We playtested the latest draft of Fiasco last night and it went very well. I'm really happy with it! This particular game was dark, dark, dark and felt very contemporary:

So there's Bernard, a middle-aged Christian zealot who has a bomb-making factory in the funeral home he works at, supplying abortion clinic bombers. He's also gay. And infertile. So .. he's a fucking bastard with problems (played with gusto by my brother!). His wife wants a child he can't provide. She's already got a grown daughter who thinks she's her niece. This "niece" runs a greenhouse and grows a little weed on the side, supplying the town through her reliable contact, a strapping 19-year-old lad who is the son of the guy who owns the funeral home. Who is also gay and in the closet. The fiasco is primed. Everyone is pointed at everyone.

We get to play out Bernard's seduction of Rich Spiller, the gay kid, and the truly awful scene where Rich gets brought into the fold. There first target - that cradle of filth and ungodly perversion, the town's gay hook-up spot behind the Patio theater... Rich plants the bomb that kills two of his friends, despite his strenuous efforts to sabotage the bomb.

Sophie, the pot-growing niece, arranges to hook up Rich Spiller with her aging "aunt", using her knowledge of his homosexuality as well as his interest in coming into the drug dealing business against him. Late in act two we fade to black as Elizabeth Spivey gets what she wants ... more awfulness as the lovers are discovered by Bernard, who is being cheated on by both his wife and his lover at the same time.

Of course the FBI is nosing around, looking for the bomber, and Bernard loses it. He's been betrayed, he decides that Rich "corrupted" him, and sets up him the bomb, literally. RIch becomes an unwitting suicide bomber and takes two FBI agents with him. At this point justice rains down, poor Sophie torches her greenhouse in a panic and loses all her hard-earned drug cash, Bernard goes to prison forever+1, and Elizabeth has a dead gay man's baby. It was pretty choice.

I just observed a four player session and it was hugely instructive - I realized a few things about the rules, and the game's flow, and how to explain that in words. So it was very productive, and confirmed a lot of the choices I made after Dreamation. Fiasco is approaching baked-ness.

It was really cool to have this buttoned-down guy become the focus. There was a terrific scene early on where he got sent to the fertility clinic to deposit a sample of his sperm, which involved some private activity to which he was morally opposed - Onan and all that. And my brother, playing Bernard, described him stewing in the little booth, looking at the unappealing assortment of dog-eared pornography, and seeing a copy of HONCHO at the bottom of the pile. It was just a perfect, sad moment, and that magazine ended up being important - he stole it and stashed it with his bomb-making stuff.

I think if "Object: Weapon: Pipe bomb" hadn't been chosen, it would have been a very subtle session with a lot of pathos. But, you know, pipe bomb.

"I just observed a four player session and it was hugely instructive - I realized a few things about the rules, and the game's flow, and how to explain that in words."

I'm curious about that. Fiasco strikes me as a very naturally easy game to play, but hard to explain, especially in text.

Posted By: Jason MorningstarWhat I'm realizing is that I just need to say some stuff that, in a perfect world, would be second nature, like "edit scenes aggressively", and explain what I mean. So in some ways it's turning into a "How to play GMless games well" handbook. That wasn't my intention but there it is.

That bolded bit, might it be a worthwhile spin off project?

I mean, actually writing that on the side might make it even easier to condense the important bits of it for Fiasco itself.

Hmm, will consider the spin off idea.

I dunno, Colin, the Spiveys sort of bring it on themselves, don't they? That's low people for you. The worst possible southern insult applies - bless their hearts, they just don't know how to act.