Hi, all-

Just wondering how other Fiasco games went at the show. Steve was cool enough to loan me a bonus kit so I was able to facilitate two games of Fiasco after I played in one as a refresher.

Playsets we used: London, Vegas, and Operation Zebra. The two hard-boiled games were great, just really fantastic; we had engaged players and a real appreciation for the specifics of each environment in those. The sub set was a little less satisfying in that it turned too-quickly into a CoC game, and the extreme claustrophobia of the setting seemed to stifle creativity a bit as far as framing went. But that group was also mostly players completely new to story games, so that considered, they really opened up after we went around a couple of times, one of them revealing he was a Nazi agent in a really great bit of Flashback, and seemed by the end to be having as much fun as everyone else had before.

I've found the most common difficulty with the game is the tendency to make the 'framing' sequence an extended narrative: "You're here, and doing this, and then so and so comes in, and he says 'What the Hell, and notices your gun, so you don't know what to do since the cops are outside..."; you see what I mean.

How did other games go? Steve, it looked like you were busy...

-Jim Crocker
Modern Myths, LLC
www.modern-myths.com

Hi Jim,

I'm really glad the kit helped you pull those games together!  I played in a game with the Touring Rock Band playset and facilitated another for five players who chose The Ice, the Antarctica playset from the book.  I heard lots of great feedback from other folks who played the Vegas and Los Angeles 1936 sets that we provided as convention specials.  There was one other game using Operation Zebra that, much like your experience, left folks unsatisfied. 

We were very excited about Zebra because it includes some really unusual stuff (flashbacks as Locations, a very constrained location, explicit horror elements).  I'm realizing now that while the playset would provide veteran Fiasco players with a fresh experience, it might not provide the right tone for new players.

Framing scenes can be challenging, especially for new players who are either intimidated by being on the spot or who run off with the narrative.  In the latter case, it can result in folks pre-playing the scene too much or just generally going gonzo with their descriptions.  All of those issues rely to a large degree on the other players helping out or reigning in the player framing the scene, as described in the rules. 

I found that when I was facilitating, I did a lot of prompting in the first act, asking the spotlight player framing a scene  "where is this taking place and who's there with your character?  What does your character want?"  I'd also suggest ideas for NPCs that others could play, and generally point them at conflicts that arose from a scene.  In the end I'd gesture toward the dice pool to whichever players were resolving the scene, suggesting it was time to make a decision.

Some people will get all of this quickly, and some will need such reminders throughout the game.