Week three, we began playing the gm-less roleplay game Fiasco. For this game, you have no game board. All you need to play the game Fiasco is the main rulebook, some note cards, some dice, and an imagination. You and your friends (or anyone you decide to play with) will start the game with four six-sided black dice and four six-sided white dice. These dice determine the outcomes of a scene that you create. The goal of the game is to create a story that usually involves some sort of crime or dastardly deeds. With little guidance, the players must establish who they are, what they want, and how each of them is associated with each other. The game is split into two main acts, the tilt events, and the aftermath. By the end of a game of Fiasco, individuals gather eight fateful dice that determine whether they are victorious or if they go out in a burst of flames.
Our class played the game Fiasco over the course of two weeks. The first week we played it, we were tasked with attempting to finish the first act. I played in a group of four. At first, it was a struggle to get started. Due to there being few rules for how to start, we needed a bit of guidance. After choosing our setting, The Ice, we began to create our characters. My character was Pierro. He started off as a pilot who had crashed on Ross Island after running out of gas. He was bitter enemies with another character, George. On the other hand, he was indebted to another character, Edwardo, for saving him from the crash. We only made it through four scenes, but they were all quite amusing. Pierro was convinced to help Edwardo and his partner in crime to go save a penguin who had floated off on an iceberg. They help him fix his helicopter, and plan to find the penguin once they can get some gas into it. Little did Pierro know, they only wanted to save the penguin in order to smuggle it off the island. By the end of the class session, we were starting to get the feel of how the game worked.
The hardest part of the game was definitely getting started. Getting used to the mechanics was not easy. I am far more used to games with a firmer structure, so this was new. Even so, once we had our characters made, we all seemed to flow easily between each other. I believe we did a pretty good job, and we all had a bit of fun with it. I think I definitely needed to watch myself though, as I did find myself trying to guide people so that the story would make sense cohesively. Considering the lack of rules, it made it hard to know exactly what might happen. That was both thrilling and scary in a way. I think it opened up for a lot of laughs for our group. So far, I definitely think I like this game. Though, I think it would be more enjoyable if I played it with people, I know a bit better. For that reason, I would recommend this game to my friends Roai and Korben. We have all played roleplay games together before and have great chemistry when it comes to those types of games. I will certainly have to try it out with them sometimes. Especially Korben, he would love the chaos this game could foster.
As I implied before, I like games with more structure. The lack of rules made me feel a bit more anxious. Even so it did not ruin the experience for me, as I really do love the roleplay aspect of it. I am really excited to see how the story progresses next week.
When it came to leadership, I could see it lightly in each scenario. One could choose to set up the scene or give that power to the other players. For those taking on the role of creating the scene, they were taking on a leadership role. They would choose who and what was going on in a scene, like a director would. However, I also saw leadership in other ways. My group would usually vote for how a scene would end. Usually, when one person proposes a certain outcome (decided by giving the directing player a black or white die) the other voting players would agree. For myself, I often found myself leading in small ways, by guiding towards a more cohesive timeline for the story. At times, I felt bad for doing so, as I did not want to limit the other players’ creativity. Though I know this simply comes from my desire to create a storyline that can be followed. I do believe that this personal value of mine had an effect on how the game progressed. I also think it had an effect on how I played my character as well. Overall, it was a good time, and I definitely would like to play it again.