Fiasco is a game of collaborative story telling. Compared to other roleplaying games like D&D it is much lighter on rules. To me it feels more like a collection of improv skits that put together tell an intriguing story. For me this style of improv is one of the biggest challenges of the game. When I play D&D I typically have spent a lot of time creating the character before ever playing them. For Fiasco we only had a short amount of time to create a character and then roleplay as them immediately after.

Leadership is very important to the storytelling of Fiasco. As you create characters you first establish the relationship between you and the players next to you. Its important to pick a choice that both players will be happy with for the rest of the game. During a player’s turn you have the option to act as the ‘director’ and create whatever scene you prefer. Alternatively you can decide the outcome and rely of the rest of the group to figure out the details. Either way everyone playing has to keep in mind the goals of each character to stay consistent. It would be rude to force someone to act out of character just to better the situation for your own character.

While playing we first had to pick a setting. For our group we went with the suburbs. As we used the dice to create our characters I ended up with a cousin trying to get revenge on me and a best friend who runs a lemonade stand. The others at the table were a criminal rival lemonade saleswoman and her accomplice who my cousin was blackmailing. The rival lemonade stands formed the core plot of the game and most of the scenes felt tied to that. My cousin wanting revenge meanwhile was a slower second plot thread as she gathered information and allies. We ended at the end of act one having established all the plot points while still saving major events for act two.