Mann-ing Up!

The life and times of Hida Mann, RPGG's Crabbiest resident.

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Posted by Jaime Lawrence

RPGG

12 Feb 2011

Jaime Lawrence

(Hida Mann)

Australia
Sydney
New South Wales

See Below.

Evil Bob: Lawful good since 2038!

See, the titles can be worse than you thought.

Strange doings occurred here last night and I am forced to consider new and frightening possibilities.

Is it possible that Fiasco isn't amazing? Personally, I can't see it, but one of my regular players unleashd a barrage of criticisms on it last night and we clearly had irreconcilable differences of opinion about the game, which is bad for a game that I'd pretty much like to play any time we play games.

He feels the game is arbitrary. Because of the dynamic whereby pre-tilt, you give dice away and take what you're given, you have little control over your destiny and even if every scene ends well for you, you can end up dead.

I feel that this is the whole damn point of the game. No matter how good or bad you are, life can take a dump on you and there's nothing you can do about it. I love the random outcomes and quirks of fate that Fiasco creates as well as the challenges of imagination that it forces on you by flipping your destiny on its head.

He feels that the dice mean nothing and that it's a poor choice to have them move from being 'good' and 'bad' to 'mental' and 'physical' during the aftermath.

I feel that he's totally right about the dice being unimportant in and of themselves, something which I enjoy - narrative control is in my hands. The switch doesn't bother me because we already know things are supposed to end badly for most or all participants.

He feels reluctant to play, even when the rest of us are champing at the bit.

I feel disappointed that my friend isn't getting the game.

So in the end, we decided to house rule the game so that there was no change after the tilt and instead when you establish, you give away the die you're given, when you resolve, you keep it. It wasn't great - in fact, he didn't choose to establish once during the night. At the game's conclusion however, no-one got out smelling like roses, so I suppose it's ok. I just feel a bit dirty.

In the final analysis, I fully support my friend having different opinions to me, but they're so alien and foreign to my idea of fun that I'm feeling like I just shouldn't try to bring the game out again (Yes, I know you're reading this and no, it isn't a guilt trip, so don't feel that way!).

So how about it, Geekites? Is Fiasco just a fad for the fortune-favoured, or a failure yet to be found out? I know which camp I'm in, give me opinions!

Fiasco

8 Comments

Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:18 am

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フィル

(sbszine)

Australia
Newtown
NSW

Fiasco is a bit unusual for an RPG, in that you're not trying to keep your character alive and develop him or her further. Instead, you're trying to tell a good story involving all of the characters, and it might be best for the story if your guy gets hosed. The point of the dice (I think) is to give you something to start with, then to challenge you to adapt the story to twists of fate. It can seem like there's almost no game there, but if you play some other GM-less games you can really see how Fiasco is a carefully designed solution to their lack of approachability.

The tone also varies from group to group and playset to playset. The current PbF game I'm in is played reasonably straight and serious, whereas the face-to-face games I've played have tended to the comical. Maybe your friend would enjoy it more with a more serious tone?

Posted Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:22 am
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The Man Unmasked

(dumwytgi)

United States
Jackson
MS

If he feels he has no control over the outcome, remind him he can still game the system and boost his odds of survival by choosing dice in act ii that benefit him in the aftermath more than the scene. Or remind him that it is called Fiasco, not Happily Ever After, and that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and as Robert Burns observed that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

If he still doesn't agree, hide his dog in your basement as a prank and tell him it ran away. What's the worst that could happen? It isn't like it will eat the half gallon of paint and die, leaving you scrambling to come up with six thousand dollars to replace his prized purebreed with your only hope being an illegal cock fight, and a mobster willing to front you the stakes if you kill his wife. But don't worry. That's only if you lose. Big Tony swears this bet is a sure thing, and that no one has ever rigged a cock fight before.

Edited Sat Feb 12, 2011 11:11 am
Posted Sat Feb 12, 2011 11:03 am
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Korvettenkapitän Jasper Aurelius van der Meer

(jaspermeer)

United States
Atlanta
Georgia

In Fiasco, your mate should play character types he really doesn't like. Fiasco characters can be like voodoo dolls...
devil

Posted Sat Feb 12, 2011 1:09 pm
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Brian Cooksey

(Vaklam)

United States
Nashville
Tennessee

sbszine wrote:

My thoughts, too. Is he trying to win Fiasco? If that's not his goal, maybe he just doesn't like the sense of being cast adrift in the currents of the story.

When I play Fiasco I look at the big picture rather than what I do in most other games which is to look at things from my character's perspective first and foremost. Someone once said that the key to good fiction is to put someone in a charged situation and then have them say yes to everything a rational person would say no to. That's pretty much perfect for Fiasco but it doesn't work in other kinds of games where the character is more of a representation of the player.

I agree with you about the arbitrary nature of the dice and I think that's a strength of the game. I love being presented with a limited set of options and then trying to figure out what the hell to do with them. The randomness of character/relationship generation along with the random factors of the tilt and the outcome are like trying to write a poem with a restrictive form. "OK, how do I convey the idea of autumn in seventeen lines with this rhyme structure?"

I like the challenge.

Posted Sat Feb 12, 2011 1:15 pm
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Anne Freitas

(riska)

United States
San Antonio
Texas

No one expects the Anne-ish Inquisition!!

Fiasco is supposed to be an amusement park ride with the option of having toothless carnies operating the equipment and with lower safety standards. A collaborative Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot experience. What's not to love unless you're a soulless, humorless control freak?

Mileage may vary depending on the players, and if one person isn't into it, it could spoil the experience a bit.

I think the game has a lot of reusability, but every game won't be an amazing experience, especially if several gamers in the group lose their muse in the middle of the game. But overall, I still think it's great.

Posted Sun Feb 13, 2011 6:05 am
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Ryan Hendricks

(UncleLothar)

United States
San Antonio
Texas

I love the game, but I've seen a lot of players go into it playing like a normal RPG; they think that their character needs to stay alive and being the awesomest character ever. The key is to remind the players that while they will be the voice/actor for one character, their role in the game is more as a director. They should be focused on building the story, not their character, by building tension with hopeless cases, strange romances, etc. - even if it means that their character takes some bad falls along the way.

Posted Sun Feb 13, 2011 5:18 pm
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Benjamin Davis

(Jlerpy)

Australia
Summer Hill
NSW

As the player in question:

No, I'm not trying to win.
No, I'm not bothered about characters being buffetted by the winds of fate.

What I'm bothered by is that the dice don't achieve that end in a satisfying way.

What I mean by this is twofold
1) That whether you have a "good" or "bad" outcome feels only tenuously related to the character's eventual fate, but it's that tenuous connection that is so niggling. Good and bad don't map to mental and physical (nor vice versa).
Fate taking a dump on you for the whole game means you'll probably come out well in the end and that's dramatically fairly satisfying.
What bothers me is that the reverse is in no way true. Every scene can come out well for you and you'll stand the same chance of getting off well.
The time you have to worry is when things are going your way half the time. Which has no dramatic weight to it.

2) The pre-tilt dice mean nothing whatsoever.
You give them away, so it's an entirely metagame element. They mean precisely zip.

If one were angling to "win", this would be where you'd push: always choosing to resolve, always choosing bad outcomes in the first half, then switching to good in the second, to maximise your odds of a good result in the wrap-up.
Or, you could do exactly the opposite and achieve pretty much the exact same result, with the "mental" and "physical" descriptors switched. This is as close to any kind of agency as you can really achieve and it's not much of one.
If you're aiming for a lousy ending, you still don't really have any control over that, but you have the cardboard illusion of choice that means little in an ultimate sense and nothing in a short-term one.

I remember you saying that the tilt was intended to encourage establishment early on, resolution later, but I just don't think it holds. Either way, you're giving away what you get early on, keeping it later, so it just doesn't matter.

If anything, I'd be happier for that dynamic to reverse, with the caveat that you have to connect the characters involved in the exchange. That would massively allay my discomfort at the arbitrary nature of the dice from nowhere and encourage a "and THIS is how these events are connected to THOSE events" dynamic so prevalent in the source films.

As for that house-rule discussed: it was vastly different in its original concepttion. It seems to have warped horribly since then.
Maybe my memory is playing tricks and the elegant alternative I remember remembering never was, but I remember my figment being better thought out.

I'm glad we at least tried it, because it verifies that this is not the device I imagined.

Posted Tue Feb 15, 2011 8:16 am
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Ryan Hendricks

(UncleLothar)

United States
San Antonio
Texas

Jlerpy wrote:

What I'm bothered by is that the dice don't achieve that end in a satisfying way.

What I mean by this is twofold
1) That whether you have a "good" or "bad" outcome feels only tenuously related to the character's eventual fate, but it's that tenuous connection that is so niggling. Good and bad don't map to mental and physical (nor vice versa).
Fate taking a dump on you for the whole game means you'll probably come out well in the end and that's dramatically fairly satisfying.
What bothers me is that the reverse is in no way true. Every scene can come out well for you and you'll stand the same chance of getting off well.
The time you have to worry is when things are going your way half the time. Which has no dramatic weight to it.

2) The pre-tilt dice mean nothing whatsoever.
You give them away, so it's an entirely metagame element. They mean precisely zip.

1) I'll agree that the switch from good/bad to mental/physical is weird, but the results have always been great for my group.

On the matter of game conditions not having an exact effect on the endgame is intentional. That is how these stories often go, the person who has everything falls and falls hard. The small background character thug who has no reason for things to go right gets everything at the end of our story. I like it that way.

Also - do not underestimate the fickle nature of the dice. It is very easy for someone who has equal black and white dice to roll something fantastic for their character or vice versa. That is another element that I love, even at the 11th hour, I have no idea what is going to happen to my character.

2) Sure the pre-tilt dice have meaning, they are affecting scenes which will affect how the players write the story.

I do have to agree that giving away the dice is an odd mechanic that I am tempted to drop from my games. Perhaps it was added as a way for characters to have an unequal amount of dice to create a "main" character of the group.

In conclusion: Don't worry so much about the dice. It's all about writing and acting out an improv story, together as a group of friends. If I were hosting, I would even allow some dice to be fudged a little if all players agreed it was best for the story.

Posted Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:48 pm
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