Fiasco is a role-playing game about characters with grand ambition and poor impulse control. The game emphasizes improvisation and collaborative story-telling over dice rolling and encourages characters to fail forward, rather than strive for success. In other words, everybody loses a little better than the rest.
The game is played over five stages:
The Setup, in which the dice are rolled to generate a network of relationships and the details (objects, needs, and locations) which inform the story. The players then synthesize these elements into a house of cards ready to topple.
Act I, in which the players take turns establishing and resolving scenes featuring their characters, the relationships, and the relevant details. Plots are schemed, rifles are set atop mantles, and keys are left in the ignition.
The Tilt, in which two players choose additional elements which can be introduced in order to destabilize the story, twist an established aspect of the story, and further complicate things.
Act II, in which the players again act out their scenes. Plots unwind, guns go off, and the story tilts in unexpected ways.
The Aftermath, in which players montage their final character moments. People die, buildings explode, and the Fiasco unravels.
The playset used for this session was Home Invasion, set in the small town of Poppleton, as unsettling events and unsavory characters begin moving into town. The playset lists Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Donnie Darko, and American Beauty as movie night inspiration.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
"Old Man" Henry Herbie Jeebies - A long-time resident of Poppleton, Old Man Jeebies claims to have fought in the Korean War and earned his right to not mow his lawn. Jeebies's sole companion is his beloved rooster, who wakes him promptly at 5 AM for ham sandwich time.
Robert "Bert" Mackintosh - Local weeaboo and general weird kid, Bert chose his nickname after growing weary of folks referring to him as "Little Robbie." Unabashed in his love of anime and marijuana, Bert possesses a general disdain for Poppleton, but especially his neighbor, Old Man Jeebies.
Richard Laundry - The new kid in town, Richard likes Inuyasha and other Japanese cultural milestones. Somewhat timid, Richard does his best to branch out and meet people, though his social awkwardness gets in the way more often than not.
Joe Free-Man - Local sovereign citizen, Joe Free-Man (pronounce the hyphen) legally changed his name from Freeman to include the punctuation. He's recently painted his garage door with a large image of the American flag, which does not go over well with the current Home Owner Association.
Leona van Housing - Some-nonsense chair of the Standards Committee for the Poppleton HOA, Leona bears a fondness for poppies and uniformity - through any means. Her drive often puts her at odds of the more entrenched citizens of Poppleton, which causes some strife in the small town.
ACT I
Scene I - Old Man Jeebies's rooster crows every morning at 5 AM sharp. The long-lived resident wakes up, makes himself a ham sandwich, and steps outside to enjoy the morning chill, immediately stepping on a rusted nail hiding in his unmowed grass.
"Just tell me what's wrong, dammit," Jeebies says.
"Well...sir, you do have tetanus," the nurse practitioner tells him. "But it's an advanced case, something you've had since before this morning. Have you stepped on any other nails recently?"
"Well...sir, you do have tetanus," the nurse practitioner tells him. "But it's an advanced case, something you've had since before this morning. Have you stepped on any other nails recently?"
"I've got rusted nails all over my lawn, stay out of my business, goddammit!"
When he gets home, he discovers the rooster has escaped his yard, as the gate was left open.
Scene II- Bert gets woken up by his neighbor's rooster at 5 AM. He sits in bed, unable to fall back asleep, until it's time for high school at 8:30. The day passes as normal: he sleeps through chemistry, gets picked last and picked on during PE, and spends lunch playing video games on his phone. The one bright side is that there's a new kid, Richard, who also likes anime and probably won't has enough personality to disrupt Bert as the alpha-weeb.
Scene III - Richard's walking to school when he sees Joe Free-Man's truck and toolkit. There's a cordless nailgun sitting in the back, which Richard thinks will be perfect for his Inuyasha cosplay. Unfortunately, Mister Free-Man is watching from his porch, so Richard hatches a plan to take the nailgun when he's not paying attention.
Scene IV - Joe Free-Man watches the new weird kid walk off and sighs as he contemplates his upcoming meeting with the HOA Standards chair. He goes to talk with Leona about the upcoming Best Neighborhood award; Leona's plan is to plant poppies on every property, which would mean Joe's own garden would need to be uprooted. Joe's not going to have it, unless the HOA deals with the rooster which has been waking up the entire town for the past few years. Leona says she'll do it.
Scene V - Leona decides on a course of action: considering Old Man Jeebies doesn't know where the rooster is, she's going to set a trap for it. She goes into the park and creates a poppy arrangement hiding a large bear-trap baited with birdseed, then sits and waits.
Scene VI - Old Man Jeebies, being the only one at the urgent care that morning, gets a ride to the Memorial for Victims of Traffic Accidents on State Highway 217, about ten miles south on State 217. He has a brief, passable conversation with the shuttle driver before he's dropped off.
Scene VII - It's after school, and Bert is smoking weed with Richard at the Memorial for Victims of Traffic Accidents on State Highway 217. They're talking about anime and cosplay when Old Man Jeebies shows up and gives them trouble for smoking weed there. Bert responds by mocking the old man for the loss of Mary.
"Yeah, if you were my husband I would have darted into traffic, too," Bert sneered.
"Mary wasn't my wife, you little shit," Jeebies said as he removed a well-folded photograph from his coat. "She was my cat, my beloved cat."
Old Man Jeebies wanders off, and Bert reveals he's getting something shipped for his own cosplay, a real game-changer.
Scene VIII - Richard is back in town and decides it's time to steal Joe's nailgun. He waits for a bit, as Joe is on his porch, but the appearance of the rooster in the sky prompts Free-Man to go inside, grab his shotgun, and start taking shots at the bird. Richard grabs the nailgun during the confusion, but Joe sees him leave with it in hand.
Scene IX - The next morning Joe is waiting on his porch as Richard walks to school. He confronts the kid about taking his nailgun ("don't do it again or I'll kill yah"), and Richard says he'll go inside and get it...so he goes inside and puts on his ghillie suit he bought because he's such a fan of Call of Duty, then sneaks out the back door. Joe, not willing to wait, knocks on the Laundry's door and is confronted by Richard's father, who insists he'll deal with his son.
Scene X - Leona watches the bird approach the rooster trap but gets over-excited and scares the bird away. Thinking it might be just a bit too much trouble, she goes to Joe and says the HOA will let him keep his American flag garage door so long as he helps her catch the rooster. He agrees.
THE TILT ELEMENTS
Mayhem - A dangerous animal gets loose
Failure - Something precious is on fire
ACT II
Scene I - Jeebies wakes up half an hour late - too late for ham sandwich time. When he goes outside to see if his rooster is okay, he discovers Joe's nailgun at his fence gate and believes the man finally went to remove his bird. He makes a deal where Joe will recover the rooster in exchange for the return of his nailgun.
Scene II - Bert wakes up to his alarm for the first time in recent memory. He has a nice breakfast and sees that his shipment has arrived - it's an authentic replica katana from Japan, with hentai art painted down the blade. He straps it to his back and walks to school, where he notes Richard is missing.
Scene III - We cut to the day before, with Richard sneaking through the park in his ghillie suit. He sees the rooster in the sky and crawls towards it...and gets his hands caught in the bear trap. We do a time lapse of Richard stuck in the park, hands caught in a trap, covered in a ghillie suit so nobody can see him as he's forced to sit in the park overnight.
Scene IV - Joe goes on a hunt for the rooster and finds it, which results in a slapstick chase through the town. Ultimately he catches the bird and returns it to Jeebies for his nailgun.
Scene V - Leona goes to check on her rooster trap and finds Richard stuck there. She extricates him from the steel jaws and sends him to the urgent care.
Scene VI - Henry wakes up at 5 AM for ham sandwich time, and he notices the rooster is flying around his yard, crowing louder and louder and growing larger and larger. Concerned that something strange is afoot, he calls the local police and the sheriff arrives.
Scene VII - While everyone is arguing over how to deal with the ever-growing rooster, Bert is annoyed at the chorus of crowing, sirens, and arguing outside his house. Intent on driving Jeebies from the town, he sneaks into the old man's house and burns all the remaining pictures of him and his beloved cat, Mary. Outside, Jeebies collapses due to tetanus.
Scene VIII - Richard wakes up in the hospital in the same room as a tetanus-ridden Old Man Jeebies. The two talk a little bit and make up, coming to terms with their alienation from the rest of Poppleton. After he's released, Richard goes to Free-Man's house and confesses to taking the nailgun, asking Joe to please make it quick. Joe says he wasn't ever going to kill him and teaches him a little life lesson about taking stuff that isn't yours.
Scene IX - Joe and Leona meet up and talk about their plans. Considering Joe effectively ended the rooster problem (we learn the police shot the rooster down, as he was growing too large), she's going to make good on her promise: everyone in the neighborhood has to paint a big American flag on their garage door.
Scene X - It's the day of the big HOA meeting to determine how they're going to win the Best Neighborhood contest. Leona says they're going to go patriotic, and we see the entire town has been painted with American flags.
THE AFTERMATH
This is Henry Herbie Jeebies, bitter old man. After his expulsion from the hospital, he learns the police shot down his rooster. He becomes a recluse, eating his ham sandwiches, bereft of both his pussy and his cock.
This is Robert "Bert" Mackintosh, social outcast. Rumor spreads around Poppleton that Bert was the one who burned Old Man Jeebies's pictures. Thanks to the alienation, Bert never learns any sort of social skills and spends the rest of his time in Poppleton alone, allegedly by his own choice, though deep down he knows that's not true.
This is Richard Laundry. With his first attempt at anime cosplay ruined by poor planning, he attempts one more: by lighting a large stash of fireworks. Unfortunately he's too close and gets caught in the blast, sending him back to the hospital with third-degree burns all over his body. The kids in high school aren't kind, and he spends the rest of his time there known by the name "Dick Wash."
This is Joe Free-Man, enjoying a cup of coffee. The past few days were strange, that's for sure, but things in Poppleton seem to have calmed down. He sighs contentedly as he looks down the row of houses, each garage door boldly painted with a large American flag.
This is Leona van Housing, Standards chair of the Poppleton HOA. The Best Neighborhood committee loved Poppleton's patriotism, and the town won the award by one point. Glad that the nonsense is behind them, she straightens the award in her office and happily goes back to her routine.
Facilitator Thoughts
Facilitator Thoughts
This was a fairly experienced group of gamers, with only one player having never touched Fiasco. The game moved at a fairly rapid pace, despite regular stints of in-character roleplay, probably making this the quickest game I've yet played. There was a lot of good table-talk and rounding about to include previous story points.
I did notice one interesting thing about the playset: Home Invasion is very clearly supposed to set up something similar to Coneheads, Stepford Wives, or The Cable Guy with subtle supernatural or extraterrestrial elements. While the supernatural did kind of occur here with the rooster, a lot of the elements we wound up generated were pretty mundane. Maybe that's the headspace we occupied at the time, but it looks like we did wind up avoiding most of the overt weirdness presented in the tables. Maybe next time.
