Dedication
To Autumn Winters, who loves a good fiasco.
Thanks
...to Jarrod Acquistapace, Ariele Agostini, Kevin Allen Jr, Giulia Barbano, Rob Bohl, Jason D. Corley, Adam Dray, Lara Ermacora, Damian Fraustro, Nathan Herrold, Will Hindmarch, William Huggins, Sage LaTorra, Flavio Mortarino, Renato Ramonda, Kira Scott, Jonathan Walton, Kamil Wegrzynowicz and my friends at story-games.com and elsewhere for insightful comments and enthusiasm.
Big thanks to Seth Ben-Ezra, Chris Bennett, Colin Creitz, Robert Earley-Clark, Lara Ermacora, Alessandro Fontana, Zach Greenvoss, Tom Gurganus, John Harper, Jeff Hosmer, Ralph Mazza, Robert Poppe, Graham Walmsley and Chris Yates for taking the time to help me make this game good as hell.
Heartfelt thanks to all of you, and to every playtester, too and sorry about the mess out back under the tarp. Best not to look, OK? Ive got it all under control.
Playtesters
Team Bull City: Mark Causey, Joel Coldren, Jonathan Davis, Matthew Gandy, Mike Graves, Nathan Herrold, Andy Kitkowski, Scott Morningstar, Clinton R. Nixon, Ian Oakes, Robert Poppe, Eric Provost, Lisa Provost, Dan Buttercup Puckett, Steve Segedy, Joe Uncle Timothy Stanton and Remi Treuer.
Team Do Not Use Our Real Names: Tomg, Spuds, Darth and Heli.
Team EndGame: Chris Thats my leopard Bennett, Robert Earley-Clark, Chris Peterson, and Karen Twelves.
Team London: Steve Dempsey, Wai Kien, Simon Rogers, Graham Walmsley and Grahams friend Dave.
Team High Point: Chad Bowser, James Connie Jeffers, Andi Chicken Hut Newton, Chris Norwood, and Clarence Simpson.
Team Milan: Claudio Agosti, Silvia Bindelli, Claudio Criscione, Damiano Desco, and Flavio Mortarino.
Team Los Angeles: Eric J. Boyd, Josh Roby, Ryan Macklin and William Huggins.
Team Morristown: Lowell Carson, Eric Tage Larsen, Ryan Macklin and Michael Preacher McKean OSullivan.
Team Peoria: Crystal Ben-Ezra, Gabrielle Ben-Ezra, Seth Ben-Ezra, Ralph Mazza and Keith Sears.
Team Portland: Evan E. Dumas, Zach Greenvoss, Joe Jaquette, and Brian K. Smith.
Team Seattle: James Brown, Chris Bennett, Michael Decuir, Ryan Forsythe, Matthew Tire King Gagan, Will Huggins, Matthew Klein, Ching-Ping Lin, Ralph Mazza, Lesley McKeever, Lukas Myhan, Paul Riddle and Mike Lucille Sugarbaker.
Team Shot the Sheriff: Colin Creitz, John Daniels, Chris Deibler, Sarah Heidi Jo Thomas.
Team SuperNoVa: Jeff Hosmer, Auntie M, Joe Iglesias, Sean Leventhal, and Mel White.
The Elevator Pitch
Here are just a few of the key ingredients: Dynamite, pole vaulting, laughing gas, choppers can you see how incredible this is going to be? Hang gliding, come on!
Dignan, Bottle Rocket
Fiasco is inspired by cinematic tales of small-time capers gone disastrously wrong particularly films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan. Youll play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It wont go well for them, to put it mildly, and in the end it will probably collapse into a glorious heap of jealousy, murder, and recrimination. Lives and reputations will be lost, painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, your guy just might end up back where he started.
Youll Need
- Three, four, or five people, including yourself. There is no Game Master.
- Four six-sided dice per player, two each of black and white. You really just need two different colors you can use to denote success and failure Ill use black and white for clarity.
- Several dozen index cards or sticky notes and some pencils.
- About two and a half hours, varying with experience, play style and the size of your group.
Getting to the Good Stuff
Theres a fly in the ointment, shits hittin the fan, the lion will speak!
Saul, Pineapple Express
Just Browsing
If you are browsing and want to get a feel for the games flavor, read the an extended example of play.
New to Weird Games
If this sort of game is new to you, Id encourage you to read the whole thing and pay particular attention to the examples cross-referenced in the . It isnt rocket science, and I hope its pretty clear how it works, but it might be a little weird on first reading. The examples should help!
Story Gaming Goober
If you are comfortable with collaborative, narrative-heavy games ( Fiasco is similar in a lot of ways to Prime Time Adventures or Montsegur 1244, for example), you can get away with ignoring the Replay and the Things to Look For sections of the rules. It does behave a little differently than what you are used to, though, so dont make any assumptions. I try to spell out exactly what to do and when to do it.
Fiasco Regular
Here are the links to the . Go crazy.
Overview
Before we go any further, all right, we have to swear to God, Allah, that nobody knows about this but us, all right? No family members, no girlfriends, nobody.
Peter Gibbons, Office Space
Fiasco is a highly collaborative game in which every player should always be engaged either actively playing a character or throwing out suggestions, brainstorming scene ideas, and listening for ways to make each scene hit harder than the last. Because the pace is so frantic, every choice you make has to matter a lot.
A game of Fiasco begins with The Setup a group activity where you and your friends create a potent and unstable set of circumstances. You choose a Playset, which fixes the game in a particular time and place a contemporary southern town, maybe, or the old west. Using a pile of dice, you create an interconnected circle of Relationships and Details pulled from the Playset. Once youve created a situation poised on the brink of juicy disaster, you define characters based on your choices.
Once the Setup is done, you play out