I facilitated a game of Fiasco at Camp Nerdly 03 with myself, John Stavropolous, Nathan Herrold, and Krista Evanouskas. We chose the new suburbs playset, and our setup looked like this:

What emerged as we built the situation up all revolved around Elaine. Her ex-husband, a high school hockey hero who now runs a failing tile store, is importing anabolic steroids from Italy, and their daughter Francesca is selling them at school. Elaine's a supervisor with ICE at the Buffalo airport, a major narcotic transshipment point, and Stanley is one of her agents - who is also the former cross-town rival of Erik, the tile guy. His one goal in life is to avenge the humiliating 1989 defeat in the hockey state finals, and he's going to sleep with Elaine, Erik's ex, to drive that knife home. As fiascos go, this was a pretty low-key setup, but we were all good with it.

What developed in play was a fairly even-keeled relationship drama. Francesca had a posse of other dealers and generally unsavory high school yeggs, and her mother's law enforcement career made her suspect. In order to prove herself, she needed to do something bold, in public, to mess with the police. There would be a Youtube video. She attacked poor Stanley, the guy who was gradually making in-roads on the whole "fuck the ex-wife" scheme, and it did not go well. The Youtube video ended up being her mother slapping her and dressing her down.

Stanley (thanks to Elaine's player choosing to establish scenes and the other players gleefully making her fail in her efforts to keep him at arms length) was gaining his boss's trust and affection. He was very up-front about his goals with Erik, who of course still loved Elaine. This all ended in a dinner table scene with all four characters trying to sort things out, and this is where the "weapon: Hockey stick" appeared.

Things took a bad turn, Stanley found a signed bill of lading for illegal steroids and tried to blackmail Francesca, who recorded the conversation and got him arrested. But drugs is drugs, and all Elaine's efforts to keep her ex-husband out of trouble failed, and he skipped town.

The aftermath was a little challenging - through a fluke, Elaine - a powerful, dominant, totally clean character - ended up with a zero, which meant we needed to figure out the worst imaginable fate for her. Since Stanley (who got 8 black) was released on a technicality, we all agreed that she should be forced to apologize and now work for him. And Nathan, who is truly evil-minded, suggested that the worst possible fate for her wasn't working for Stanley, but being married to him. So we went with that - her soul crushed, married to the man who ruined a man she still cared for and her daughter, married to a guy she knew had set her up and used her. We all felt dirty.