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Steve Donohue
United States
Allen Park
Michigan
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I finally broke down and bought a copy of Fiasco, the long-time darling of the RPG Geek crowd. I have to say I wasn't that impressed.
There are plenty of reviews already out there on this thing so I'm sure you know the drill, but I'll repeat it for you quick. Players make up guys who know each other and have a few things they want. They talk for a while, the dice come out and everything goes downhill from there until a few people are dead, crippled or otherwise unable to keep the ones who aren't killed or crippled from taking their stuff.
To be honest, it sounds like just about every adventure I played in my first two years playing Basic Dungeons & Dragons. So I bought it thinking I could get back that old school feel. Well it didn't work out. Rather than bore you with details, I'm just going to give you some bullets.
Stuff I Didn't Like
* Way too much use of "relationship". If I wanted to have a "relationship" I wouldn't have ditched my girlfriend when she started using the "R-Word".
* It says "powerful" right on the back cover, but most of your guys are pretty normal.
* Could not find a GM section anywhere, it said we should just agree to do what everyone thought was best for the story. If we could agree, we wouldn't need a GM anyhow.
* Could not find the class or level table anywhere! Is this some kind of dodge to make me buy the Fiasco Companion so I can have the rest of the rules? It almost seems like they think these guys are like real people and won't have character sheets. What's up with that?
* With no classes or levels, I figured it had to be skill-based, but guess what? There are no stats, attributes or skills! Oh sure, sometimes your R-word will have an attribute, but those are words. This game has s disturbing lack of numbers.
* Everyone starts with 4 dice, which you roll like a die pool. Dice pools are cool, but they barely use this mechanic - you roll dice like three times in a whole game and one of those is before it even starts.
* Most of the time when you deal with the dice only the color matters. Speaking of colors, what's up with the whole "white dice lead to happy outcomans and black ones lead to bad ones" mechanic? Yeah, and it's just a coincidence that all the "colonists" in Puerto Rico are brown.
* There's no movement scale and no time scale. Some stuff even happens to your guy before the game starts. I've hated background checks ever since the recruiter found out about my criminal record.
* The game ends with a montage where again the numbers on the dice don't matter. Also, I hate montages - you can never really see what's happening on the screen.
Stuff I Did Like
* Bully Pulpit is a cool name for a game company
* It's short, only about 60 pages or so of rules.
* Morningstar is a cool name for a game designer but I think they just put his name on the cover so they could tack on a fantasy theme.
* It comes with 4 modules and the modules have plenty of tables.
* The rules always say "your guy" or "my guy" which is cool. I hate when people try to pretend their guy is something other than a guy. You know like "Teh Nord would never do that, he's an honorable person". Yea right, Karl. Your guy is after the gold same as mine.
* There's a good play sample.
* Dude is getting shot right on the cover.
* There's a good table of contents and a good index.
* There are cheat sheets to remind you of important stuff.
Conclusion
So I'm not sure this game is for everyone. Here are some things you'd have to like in order to find this game fun.
* having the dice shape the story but not really control it.
* Making your guys being part of the story and not *having* to meet in a tavern/saloon/cantina/bar again (unless your guy likes that sort of thing)
* playing a whole game in just a few hours even if you've never played it before and probably with no rules lookups.
* not enough rules to really argue about anything other than what's best for the story you're telling.
So yeah, if that sounds appealing you'll probably enjoy this.
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Hamish Cameron
New Zealand
Los Angeles
Unspecified
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*rimshot*
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