Fiasco

by Jason Morningstar

  At a minimum you’ll have the outline of a scene – where it takes place, who is there, and what they are doing. You might also have a big conflict in mind, but it’s perfectly acceptable to find out what’s going on in play as well. You can Establish a scene and see where it leads, if that feels right to you. Of course if you chose to Resolve, your friends will set the scene and probably introduce a conflict for you.

  There aren’t any hard and fast rules about what constitutes a good scene or what constitutes an acceptable level of “positive outcome” or its opposite. Ideally you want all your friends involved and throwing in ideas, an opportunity for some character interaction, incorporation of stuff you’ve authored into the game, and questions both asked and answered. Your group will have its own standards and style – just avoid scenes that are aimless, don’t advance the plot in an interesting way, or are self indulgent. You don’t get very many scenes! Make them count. Be bold.

  If you Established, accept a die from your friends. If you Resolved, choose a die and the outcome.

  If you are Resolving, at any time during the scene you can take any die that remains in the central pile, white or black. If you take a white die, that is a signal that the outcome of the scene will be positive for your character. If you take a black die, it’s the opposite – a negative outcome for your character.

  If you Established the scene, your friends will make this decision for you, reaching a decision about which die to give you however they like. Whether you decide the outcome based on character- or player-level choices is up to you.

  No matter who chooses the die, hold it up for everyone to see and then carry on – you don’t need to disrupt the scene at all. The color of the die you’ve chosen will let everyone know how the scene is supposed to play out. Once you know whether the end result is going to be good or bad for your guy, you can play out the rest of the scene. I can’t emphasize enough how satisfying it is to do all this without skipping a beat in the role-playing – just play the scene, accept the die, and let that guide everyone to an appropriate conclusion. That said, it’s also perfectly acceptable to interrupt a scene to announce your intent, to point out something that’s worth fighting about, or to ask for clarification.

  Many times you’ll frame a scene as a straight-ahead conflict. Do you convince the Sheriff to arrest your sister? If throwing your sister in jail is a net positive for your character, a white die means she’s in bracelets. Scenes don’t need to be centered on conflicts, though. Sometimes really good scenes are just color, giving us insight into a character’s heart and mind. Positive and negative can be a little more subtle here. Ultimately if it is your scene, you decide what constitutes a positive outcome or a negative one. Sometimes you’ll need to communicate this if it isn’t entirely clear, and that’s encouraged. It’s also possible a scene won’t involve any role-playing at all – just description. If that’s what’s called for, there’s no need to shoe-horn role-playing into the scene.

  If it is Act One, give the outcome die to another player. If it is Act Two, keep the outcome die.

  As the game progresses you’ll develop a little pile of dice. Keep them in the open in front of you – you’ll need them later. Note that the point values of the dice don’t matter right now – just the colors. During the Tilt and the Aftermath, having a collection of dice well balanced between black and white will spell disaster, and having lots of one color and few or none of the other is a recipe for safety and success.

  In Act One, you always give away the outcome die if it is your scene. Give it to any other player you like. This decision has nothing to do with the in-game fiction and everything to do with who you want to support or mess with.

  In Act Two, you always keep the outcome die if it is your scene. This means choosing to Resolve is especially inviting, just when losing control over scene framing becomes a terrible idea.

  Finish the scene, informed by the color choice.

  If you end up with a white die, the outcome should be positive for your guy. If you end up with a black die, the outcome should be negative. How positive or negative? That’s up to you and your friends, guided by the tone you’ve set for the game in general and the scene in particular.

  You’ll have some unfinished business, and maybe a chance for some good role-playing, once the outcome is revealed. Enjoy it! That’s how scenes work. Acts One and Two are nothing but scenes, in rotation, one after the other.

  Things to Look For

  I wish somebody else had found that money.

  Jacob Mitchell, A Simple Plan

  The First Scene

  Sometimes Fiasco’s “cold start” beginning can be daunting. You’ve got a situation that seems primed for fun, but how do those translate into action? The answer is to take a look at the character in the spotlight and start asking questions.

  Always build a scene for the guy in the spotlight around a question you’d love to see answered. What does he want to know about other characters, the world, himself? Do you wonder what would happen if he shorted his dealer? Does he wonder if lying to a cop is a good idea − or if lying on top of a cop is a good idea? Do you wonder if he has the balls to stand up to his dad? Sure, he got Shontelle pregnant and now his baby daughter is an Object in play (charming), but what does she know that keeps a maggot like him from running out on her?

  Don’t be shy. You have few enough opportunities to create scenes, so go big when you get the chance.

  Some Advice for Knuckleheads

  The way scenes are Established and Resolved in Fiasco might seem a little counter-intuitive. To be perfectly clear, you don’t set stakes as such (although it’s OK to say what you want), you don’t roll the die to determine an outcome, and the only limits on your description are those imposed by your friends on a social level − if they balk, figure it out together as players, with you (the player whose character is in the spotlight) having the final say. It’s up to you to incorporate positive and negative outcomes into the developing story with their help and input. With a little practice this can be very smooth, but when in doubt, let the guy in the spotlight decide.

  If you’re Resolving, just grab a die mid-scene when you’ve decided how it’s going to go. Make sure everybody sees it and continue the scene without missing a beat. Similarly, if you and your friends are making the call, somebody with a strong feeling can pick up a die and seek consensus exclusively through eye contact. It’s pretty fun to handle this stuff without breaking stride.

  Regardless of whether your friend chooses to Establish or Resolve his scene, you are involved. It’s up to everybody at the table to either craft a memorable, engaging scene (if he asked to Resolve) or collectively determine the tenor of the outcome (if he chose to Establish). Either way, work together and do the most interesting thing you can. If you can’t agree on a course of action, ask the player whose scene it is for help, and let him be the final arbiter of any log jam. Honestly, if you can’t agree on this stuff it probably speaks to a bigger problem, and it might be worth taking a break to talk about it.

  One last piece of advice – edit aggressively. Cut to the meat of a scene, don’t beat around the bush, and wrap it up when a decision has been made, a truth has been discovered, or a Rubicon has been crossed.

  Why Die Choice Matters

  Here’s the thing – the dice are both a countdown clock and a barometer of happiness and misery. There will be a bunch of dice in the central pile at the beginning of the game and none at the end. There are a finite number of positive and negative scenes, as defined by white and black dice, and players with lots of one or the other will get to make more interesting choices.

  That said, it’s generally a good idea to angle toward white or black, either by having negative outcomes and failing a lot, or by enjoying success and positive outcomes. During the Tilt and again during the Aftermath players will be rolling their own dice, totaling each color, and subtracting the high total from the low. Big numbers are good, low numbers, or zero, are bad.


  As a result, there is a tactical element to all of this that can be really fun. While you can create a scene about anything, you’re wasting everybody’s time unless the results really matter to you. Figure out what you want − in the fiction or dice − and Establish a scene where you can make getting it interesting and attractive to your friends. If you want that white die in Act Two, you need to Establish a scene where they will absolutely want you to succeed − because if you let them Establish, they will surely make you want to fail! Likewise, if you are asked to create a scene for somebody to Resolve, think about what they might want and give them an impossible choice to make. In Act One the die they choose will be given away − possibly to you − so make sure the outcome really matters.

  It's Not All about You, Trust Me

  The game’s action might drift toward the people with written Needs, but it isn’t their story, necessarily. See the movie Fargo for a great example of a story that isn’t really about the jackasses in the center of the storm, and see this game’s extended example of play for some good examples of Establishing scenes, in the third and seventh scenes of Act One.

  Why Color Scenes are Great

  Scenes that don’t go for the throat − monologues, narrated montages, character-driven moments that are revelatory and cool − are great. Every group will set its own tone and style concerning what constitutes a good conflict-free scene, as well as what defines positive and negative regarding the die awarded for the scene. One hard and fast rule, though − you always Establish your own. If you ask to Resolve, your friends should feel obligated to throw you a meaty conflict to chew on. Anything less would be weak sauce.

  Hey, You Just Killed Me

  In any session of Fiasco there is a good chance that people are going to perish. Your character is not immune from the carnage and may die. If this happens, it isn’t a big deal − Character death just means that your scenes will either be flashbacks or won’t include direct conflicts, you being dead and all. Your scenes should still be all about what your character wanted, and you can absolutely include other characters. It might be fun to use flashbacks to zero in on why he did what he did, using his untimely demise as a starting – rather than ending – point. The Aftermath should be about your character’s goals, ambitions, or reputation rather than their physical person. Playing a dead character is liberating and expands your possibilities in interesting ways, while limiting you in others.

  It’s probably polite not to murder any characters before Act Two, and a person with a dead character is a good candidate for playing the various secondary ne’er-do-wells who tend to crop up during the game as well.

  Act One

  In the first act, we should meet our guys and see the dynamics of their Relationships in action. Everything you do should foreshadow things to come. If we meet an overbearing father, he’s going to get a hell of a lot more overbearing later − and rebelled against. If we see a machete, it’s going to hack some stuff to pieces later in the game. Use this time to set things up and begin to knock them down.

  The Basics

  Take turns. When it is your turn, your character gets a scene.

  When only half the dice remain in the central pile, Act One ends.

  How It Works

  A few clues for latecomers: Several weeks ago... A pile of money... An English class... A house by the river... A romantic young girl...

  Le Narrateur, Bande à Part

  Take turns. When it is your turn, your character gets a scene.

  The player who grew up in the smallest town has the first scene. Rotate clockwise thereafter. See the rules for crafting scenes. For an example of starting Act One, see the replay.

  When only half the dice remain in the central pile, Act One ends.

  When everybody has had two scenes, the game is just about half over. If you’ve got a solid Setup and have pushed hard, by this point you’ll have a hell of a mess well underway.

  Things to Look For

  There’s no money, there’s no weed. It’s all been replaced by a pile of corpses.

  Tom, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

  Building across Act One

  By the end of Act One, people should be aggressively pursuing their goals and maybe even achieving them. People with Needs ought to be chasing them hard, or starting to satisfy them. Encourage both poignant and revelatory color scenes and down and dirty, hilarious conflicts.

  Keep an eye on those dice! It’s easy to forget to end Act One at the halfway point. If your group has a problem with this, randomly parcel out the dice into two piles of equal number and only touch one pile per Act.

  Playing Toward the Endgame

  In the Aftermath, dice are rolled and totaled as in the Tilt, but color has new meaning. On the Aftermath table, black results are generally physical in nature, while white results are generally social, mental, or emotional. So having a low black total means getting beaten up or crippled, while a low white result is probably emotional trauma or a ruined reputation. More importantly, having a high black or white total in the Aftermath means a good outcome for your character. Having a low number or zero − because you have no dice or your totals canceled out − means a terrible outcome for your character.

  So why does it matter what color of dice you accumulate during the game? If you want to be able to choose new Details during the Tilt, you’ll want more of one color than the other, so that you’ll get either a high black or white total. Likewise if you want a happy ending in the Aftermath you’ll want a lot of one color or the other. So if you have a specific destiny in mind for your character, angle for the right dice accordingly.

  See “Good Die, Bad Die” in the Optional Craziness section for another way to handle the Aftermath.

  When half the dice have been taken from the communal pile, Act One ends. The break between the acts is the time when something new and unstable is injected into the story. This is called...

  The Tilt

  The Basics

  At the end of Act One, roll the dice in front of you. Do some dice math.

  If you have the high number of either color, you will help add a pair of complications. Roll the unused dice in the central pile.

  Consult the Tilt table and choose two Elements.

  Reassemble the central die pile. Keep dice already assigned in Act One.

  Take a break; stretch and get a snack. Talk about where the game is heading.

  How It Works

  Up is down, black is white.

  Eddie Dane, Miller’s Crossing

  At the end of Act One, roll the dice in front of you. Do some dice math.

  As Act One wraps up, you’ll have some dice in front of you as the result of the preceding scenes. Roll them all, and add all the black dice together and all the white dice together, and then subtract the lower from the higher. For example, if you have one black and one white die, and roll 6 and 4 respectively, that’s 2 black. If you had one black and three white dice, and rolled totals of 1 and 18 respectively, that’s 17 white. If you have no dice, your total is zero. For an example of calculating your Tilt score, see the replay.

  If you have the highest number of either color, you will help add a pair of complications.

  The player with the highest white total and the player with the highest black total each get to choose Tilt Elements. The Tilt is a standard list of Details, just like Needs, Objects, and Locations − but this time, it represents disruptive, game-changing events, people, and impulses.

  Roll the unused dice in the central pile.

  You’ll want some random numbers. In a four-person game, you’ll have eight dice. Don’t mix these with the dice you’ve earned in Act One.

  Consult the Tilt table and choose two Elements.

  Use the results of the roll to pick Elements from the Tilt list, as during the Setup. Each high-scoring player chooses a general Category and a specific Element for the other guy’s Category. This is a good time to ask for input from the other players, who ma
y have really good ideas. It’s also a good time to privilege your own character’s big finish!

  Pick Tilt Elements you are excited about and will have the potential to take the game in an intriguing direction. You are injecting trouble, so don’t be shy. Write the new Details on their own index cards and put them in the center of the table. These are fair game for anybody and are not Relationship-specific. Chances are everyone will know right where they belong. There’s an example of creating Tilt Details in the replay.

  Reassemble the central die pile. Keep dice already assigned in Act One.

  Any dice used to choose Tilt Elements get tossed back into the central pile, which should be half empty. The other half of the game’s dice should have already been assigned to players during Act One.

  Take a break; stretch and get a snack. Talk about where the game is heading.

  Once you’ve got a pair of juicy Tilt Elements, discuss the events so far and what you’d like to see happen. Take a break and step away from the table, get a snack, and talk about the game. Check in with your friends, make sure everybody is having fun, and highlight cool things that have happened, and cool things that seem poised to happen. This break is actually really important!