Fiasco
Fiasco was, as promised, a fiasco. As expected, the Tabletop Simulator was difficult to navigate, especially since I’m currently stuck using a trackpad. Otherwise the game went as many do, with a lot of confusion and chaos. It was hard to work off of the energy of the other players like you can in person. We compensated by talking as much as possible about our characters and the story itself. One of our group had a lot of trouble with connecting his voice to zoom, so for the last session we had the zoom chat pulled up and he communicated with us that way. Despite these struggles I believe that we were able to play

I’ve played Fiasco before in person and, despite the challenges that came with playing these past two weeks virtually, still really enjoy the game. There’s a lot of freedom in creating the characters, while still having enough of a structure and general direction that you’re not truly put on the spot for having to suddenly come up with a creative character backstory and motivation. I did struggle with immersing myself in the role of a mink farming grandmother. That had more to do with getting the components working than the game itself.

I feel that it ties into leadership by forcing each player to take an active role in making decisions concerning the story. Fiasco is, in my personal opinion, a fairly cooperative game. This means that there needs to be a balance of taking responsibility for the direction the story takes and then stepping back and listening to the others. There is also a lot of on the fly adapting that all the players need to be open to. A rigid mindset of how the game with play out can make it feel more like a script than a cooperative game. Being willing to hand over the reins can be difficult, but also makes the story better most of the time.