Today was the first time I ever played fiasco. I had the brilliant Derek, Kim and James as coplayers. It was a bit of a slow start at first, and the players were a little reticent, and since I had the strongest rules knowledge I facilitated the game. It didn't take long for the players to get into it. Kim and I were immediately in a criminal relationship (which she defined as "Muscle and Mouth", though neither of us could figure out which was the muscle and which was the mouth we set our need to "to get free... of our criminal charges). Kim and James were in a romantic relationship, with him obsessed with her (totally friend-zoned!), James and Derek were cops on overlapping beats (they were both detectives), Derek's relationship with me was Secret (faithful spouse and the other man/woman) - we interpreted it that Derek was a faithful partner to James' character. While on the take from me). We determined an important location to be an Alley Behind a Sex Shop, and an important object to be a wad of twelve $100 bills ready to go.What followed was a strange tale of criminals on the lam, trying to pull together a plan to get out of the city before their trial and silence their accusers once and for all. Some highlights include:
Tina Sparkles: Stripper and object of Detective Hank Doright's obsession accepting a wad of $100 bills but failing to realize that they were marked.
Rico Chavez slamming his car into Hank Doright in order to meet Detective "Catches" Craven.Then failing to convince Craven to betray his partner.
Tina Spakles coming up with the money, and the pair of them deciding that they would be better off bumping off the police chasing them.
Detective Hank Doright convincing Detective Craven to kill off Rico, but failing to convince Tina to stay out of it and her swearing to kill Doright for threatening her partner.
In Act 2 Tina and Rico decide that Petrol Bombs (half tequila/half petrol) would be the best weapons. The police decided on automatic fire-arms. It was a complete fustercluck! (We had run out of white dice by the time the characters met in the alley so everything backfired). Tina threw a petrol bomb at Hank Doright, and his reflexes caused it to explode in mid-air covering Tina in flames. Doright turned in time to see Rico's sweet chevy driving into the alley and Hank opened fire, causing Rico's car to flip and slam into the nearby Detective Craven the flipped car of course exploded. Aftermath: Rico miraculously unharmed crawls out of the car, and races out of the alley; the two cops firing on him, one of the bullets catching him in the ankle. Rico falls to the ground and gets arrested by Craven. Meanwhile Tina Sparkles in burning agony looks up to see Hank Doright pick her up just as it starts raining the cool water sweet on her skin. Rico went to prison, for the rest of his natural life. Doright ended up married to the terribly burned (mummylike) Tina Sparkles, selling heroin from the evidence room to pay for her expensive skin grafts. Craven was fired from the force for his role in the back-alley battle. Rico meanwhile built a criminal empire from within the prison, ordering a hit on the police who put him there.
End
The game was very whacky and could have gotten gonzo very quickly. We had some pacing problems by the end because I had accidentally put too many dice on the table (whoops). We loved how even characters who got what they wanted found it tainted, and those who got the opposite of what they wanted found some redemption. The game was super easy to play and I'm going to go ahead and play this again SOON. It's such a great rules lite story game, and so much whacky fun. Next time I think I want to try LA 1920s playset. I think we could have pulled the Object in a little better (it seemed to take significance but then lose it pretty quickly), but over all the dice forced some interesting decisions.
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