Free Hump Day - Fiasco Playset - Gangster London

It's been a while since I've talked about Fiasco, and it being my game of the year last year, I consider this to be a great travesty! So, to remedy my horrendous oversight, I'm going to take this Free Hump Day opportunity to highlight a free product that directly resulted in one of the most amazingly fun and funny nights of gaming I've ever had.

But first, a quick review of Fiasco basics!

2010 Hopefuls - Game of the Year - Fiasco

Reservoir Dogs is my favorite movie. I know it's not really a controversial pick, but it's important for the rest of my argument here. Anyway, a while ago I heard of a little game called The Shab-al-Hiri Roach from Bully Pulpit Games. I wanted it badly (still do, sadly), but before I got too close to buying it I saw the cover of the 2010's game of the year - Fiasco - over on the Geek.

Take a look at that cover for a second. From the simplicity in design to the font to the amazing overlapping artwork, it takes a minute to find the real Easter Egg of the game - that little broken heart of this faceless character. I've never seen a cover of an RPG perfectly describe every single game session for an RPG like Fiasco does.

Tons of people have raved about this game, but I'd like to take the hipster approach that we were very early adopters. Back in February we snagged an early interview with designer Jason Morningstar (read it here). Jason was gracious enough to give us some insight into his design process and what makes GM-less games tick.

That's the thing with Fiasco. We've tried GM-less games before, but none click into place as perfectly as Fiasco. It represents a genre where mindless, random acts of God strike characters with merciless efficiency. There is no better rule set to game a Tarantino movie. The real surprise behind Fiasco was just how adaptive the rules were to other genres. Sure you could do Pulp Fiction, but you could also do Coen Brothers, trashy 80's fantasy films, and zombie flicks. There's pretty much anything that you can't make awesome through using Fiasco.

Bully Pulpit didn't stop with an amazing rule book. Month after month we've been getting great new play sets (the scenarios necessary to give both flavor and order to a game of Fiasco) for free via pdf download. Rumors for a Fiasco Companion this year would be welcomed and thrilling to see how exactly Jason and the Bully Pulpit crew can expand on the game. Ultimately the decision for Game of the Year comes down to this - what gave me the most enjoyment this year? There's no competition. Every game of Fiasco has caused me to get a soar throat from laughing so hard and for so long that I was worried I'd lose my voice the next day. I've never played a game of Fiasco that ended up not being fun. What's better than that? Oh yeah, there's zero prep time for everyone in the group. That's kind of the perfect game.

Need some inspiration for your game of Fiasco? Look below - these are all amazing movies that can be easily replicated by the 2010 Game of the Year.

The Office is a Fiasco

Ok, seriously, I'm not procrastinating from NaNoWriMo, why would you even ask that?

Anyway, Andrea and I are re-watching all of the Office on Netflix Instant Watch, and like with everything I watch, read, and think about, I've been sitting here asking myself this question - how would I play The Office?

I turned to an old standby, Fiasco, to give me my answer. Of course you could pretty much Fiasco-isize any good story, but I'm thinking for a lighter game of Fiasco and to really emphasize the GM-less nature of The Office, it's a really great combination.

Sometimes I don't want to see all of our characters face truly horrific ends in my game of Fiasco (not that I know what that would be like - this is how all our games of Fiasco end), but it's tough when you're trying to emulate movies like Blood Simple or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. I know there are some lighter playsets put out by Bully Pulpit as their monthly playsets, but honestly, even in the traveling rockband playset would likely end in bloody smears for each of our characters.

So now I turn to The Office (U.S.). We love the Office so much, and clearly the characters are what make the show. Characters just happen to be what makes Fiasco so excellent as well. Now you couldn't play the characters from the show, but why not select one of the other Dunder Mifflin Paper Company? Michael Scott doesn't have to be a phenomenon for the company. Hey, why not base it in your very own crappy little post-industrial town (we've got just the place!)?

I don't have anything written up as far as a playset goes, but I can definitely imagine some key things I would put on there. First off, office supplies would be tons of the objects. Relationships would be really fun to write out and see the results of. Needs would be quite excellent as well as you just need to look to the show for all the character's motivations. Like I said, the characters make the show, and it'd be an easy transfer to the game to make it a success. The more I think about it, the more I want to write up a playset (maybe with the help of Andrea and Chuck!). If we do, we'll make sure to post it.

Gaming Hoopla - 8 Commandments for Running Your First Con RPG

This past weekend was Gaming Hoopla just outside of Janesville, WI (South Central WI 30 min south of Madison). Gaming Hoopla moved from Lake Geneva due to space restrictions. They apparently halved their facility cost while doubling space, a double win. (Triple win if you count moving to within ten minutes from my house). Gaming Hoopla is primarily a boardgame con. In fact, I was the first person to register ANY roleplaying events ever. I signed up to run Fiasco, Dread and Call of Cthulhu. Unfortunately, I had no takers for Dread on day 1, but I did get a small game of Fiasco in on the first day with Paul, our friend Dan Hauser and myself. It was a great game, but I get to play with these guys regularly and was looking forward to trying a different group and running a game for mostly strangers. Keep Reading to see how it went!

Collaborative, Not Competitve Storytelling.

I started off yesterday by explaining where I'm coming from on this, so I'm just going to say read yesterday's post and then come back here for the follow-up. It's ok, we'll wait.

Got it read? Good! Where yesterday put an emphasis on involving the players to make the GM's playing responsibilities lighter, today I'd like to think about how we can make the GM's planning responsibilities easier. One of the things I love about Fiasco is the fact that, since there's no GM, each player is equally responsible for thinking up fun and logical ways to set the scene. However, there is another indy game, this one that's GM-centric, that also leans on the players for setting the scene, but I gotta ask the question, why don't more games make the GM's job easier? Keep reading to see what I'm talking about.

What can we learn from Fiasco to make other games more fun?

I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes Fiasco so much fun. I want to spend the next two or three days looking at what we can do to pull out some of the fun elements of Fiasco to use for your more strategy-based, traditional RPG's. To make sure we're all on the same page, I'll explain the basic rules and structure of play here. Feel free to skip down a paragraph if you're familiar with the rules.

Fiasco is a game played over two acts. Each act is made up of a number of rounds twice the number of players - each player essentially gets to play out two scenes starring their character per act. There's no GM (a huge plus for a pick-up game), so the turns work quite differently for Fiasco. Each player goes around taking turns where they have to make a decision: do I get to set the scene and the situation for my character, or do I get to resolve the main conflict of the scene? Whatever he or she choose to do, the other players get to establish the other end. The goal of Fiasco isn't to win or even survive. The focus is on making the most painful and difficulty situations for yours and everyone else's characters. Sure your character has a goal based on a need, object, or location, but it really doesn't matter whether or not (most likely not) your character meets the goal. So what can we take from Fiasco to make much more strategic, GM-centered games like D&D or Savage Worlds? Read on!

You've never had so much fun with things going so very wrong - FNG 5/14/10

We played Fiasco for the second time Friday night. Our first time was a test run where we used the "Main Street" playset. It was extremely fun - the most fun role playing I'd ever had - and not having a GM was incredibly freeing. If you're interested in reading more about the premise and inspirations for Fiasco, go check out our interview with Jason Morningstar, the designer.

So this past Friday for game night, we did two things: we brought our first GM-less game to a group that predominatly plays D&D 4e, Savage Worlds, and other highly-tactical games, and we split the group up into two games. Because the little sister and the Gamer Wife were able to come, our numbers swelled to eight players. This is far too large for any normal game of Fiasco, so we split into two groups of four. Four is probably the sweet spot for Fiasco, but three to five is the recommended size. I really like four personally because it creates a good depth of plot while giving you enough players to play NPC's. Keep reading to find out why you have to play Fiasco.

Guess what came in the mail today!

As I spent all day anxiously awaiting the fateful email from Amazon that my comic book order I made Satuday night would inevitably be cancelled, I was very excited to see a nondescript packaging waiting for me at my front door. I had no idea what it would be as, apparently, my working memory is pretty bad. It was too small to hold the giant three hardcovers I ordered (and will likely never get) from Amazon, not to mention it was way too quick for the free shipping option I selected. Alright, so that's out of the picture, what could it possibly be?

I recently (although not recently enough that I remembered making it!) made an order on Indie Press Revolution for a couple of small-press RPG's. Originally it was to pick up the PDF for Fiasco as A.) I wanted the game pretty badly and B.) I had to prepare for my interview with Jason Morningstar, designer of the game. I knew it would be one of those neat indie games you'd probably be hearing about quite a bit on places like rpg.net as an indie darling.

For more information on Fiasco, you really should give my little interview a click and a read. Fiasco, as it turns out, is one of those books that reads so much better in deadtree version than it does pdf format. Don't get me wrong, the pdf will get you were you need to go, but the book is a really high quality and the layout is very well done for the two-page format. I love the size of these indie rpg's so much. Although I claim to love text book-sized rulebooks, there's definitely a certain appeal to the ultra-portable indie game.

The other game I picked up, Timestream was bought on a lark since it was cheap and involved time travel. I don't usually do blind buys, but the appeal of a concise time-travel game was just too strong. The game, by Nathan Paoletta, is a simple system that's highlighted by its rules specifically dealing with time travel. To be honest I haven't read the 67 page rulebook yet this afternoon, but I really like what I see. This is from the back of the book:

"Some can journey through the stream of time. They are the Travelers. Some can control the flow of time. They are the Manipulators. Some are forced to wade the tides of time. They are the Thralls. All have great power. And great weakness."

I think reading that on IPR's page for it is what really grabbed me. There's a very strong sense of theme here. I'm really looking forward to giving it a read and writing up a full review of it here, so stay tuned for that. The other thing that really makes me happy is that it comes spiral bound from the get-go. Check out the picture to the right here. This is the advantage of spiral-binding your game books. You can just lay them out on the table to a rule and keep going. I've found that this kind of thing is almost essential in miniature wargaming, but it still can be useful for RPG's as well.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am a nerdy nerd who loves getting nerdy things in the mail.

10 Questions with Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games

I'd like to introduce our inaugural edition of what I hope to be an on-going series titled "10 Questions" where the title says it all. We approach game designers in the field with 10 questions about their company, gaming experiences, and most importantly a new or classic product that we can't stop talking about here at The Hopeless Gamer offices (there are no offices).

This time we interviewed Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games about his new game, Fiasco which was just released last month. Jason was gracious enough to take some time out of his busy RPG designing schedule to answer 10 questions for us, and we're eternally grateful! As you can see by the graphic here, the tagline for Fiasco is "A Game Of Powerful Ambition & Poor Impulse Control." The game itself is GM-less, giving each player an equal shot of impacting the story. Here's the "elevator pitch" found at the beginning of the book which will do it much more justice than I could.

"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. You’ll play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It won’t 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." Fiasco, pg. 8

On with the questions!