Fiasco is a table-top role playing game heavy on the improvisational story-telling and light on the dice rolling. It concerns characters in possession of grand ambition and poor impulse control, and most of the story elements are randomly generated at the beginning, pulled from a specific Playset. The best comparison is to a film by the Cohen Brothers, in which a house of cards is built upon unsteady ground.
Fiasco is played across five stages:
The Setup, in which players choose a Playset to randomly generate relationships and their associated details: needs, objects, and locations.
Act I, in which players establish and resolve scenes. The end-result of these scenes, whether positive or negative for the character, is determined by a die taken from the pools in the center of the table.
The Tilt, in which the players with the strongest narrative through-lines choose Tilt Elements: unexpected events, characters, or items which turn the story on its head.
Act II, in players drive their characters to an inevitable conclusion. Guns go off, precious things are set alight, and loose ends are tightly wound together.
The Aftermath, in which the players provide final, conclusive scenes determined by the net-positive or net-negative dice accumulated throughout gameplay.
The playset used for this game was Manna Hotel, included in the Fiasco Playset Anthology '11. Set in the sleepy town of Manna, Kansas (pop. 1200), it concerns a 22-room motor lodge and the strange folk boarded there...
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Ruth Yoder - An old-world Mennonite woman keeping watch on Manna for the Kansas City mob. Operates the Manna Hotel, and is often seen knitting at its front desk.
Sabrina Wimples - Highly ambitious. Serial cheater. Militant lesbian. Recently collaborated with Leopold Tinman to steal a honey badger and a black bear from the nearby Calgary Zoo.
Leopold Tinman - A bitter veteran of the Korean War...or the Vietnam War? One of them. Suffers from severe tinnitus. Assisted Sabrina in her zoo heist, but doesn't know what to do with the animals.
Jeff Stalin - A junior member of the Russian Mafia in town to establish a criminal foothold. Fought against Tinman in...the war? Actively seeking to remove Ruth, as she's the lone representative of the Kansas City mob. Currently under-cover as a check-out boy at Manna Grocers.
Svetlanalanka Stalin - Jeff Stalin's twin sister, and partner in the mission. A fan of knives.
ACT I
Scene I - Tinman and Sabrina have just stolen a black bear and a honey badger from the Calgary Zoo and stashed the animals in their room at the Manna Hotel. The two go to Manna Grocers and buy out the meat department, alongside a cart full of ice and styrofoam coolers. The pair chat with the checker while Jeff secretly shakes up their 2-liters before loading them into the car. Tinman drives them out towards the hotel when a particularly violent bump pops the 2-liters, which throws Tinman back to the War, causing him to crash the car miles from the hotel. The two start walking.
Scene II - Satisfied at his prank, Jeff clocks out from Manna Grocers. He drives past Tinman and Sabrina on his way to the hotel. Once back at the hotel, he and Svetlanalanka discuss their plan, which amounts to causing petty vandalism in order to drive down morale. They decide to hit the zoo first.
Scene III - Svetlanalanka is interested in vandalism, but she reminds Jeff that they need to remove any influence from the Kansas City Mob - AKA, get rid of Ruth Yoder, the severe-looking woman in the bonnet who's always knitting behind the motel's front desk.
Scene IV - Ruth is knitting something behind the front desk when a man checks in - he says he's a zoo inspector from the city in Manna to inspect the Calgary Zoo, as two high-profile animals have gone missing. Ruth gives him the room next to the war veteran and the lesbian couple ("Praise God she's taken herself a man").
Scene V - Sabrina and Tinman feed the animals - the honey badger's chained up in the closet while the black bear's in the bathroom. They decide the bear is too much to keep in a hotel room and the abandoned schoolhouse up the road is a better option. Ruth drives a large panel van to and from work, so the pair decides to use it to transport the bear.
Scene VI - Tinman shmoozes with Ruth over their shared distaste for young folk. Ruth lets Tinman take the van, so long as he returns it the following morning, as she uses it to transport the local Korean population to church on Sundays and Wednesdays.
Scene VII - After a day at work, Jeff meets up with Svetlanalanka, who has decided the best course of action is to blow up Ruth's van while she drives it back from church. He agrees, and while she prepares to attack the woman he takes a handful of molotov cocktails to the Calgary Zoo and sets the entrance building on fire.
Scene VIII - Svetlanalanka lies in wait as Ruth's van - actually driven by Tinman, carrying Sabrina and the black bear - arrives at the schoolhouse. Svetlanalanka uses her smuggled rocket launcher to blow up the vehicle, though Tinman, Sabrina, and the bear escape unharmed. Before they can confront her, Svetlanalanka disappears into the Kansas countryside and Tinman runs off, thrown back into flashbacks to the War.
Scene IX - Ruth is knitting at the front desk when she sees a soot-covered, dusty Svetlanalanka slink back into the hotel parking lot. The visiting zoo inspector soon leaves, talking on his phone about how the zoo is on fire. Ruth puts 2-and-2 together and calls up the Kansas City Mob, who says they'll send some boys out to drive away the Russian menace.
Scene X - Sabrina tries to get the bear to track Tinman, but the animal isn't willing. Fortunately, she finds him asleep inside the schoolhouse, no worse for wear. Relieved that they're okay after the van mysteriously exploded, they outfit the bear with a harness and a nearby wheelbarrow, and ride the beast back into Manna.
THE TILT
Failure - Something Precious is on Fire
Guilt - A Showdown
ACT II
Scene I - Tinman has a flashback to the War while riding in the wheelbarrow. Whichever conflict it was involved Russian bear riders and a tank. Upon arriving at the hotel they apologize to Ruth for the van's destruction, but the woman seems preoccupied. Tinman and Sabrina offer to use their bear wagon to take the Koreans to church the next day, which seems to mollify Ruth.
Scene II - Svetlanalanka's pissed at Jeff - the attack on the zoo drew unwanted attention, and now they need to hurry to get rid of Ruth before the enforcers arrive from Kansas City. They make shivs out of some broken vodka bottles and storm the front office - but it's Sunday morning and Ruth is at church. They decide to take out their anger on her knitting, slashing it to bits.
Scene III - Svetlanalanka flashes back to her mafia induction, where she's tasked with killing the Mayor of Kansas City...but she's foiled by a junior member of the Kansas City Mafia, who is revealed to be a young Ruth Yoder.
Scene IV - Ruth is at the church graveyard when Sabrina arrives. The two have a heartfelt conversation in which Sabrina apologizes for destroying her van. They hug and go back to church.
Scene V - Sabrina flashes back to the zoo heist, in which Tinman is a distraction while Sabrina smuggles the animals out. She heads out to meet Tinman at the schoolhouse.
Scene VI - Tinman's feeding the bear when he finds Svetlanalanka's discarded rocket launcher. The combined stress and PTSD breaks his mental state and he decides the only way to be free is to blow up the zoo. Sabrina comes across him limping across the Kansas countryside and knocks him out for his own good.
Scene VII - We skip forward one month in time. Sabrina has opened a new zoo in the schoolhouse, with a ranting Tinman as the main attraction, and business is booming. Jeff comes by to visit and confesses to Tinman it was actually him who blew up the van. The betrayal drives Tinman deeper into his psychosis, and the guilt causes Jeff to wander out into the countryside.
Scene VIII - Ruth is at the church's graveyard when Svetlanalanka arrives. The two have a short conversation before they begin to fight! Blows are exchanged! Ruth throws Svetlanalanka into a gravestone! Svetlanalanka tackles Ruth through the stained-glass window! Ruth takes a gun out from her hollowed-out Bible and shoots Svetlanalanka! Svetlanalanka wrestles Ruth's knitting needles away from her and stabs her through the neck, ending the fight!
Scene IX - The enforcers from the Kansas City Mob arrive and meet up with the Koreans - they were secretly Ruth's contacts. They go to visit the Manna Hotel, which is under new management - Svetlanalanka meets them and confirms she's on their side...
Scene X - Sabrina has her new zoo up and running when she's visited by the zoo inspector. The man is hesitant, but revenues are up and Sabrina secures her licensing for future security.
THE AFTERMATH
This is Leopold Tinman. He's finally found some measure of security against the outside world, locked away in Sabrina's zoo. The outside world proved too much for him, and so he embraced his imprisonment. However, the trauma he's experienced will never fully leave him and his mind proves a more effective prison than any metal bars ever could.
This is Jeff Stalin, wandering the wilderness. He's distraught over his betrayal of his friend and once-enemy, Leopold Tinman. He's soon found by Sabrina and taken to her zoo, where the company of Tinman's nearness is a minor comfort.
This is Svetlanalanka Stalin, who now runs the Manna Hotel. With her brother's mental breakdown, she attempts to go it alone and tries to carve out her own small empire based in Manna. Unfortunately, she's not quite up to the task and winds up getting busted by the cops.
This is Ruth Yoder, survivor of the church brawl. The Kansas City Mob does not suffer failure lightly, and though they nurse her back to health, she never sees the light of day again.
This is Sabrina Wimples, zoo tycoon. She enjoys a brief span of significant success providing work to local veterans at her Human Exhibit. But it's lonely at the top, and soon her exhibits begin to act up. One night the locks fail, and she finds herself as prey at the mercy of a gaggle of old, hungry soldiers. They eat her alive.
Facilitator Thoughts
The group walked out of this session pretty satisfied - due in part to a few vivid scenes and interplay between the plotlines. In particular, Sabrina's player ruthlessly pursued her character goals, resulting in some very dark imagery which contrasted nicely with the goofier mafia story. The highlight was the fight between Ruth and Svetlanalanka - a scene which exploded into play with very little warning and contained reincorporation of various, seemingly inconsequential images from earlier in play.
The best advice I've ever heard concerning Fiasco is to never let yourself get in the way of the character. This particular session was a study in how it can result.
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