I facilitated a playtest of Fiasco last night with my regular group. We had five players and I experimented by cutting it down to 16 dice from what would normally be 20. In the bucolic North Carolina town of Billsborough we established the following characters and relationships:
Dwight Sevier, a doddering old Ford dealership owner. His grandson Talbot, an Iraq veteran and now sheriff. Jonathan Franklin, middle-aged county judge, married to Meredith, an NPC, Dwight's daughter and Talbot's mother. Rachel Colson, 19 year old misfit, Campbell's sometime girlfriend and Judge Franklin's lover. Earl Campbell, criminal knucklehead and Ford dealership employee who is robbing old Dwight blind
We also had a need, a location, and an object:
Judge Franklin's wedding ring The town parking lot by the railroad tracks, where all the yeggs hang out and smoke dope Talbot and Dwight's burning need to get even with the judge for cheating on Meredith
Everybody was pretty happy with this setup, which took about fifteen minutes. What evolved was a low-key and melancholy sort of feel, as we got to see the various characters' flaws during The Score (basically Act One of the game). Dwight was pitiful and sympathetic, Rachel was trapped between two useless men, the judge was a bastard, the sheriff wasn't as law and order as he appeared, and Earl emerged as a very powerful and confident criminal.
The Tilt, half-way through the game (about 45 minutes in, maybe an hour) introduced two new elements:
Innocence: Love rears its ugly head Mayhem: Cold-blooded score settling
Which had everybody pretty stoked. We discovered that Rachel genuinely loved the judge, and there was a great scene where she showed up at his house and told him to get in her car, it was now or never, and he abandoned his wife and left town with her. The Seveir family had been trying to get at the judge without any success, and there was a sort of B-plot with the semi-senile old man Dwight plotting against him, buying a pistol, and so forth. The day after the judge skipped town, myopic old Dwight bust into the courtroom and shot the wrong judge.
So things ended badly for the old man, Rachel ended up returning to town (and her job at the Chicken Hut; she ended up with a score of zero during the Aftermath which is "the worst thing you can imagine", and that was it for her), the Sheriff learned to like the taste of power a little too much, the judge fared pretty well in a new town, and Earl was given the dealership by a trusting Dwight - a final flashback showed him running it into the ground.
The whole game lasted two hours, which is the design goal, and despite this session being notably mellow (only one shooting, and that of an unnamed NPC in the final reel) I thought it went very well. My friend Robo pointed out a significant procedural flaw which I will correct, I got some great feedback, and overall it was a success. One thing I learned is that a rule I added allowing people framing a conflict-free scene to move dice around as a reward is both a blessing and a curse - it got used a lot as people began to see the tactical value of dice, but there was also a little padding out of the game as people deliberately crafted color scenes when they weren't really necessary or appropriate. I think this is a group-specific thing, but I'll probably add some advice about how to regulate this if necessary on a social level.
Something else I observed (I didn't play) was that the object (the wedding ring) and the location (the parking lot) didn't become central. This is OK and it worked out fine, because as it turned out both of those details strongly infilled characters and relationships.
Fiasco is ready for some external playtesting. If you are interested, let me know.