More playtesting of Fiasco, my cinematic caper/disaster game. I played with Remi, Joe and Joel last night and it was probably the best session yet, and a memorably good time in general. This bodes well. All of us had played the game before so things moved very quickly; I think we played the whole thing in two hours. Here's the set-up:

I played Adelle, Joel played Butch, Remi played Bruce, and Joe played Timothy. The people in italics were created in play, and the two items in green are the tilt elements that appear halfway through the game. Everything else is situation, established at the start. We had a pretty fun set-up: It's 1876, a western mining town. Butch and Bruce are working claims on Timothy's land and discover a huge hoard of Spanish silver. They vow to keep it for themselves and not split it with Timothy. Adelle gets wind of this (Butch isn't the sharpest tool in the shed), as does her working girl, Trixie, who Butch is sweet on and who also has a regular customer in Butch's uncle, Timothy. To complicate matters Timothy and Adelle are old flames, and she's sworn to get even with him for ruining her. Obviously this is all primed for disaster, which dutifully shows up, Trixie ends up dead, Butch goes bananas, Bruce tries to haul off the silver in a handcart, Timothy hires a gunfighter to come kill him, and everything goes very, very badly. Joel played Butch as a genuine simpleton, and we were all rooting for him - and in the end, he alone emerged with a positive outcome. Adelle - dead. Timothy - dead. Bruce - broken and back where he started, with a pair of smashed legs. It was note perfect, and really fun to play.

Some interesting points - it was, by and large, serious as a heart attack. There was not much humor, which is atypical for Fiasco. There were some fucking great scenes - after Timothy casually murdered Trixie to silence her, Adelle confronted him, and he delivered a towering ultimatum, threatening to burn down her brothel/hotel. She responded by shooting him in the knee, and in that moment they fell back in love. It was perfect and illustrative of both these evil, amoral characters, totally unexpected. Later she dies, gutted like a trout by the greedy and semi-insane miner Bruce, who she had betrayed, and as she dies she begs Timothy to forgive her killer, which he does. It was pretty cool.

Playing a dead character, as it turns out, is no problem at all. This is reassuring! This session hit all the relationships and details squarely, also a bit unusual, but probably a result of having players who were comfortable with the system.

Fiasco is ready for some external playtesting, so if you are interested, let me know.

Hoooray! But seriously, this was a great session. It didn't feel rushed, we pushed conflict (a lot of that was built in to the relationships up top). It felt great to spend two hours trying to crush Joel's character to finally forgive him and die by his hand at the end.

This sounds so cool. I'm glad it is working out well. I've known it is a good game and this shows it. I can't wait to play.