Nerd Alert: Fiasco Review

Winner of many independent RPG awards, so hipster nerds love it.

I am going to nerd out here a little bit and introduce you to a fine new purchase I made recently: Fiasco, an RPG published by Bully Pulpit Games, and created by Jason Morningstar.

RPG, for the uninitiated, means roleplaying game. As in a game where you take on the role of a character, and play as them. Roleplaying game! The most well known RPG in history is unquestionably Dungeons and Dragons, but this game really isn't anything like that. There are no battles, no monsters, no complex dungeons to adventure through.

Instead, Fiasco is based on small-time caper films like Fargo, The Ladykillers, and Small Time Crooks. The game falls into a few sections. First, the 3-5 players roll some dice, and die by die determine their relationships to each other. Once that is settled, the players take away dice and act out scenes until no more dice remain, and an aftermath of their disastrous situation is resolved.

A big part of the fun is that during each scene that is acted out, the players who aren't in the scene determine whether the scene goes positively or negatively for a player by giving them a white (for positive resolutions) or a black (for negative resolutions) die part way through the scene. So things never quite go the way you plan for them to.

We didn't have enough black dice, so we had two groups:
"Whites Only", and "Coloured". Didn't think that one through.

So that's the stuff you would need to know. Sounds pretty nerdy, right? Well, what's really cool, is that I've found how amazing the game is as a storytelling tool. Take the way the relationships are established:

Through tables provided in the Fiasco handbook, and with the dice your players have rolled, you determine your relationships together. These each fall into two sections- Relationships ie. how you know each other, and Details ie. a shared Location, Object, or Need. Basically you roll a bunch of dice, and based off of the numbers that come up, one by one you pick a die to correspond with a detail on the tables. Easy.

You share these traits with the person to your right, and to your left. And that's what makes it so interesting.

So you aren't rolling up and determining your own character; you are discovering your relationship to two other people. And they, in turn, are also getting relationships with the two people next to them. Thus, a five person game is going to start to have a deeply-weaved web of intriguing characters.

Our story centered around a store much like this one...

A game I recently played broke down like this:

A.J. and Ricky shared a crime relationship together, which was determined to be centered around a small drug trade. I played the naive cousin of Ricky, the small-time crime lord the suburbs, and we worked together at the Tile Hut in the mall (which turned out to be a front for his drug game). To my left was Robin, and it was determined that we were a recent couple.
Then we found out that A.J. and Robin's relationship was that of a dark past: a drunk driver and next of kin of victim. The four of us talked it out, and determined that A.J. had killed Robin's sister who had been getting into the drug game with A.J..
One of the final details was determined that though Robin and I were a new couple we shared a need together to get rich through ripping off drug lords. Soon our story was becoming clear: somehow I would have to use my contact with Ricky to get into the drug game and either provide vengeance for Robin by getting even with her sister's killer, or somehow screw both the drug guys out of lots of money.

But that was just me. Every other player also had their own different motivations and special interests. It keeps the story moving as their is always some situation that needs resolving and the action never stagnates.

I highly recommend it to RPG players everywhere, but as an improv coach, I have to say it is an amazing tool for just telling stories in general. If you are in any sort of creative medium and want to hone your craft, it's at the very least worth a play-through. It's fun, it's simple, and it's social, so grab a group of friends, plop down $25 for the book (or $12 for a pdf version) and play a game. You won't be disappointed.