Tag Archives: Fiasco

GOTW Reflection #3: Fiasco Week 2

Week four, our class continued playing the gm-less roleplay game Fiasco. For game mechanics, please refer to my previous post. This week, my group finished the first act, weaseled our way through the tilt, soared through act 2, and ended with a blast of an aftermath. The tilt is the turning point of the story, where everything starts to go awry. It is probably here that I should note that one of our players was unfortunately unable to make it to this session. Our team collectively decided that their character had been murdered by Edwardo, who proceeded to gain amnesia about his crimes and build a snowman to replace him. During the tilt, secrets were spilt, and Penny the penguin was saved from the iceberg. During act 2, the three remaining characters (Pierro, George, and Edwardo), tried to figure out what happened to the other player’s character. At the same time, it was revealed that George had stolen Pierro’s “Top Pilot” trophy on the day Pierro graduated from flight school. Not only that, but it was revealed that George had a long lost twin! Slowly making our way through Act 2, we try to put together the pieces to what happened to the absent player’s character. Making our way through several more scenes, we each collect more black and white dice that would end up deciding our fate. Going into the aftermath, I had largely accumulated white dice, having only received one black dice throughout the duration of the game. In the aftermath you roll your small pile of dice to determine what outcome your character faces. I ended up scoring pretty high on my white dice with an 11. Sounds pretty good. However, that score really only left Pierro with a neutral ending. This ended up being fairly good compared to the absent player and Edwardo however. The snowman spontaneously burst into flames, while Edwardo tragically died in a helicopter crash after successfully smuggling the penguins off Ross island. Pierro revealed himself to actually be George’s long lost brother, out to get revenge after George stole his idol’s (the real Pierro) trophy. In the end, the two brothers reconcile and live happily ever after.

I believe I struggled less during this week’s game session. I think this is because we already had gotten comfortable with the game in the last session and had a firmer understanding of the mechanics. I’d say the hardest part was wrapping it up in a way everyone found enjoyable. It was hard to predict how the other two players wanted things to pan out, and with one player absent there were some loose ends. For that reason I felt a little bad for Edwardo’s character, who was more firmly connected to the missing player’s character. As I said last week, I would play this game with my friends Roai and Korben. It just seems like a game they would enjoy. Plus, I feel like the flow would be better with people I know and have roleplayed with before.

When it came to leadership, I mostly saw it in how we wrapped up the scenes. We each started taking a firmer role in how we wanted each scene for our character to go. However, there was also an openness to negotiate which was very nice. At the end though, I feel like we all individually got to lead and determine the outcome for our characters, which was nice. I like this game. I would play it again.

GOTW Reflection #3: Fiasco Week 1

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.

GOTW Week 3: Fiasco Reflection

This week we started playing Fiasco. I really enjoyed this game, even though it was a bit confusing at first. The most confusing part for me was setting up the game. I think this was because although the video and book tried to explain it well, the general categories being their own dice and each detail within those categories being another was hard to understand. Once we were set up however, I thought starting the scenes was the hardest part. This was difficult for me mainly because it required me to both think on the spot and instruct other people what to do without knowing if they were comfortable in the scene; we did tend to just place ourselves in the scene and either ask if people wanted to join us or clarify beforehand that this scene was something that needed to happen. I also think ending the scenes is a bit difficult, just because there may have been a certain way you wanted the scene to go but upon receiving the dice decision you would have to pivot and make something completely new up.

Although, I do think the setup of the scenes is how the game relates to leadership. Not only does it require you to make on the spot decisions, but you need to direct others on what to do at the beginning of the scene. I also think the entire game is a good indication of how leadership needs to be collaborative; if only one person was telling everyone else how to play the game it would continue to go in circles and the plot wouldn’t go anywhere. We also had a lot of input during the scenes by people both in and out of the scenes. For example, we were doing a flashback scene and realized the outcome wouldn’t have matched up with what we had previously acted out, so we each shared how we would direct the scene to account for the timeline. Likewise, the decision that needed to be made after the black or white dice was chosen also could relate to leadership. Many times when you’re in leadership positions something might not go exactly as you had planned and you need to change what you’re doing quickly and make up something completely different.

As previously mentioned, I really enjoyed this game, even though I was quite nervous at first. I’ve never played any roleplaying games before, so I was anxious about what would happen. I think the first thing that eased my nerves was the paper we filled out for what we did or didn’t want to happen. It made me feel much better that no one was going to do something I wouldn’t be comfortable within the game and that we were all on the same page. I think what I liked most about the game was that our group focused much more on having fun than anything else. Our game so far has taken place in a penguin colony in Antarctica which I think helped to set a moderately unserious tone in the game, as I know the gameplay could turn very serious quickly, and heard it doing so in other groups around us. For example, I think the most serious thing that happened during our entire game was that one of our favorite penguins started floating away into the sea. I also liked that the connections you have with people were predetermined and you didn’t have to try to make something up. One of my connections is that my character is a smuggler with another character, and being in a penguin colony kind of helped to determine what was going to happen with that. Another connection I have is the soul connection with someone who has a crashed helicopter, so it was pretty simple to figure out that my character was somehow going to rescue theirs from the helicopter. Overall I’ve really enjoyed where the game has gone so far and can’t wait to continue next week!

Fiasco Part 2: A Reflection

Fiasco Week Two was exciting. I felt like the whole group was more comfortable with the idea of a role-playing game. We discussed the concepts of role-playing versus roll-playing. I thought this brought up some very intriguing points for us to discuss as a class. I saw a little bit of both concepts within our group during the first week whereas this week we leaned more on the role-playing side of things.

Our act two ended up really interesting, each turn took a new turn because of the twist that added a lot of interest. It was unexpected and the outcome was completely opposite of what I thought it would be based purely on the week before. One person from our group ended up having their character killed off. There was honestly a lot more plot and story within Act Two than we dared to add during act one of the first week.

We also discussed the video about living every day like it was day one. This felt reminiscent of how orientation was this summer for me. I was an orientation leader and we had 18 sessions this summer. One thing we really focused on was bringing ourselves into the role as if it was day one. It may not have been our first day but it was someone’s first day and first impression on campus.

I thought about the concepts of gratitude and positivity as well. This really relates to attitude and outlook on life. Personally, I believe these are all really big concepts to grasp but can truly change your life if you think about them and live with them every day. We brought this into how role-playing games give you an option to approach situations with a sense of a new day atmosphere. We talked about how role-playing games give people time and space for understanding different situations. I felt like this topic of new-day attitude was honestly really important yet not talked about frequently in other contexts of my everyday life. Therefore, I am grateful we took the time to discuss this topic as well as how it related to the choices we make during role-playing games.

Game of the Week Reflection: Fiasco Part 2

The second part of Fiasco changes the game completely, and for the better. The design of the game was created with the intent of creating scenarios for the participants to react to and add to their playthrough.  Last week we started our stories as a group and acted out scenes to incorporate into our unique rehearsal.  Instead of repeating that, this week was all about performing the “Tilt”.  The Tilt is when the players use their dice, just like in the beginning, to select new components for the story.  Following that is Act Two, which is the same steps and turns as Act One but you incorporate your twists and new components.  Once that was finished you move on to the last and final step which is the Aftermath.  This is where each player counts their dice to determine if the character they played had a good or bad ending one at a time. 

The hardest part this week was determining how these new twists and alterations would be added to our story.  It was confusing already on how to continue our production with the “script” we’ve followed so far.  Adding more elements that drastically change it made it difficult and not easily coordinated to keep the narrative on the right path without getting overly ridiculous. However, the play session overall went very smoothly.  Since I’m not the only one twisting the story, my group members had pretty creative ways of having fun with it.  That means that friends specifically would be the best people to play this with considering there isn’t usually any filter that allows for more diverse gameplay.  I liked having multiple people being able to alter our playthrough how they wanted because building off their thoughts and ideas is what makes this game enjoyable.  That being said, I wasn’t a huge fan of how the aftermath was designed.  I personally feel the dice count determining the outcome of your character was lazy and rushed.  Honestly, I don’t know how I would fix it nor do I have a better option I just didn’t like that mechanic and felt that they could have improved on it a little bit more. 

Again, overall the session went very well and I enjoyed being taken down the path of our group’s ending and conclusion.  The way this part of the game ties with leadership is about the same way as the first part.  That is, being the leader in controlling the flow of the story and producing ideas for your group members to build off of.  However, this week had a slight tilt, dealing with the tilt itself and how to mitigate your decisions based on what else you needed to incorporate could also be part of it.  Being a leader means expecting the unexpected and solving problems like that without letting the setbacks get in the way of the flow.  Fiasco strengthens this side of being a leader and assists in the overall connection between the game and the players.

Fiasco Part 1: A Reflection

Week one of Fiasco was interesting indeed! This is a role-playing game with not a lot of rules that you have to follow. It is pretty flexible and allows you to kind of structure the plot of the game however you want. I felt like our game went slow and there was not a whole lot of development. However, we also had tension within the pace of the game as the time went by pretty fast. I would contribute to us having fun as the phrase “time flies when you are having fun” really shows. The toughest part for me was that people created other names for their characters. This was an additional challenge as I was just learning everyone’s real names.

The last time I played a role-playing game was during the Pandemic. I attempted to play Dungeons and Dragons with my older brothers and some of their college friends; however, we were also playing virtually, I believe over Discord. This made the experience less enjoyable for me because it felt like I was playing mostly with people I did not know and I was physically separated from the group play. This distancing was difficult for me; therefore, Fiasco has been such a wonderful and improved experience so far.

We started playing Boomtown and got through the twist. We were not able to start Act 2 yet but were able to start planning. I think people had a lot of good ideas for the plot and storyline of the game. I felt like I was not able to get my ideas into action as much. Maybe I am a little too willing to let others control the scene. By the end of the story, I felt like I was going to be pinned for the “murder” my “cousin” and I was trying to get away with (this is in the specific context of our characters and character details).

I noticed how I was trying to be more sneaky and menacing in the game than I am in real life. I am a rule follower in real life, so the idea of even trying to pin a big event on someone else or just trying to divert attention from myself was more difficult. I also noticed that I laugh in different situations when I do not always know what emotional reaction I should have in that situation. Therefore, it became difficult to keep a straight face and serious demeanor during the story. This made it difficult to stay in character and achieve my desired outcome in certain events.

So far I have seen leadership come out with the cooperation of the group in creating the story and deciding what happens. I have also seen how some individuals have leadership qualities that take charge of the events that occur. I felt like my calm and patient approach to leading fell to the wayside and was not as effective in this fast-paced context with a limited amount of time to make things happen. This also came out when people decided if they would set the scene or if they would resolve the situation. This choice kind of helped shows how we all would approach different situations as leaders.

Overall, I am liking Fiasco so far. I am going to recommend this game to my brothers but more specifically the one in college who enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons. I think he would have a fun time playing this game with some of his friends. I also think the role-playing game is something that people should experience or give a second chance to and experience again because it does highlight a lot about one’s personality and how they approach life as well as give individuals a chance to explore different scenarios they might not typically encounter.

Game of the Week Reflection: Fiasco Part 1

Fiasco is an all-around and very imaginative role-playing board game that is, basically, a fiasco.  This was my first experience with a role-playing game and it was actually pretty fun considering it seemed nerdy at times.  Being able to have almost complete freedom in the path you take your story is refreshing especially since most board games are fenced off with incoherent rules.  Each play session was unique and the one I participated in was no different.  I liked the wild west theme I took part in and I enjoyed the enthusiasm of my “teammates” throughout my playthrough.  I love being able to do improv because I suck at it which makes it all the more funnier.  However, I wasn’t a fan of the dice, maybe because we didn’t really use it right but creating your character and the relationships, etc. in the beginning was hectic.  It made it pretty confusing to keep track of who was who and how I know them or how I’m related to them.  

That was pretty much the hardest part besides making sure in the back of your mind that you also had an object and a location and whatever else to guide your story.  My personal values surfaced in how I perceived the environment.  I gave my character courage and sustainability while also being manipulative.  That’s what I like about Fiasco, you can have the freedom to be and do whatever you want and the people around you have to play off of it and keep the story smooth.  I can’t tell you how much fun I had in the creativity department for what I was going to do next and how I was going to screw over my outlaw friend at the gold creek.  

Being that leader and controlling the direction of the simulation is what made me feel powerful.  Everyone was their own leader in a sense because they had the ability to throw everyone else off their game.  They were on the balcony looking over us on the ground being the leader and forcing our hands on what we do next.  Playing with 4 or more people is what is going to make this a blast so bring your friends and family and your creative art majors and see where this role-playing fiasco takes you. 

Game of the Week Blog Reflection 5: Fiasco Week 2

In class we played Fiasco two weeks in a row. For the second week we played from the Tilt to the Aftermath. The hardest part for me was that I had never played a role-playing game before. I tend to be more shy around people I don’t know and it was hard for me to start scenes at first when I was really nervous. I purposely made my character outgoing because I felt I could hide behind that. I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Aside from that my group chose not to involve a lot of the more risker behaviors that could happen in Fiasco. I wouldn’t have minded to include some of those things because I know it’s just a game and I wouldn’t actually be a murderer or hard core drug addict in real life. 

In our game I had a competing lemonade stand to another player. For most of the game it seemed to revolve around the two of us. Though we made sure all characters interacted with each other and had a part. At the end I rolled the highest number and had the most positive outcome where I married an EMT and got away from my failing lemonade which was my goal. My goal was to get away from something so I got away from my lemonade. 

In fiasco I noticed it is important to have a vision for your character or really all of the characters. I think this applies to leadership because it is important for a leader to have a vision and be able to share their vision with their team. 

I think some of my guy friends who already play role-playing games would like to play this game. I am going to suggest they try it and may even join them to see if I enjoy the game more in a comfortable setting for myself. 

Overall, I do not think role-playing games are for me. I did not like the aspect of role playing in this game and the lack of rules. I am definitely more into strategic games. I did share some laughs with my group, but this is not really the game for me

Game of the Week Blog Reflection (For Class on 2/24/2022): Fiasco Week 2

Recently, our class got together to finish our existing sessions of the Fiasco Role Playing Game that we had started the week prior. The Fiasco RPG System is designed with the intent of creating chaos for the players to react to and incorporate into their stories. In this session, rather than creating characters once again, we began by performing our “Tilt” The Tilt involves using the dice that have yet to handed out to other players in order to select new Elements to add to the story, using the similar method of defining a category before establishing the more specific meaning behind that Element. Once these twists have been added, we then moved on to Act Two, where we continued to tell our characters’ stories by acting out scenes while including the twists that had been determined in the Tilt. Once we had given out all of our dice, we then moved onto the Aftermath, where we each used our dice to determine how well our character’s story ended and told these stories one die at a time. 

For this second half of our Fiasco session, I personally think the most difficult aspect was trying to incorporate the Elements that we discovered in our Tilt into our existing story. Our Tilt involved two Elements, a stranger arriving to settle a score and someone developing a conscience. Before we could even begin to act out our scenes, we tried to think about ways that we could include those elements moving forward, such as by having our stranger be connected to more than one of our players, and by allowing one of existing characters to gain a conscience and using that to prompt a character arc. While I believe we were able to resolve our tilts very well, it was still likely the most difficult part of this session, and attempting to involve those elements without planning ahead like we had likely would have resulted in the whole story falling apart. 

As for the session itself, it was decided that our rival lemonade salesmen would be presented with a new issue: an employee from the company that made their lemonade stands arriving to reclaim a stand that was not paid for (A stranger arriving to settle a score), which introduced a new issue for both the innocent party and the guilty party. However, while this was being settled the “wizard” from the previous session gained a conscience and attempted to reform themselves into a businessman. Once all of the other plot points had progressed however, the estranged relatives finally settled their scores as one of them attempted to murder the other, and the sound of sirens gathered the remaining characters. The Aftermath then set the background for these characters futures, with the attempted murder landing one relative in jail while the other made a full recovery, one of the lemonade salesman running away with a EMT adn the other losing the spark that made them enjoy the business, and the “wizard” turned businessman reverting back to their “wizardly” ways. 

However, what more is there to learn from Fiasco that we haven’t learned already. Personally, I think the potential difficulty of incorporating the Tilt might contain an insight into leadership as a whole, as was how we were able to mitigate the difficulty of it. A leader needs to be able to account for unexpected setbacks as they attempt to lead their team to their goal, and to plan for a way to get around those setbacks and account for them. Similarly, our group needed to be able to plan how to include our Tilt Elements in our story, even though we didn’t know what they would be until our Tilt happened. As such, I personally think that our planning session not only allowed us to mitigate the harm the Tilt could cause to our story, but was also an example of how you might be able to use planning to be a more effective leader when faced with the unexpected.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection (For Class on 2/17/2022): Fiasco Week 1

Not long ago, our class got together to play sessions of the Fiasco Role Playing Game over a course of two weeks. Fiasco is an RPG System designed with the intent of creating chaos and allowing players to create the most disastrous situations they can. In this game, players use the color coded dice they have been given to help create their characters and determine the outcomes of scenes that they perform, all so that they can work together to create an interesting story where everything falls apart around their characters. It is worth noting that these dice rolls do not determine what the characters will be, but rather aspects of the character, such as their relationships with other characters (each player is actually required to establish at least one relationship with another character), what their goals are, and perhaps even key aspects of the world that all of the players can interact with, like important objects and locations. The players can then use all of these aspects to act out two scenes each in Act 1, developing their characters and creating conflict between their characters. Players can either establish a scene and act it out themselves, waiting for another player to give them either a positive or negative die to determine how it ends, or choose a positive or negative outcome and allow the other players to establish a scene for them to finish. For my personal group, this was the extent of our first session of Fiasco, as we ran out of time just as we finished our Act 1. 

As for our session itself, once we had established our characters and our setting, a commercial district in the middle of a suburban town, it was time for us to start acting out our scenes. Personally, I believe that this was the most difficult part of the game for our group, at least initially. With nothing to go off of besides our characters goals and relationships. With that in mind, I tried my best to establish our first scene based upon my character, Eddy McFarlain, and his rival’s (another player) competing lemonade stands, and tried to use that pre-established conflict to help begin our story. As we continued to create scenes and get a feel for our characters, this process became much easier, leading to scenes where two estranged relatives fight with each other as passive aggressively as they possibly could, and a rival lemonade stand employs a “wizard” to sabotage their competition by graffitiing their cart. However, the initial starting point was very noticeably slower to start than any other scene that followed it. 

While the beginning of our session may have been the most difficult part of our session, I believe that this also shows just how Fiasco might relate to leadership as a whole. In our game of Fiasco, we had difficulty beginning our scenes because we weren’t sure where our story was going at that point. Personally, I believe that this could represent the vision that a leader needs of their goal in order to successfully lead their team. If the leader is unsure of what their own goals are, they will likely have a very hard time actually guiding their team towards a common goal. During the course of their project, the goal might become clearer, and therefore easier for the leader to guide their team toward. However, it would be preferable for the leader to know exactly what their goal is from the beginning, so that the “warm up” period could be skipped entirely. 

However, an insight into leadership is not the only important note that I believe I can take from this, as it may also contain an insight into myself. First though, I need to more completely describe the character that I was playing as in this session, Edward “Eddy” McFarlain. Eddy is an aspiring lemonade salesman that has been down on his luck recently, as his rival across the street has managed to do far more business than him. His goals, based upon the result of the earlier rolls, were to Get Rich using a living will, and to vaguely Get Even. He also has a The Past, fast friends relationship with one of the other characters, and a Work, business rivals relationship with another (his lemonade stand rival). However, despite all of these opportunities to create conflict himself, perhaps by instigating his rival or using his friend in some way, I ended up playing Eddy as a fairly honorable, if failing, businessman, and someone that tries to be a good friend. I personally think that this aspect reflects the most on me, as I try my best to be a helpful, caring friend, and to help out whenever I’m able. In this way, I believe that my own personal values ended up being visible in Eddy, as a character that tried to avoid dirty tactics in a system that is expressly designed for them.