say not to bother is if you're always going to take a week plus to make a post. Or if you think you may start and then flake in the middle. Otherwise, I'm willing to work with anyone interested and hope anyone else posting interest will feel the same way.

Okay, I said enough... I think only thing I have left to address is if anyone posts questions or concerns. And if I get bored I'll post more about my first game... the story of a mayor running for re-election, his secretary looking for revenge, a pair of rivals, a closeted gay man, and a rooster named Cocky.
Title: Re: Fiasco - The Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control!
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 08 Jun 2013, 20:08
All right, folks. We just finished a really good game of mafia. While we recover from all the backstabbing and deceit, some of us can still have some fun RPing with something different. I just need two people minimum for three, though I'd love for there to be four or five of us total. You know you want to! Especially those of you that posted for more information and then went into hiding. I see you there!  :police:
Title: Re: Fiasco - A Roleplaying/Storytelling Game
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 21 Jun 2013, 22:51
All right, this will be my last post and then I'll let this die if nobody really wants to (and is available to) give it a try.

I said I wanted to post about my first game of this and I think this is as good a time as any. I don't remember it scene by scene, but I do remember the overall story and that's what I'll provide as an example of the sort of story you end up with. Our playset was "A Nice Southern Town."

First, of course, are the characters we ended up creating after everything was chosen:
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Act I:
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Act II

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Aftermath:
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And that was my first game of Fiasco! I left out a lot of wonderful little lines that had us cracking up and got us excited, but I couldn't include everything. I'll have to come back and edit it to make sure it makes total sense (as I'm too tired to do it now). Hopefully any of you who bothered reading it found it interesting and will want to play at some point, even if it's not now. I'm always up for it though, so unless I completely stop frequenting this forum (unlikely for the foreseeable future), feel free to necro this (I just won't be the one to do it).