Fiasco Read online

  Things to Look For

  He was alive when I buried him.

  Ray, Blood Simple

  Don't Be a Wuss

  Maybe you know exactly what you want for the Tilt, and there’s a perfect thing just sitting there. Sometimes, though, it is way better to shake things up with something unexpected, incongruous, or downright mysterious. Just because you introduce “love rears its ugly head” doesn’t mean you have to know how that is going to happen.

  Weird Edge Cases

  If you end Act One without any dice, your total is a perfect zero for both black and white.

  If you end Act One with only white dice or only black dice, that’s a good thing − you’re likely to have a high total one way or the other.

  If the high black or high white score is a tie, have each tying player re-roll all of their dice. Highest total wins.

  If no one has any dice of one color (that is, all the outcomes from Act One were positive or negative) the winners are the highest and lowest total of that color.

  Act Two

  Act Two is where the wheels should start to come off. Things are going wrong. New problems have emerged. Fires − metaphorical and maybe literal − will need to be fought. This is where you unscrew the jar of crazy and throw the lid at someone.

  The Basics

  Take turns. When it is your turn, your character gets a scene.

  Tilt the hell out of it!

  The final die is wild – it can be either black or white. Once the final die has been allocated, Act Two ends.

  How It Works

  Tim, you’re just a lost ball in the high weeds.

  Reno Smith, Bad Day at Black Rock

  Take turns. When it is your turn, you get a scene.

  Start Establishing or Resolving scenes again, just like you did in Act One. As before, you should keep dice in front of you as you receive them from yourself or others. You’re adding to the dice you acquired in Act One. Eventually, after everybody has had two scenes, all the dice will be allocated and the central pile will be empty.

  Tilt the hell out of it!

  Tilt Elements can make an appearance at any time during Act Two − right away, at the last minute, whenever it makes sense. But you should keep them in mind and drive toward them. If you know there’s going to be some “confusion, followed by pain,” set up a confusing situation and trust your friends to provide the pain.

  The final die is wild – it can be either black or white. Once the final die has been allocated, Act Two ends.

  The last die of the game can be positive or negative, regardless of its color. Just like allowing the last die during The Setup to be any number, this takes away any sense of predestination − if you don’t choose to Resolve the scene, your friends will probably stick you with exactly what you don’t want. Of course, you can still get forced into a particular outcome in the next to last scene...

  Things to Look For

  Well, I’ve flown seven million miles. And I’ve been waiting on people almost 20 years. The best job I could get after my bust was Cabo Air, which is the worst job you can get in this industry. I make about sixteen thousand, with retirement benefits that ain’t worth a damn. And now with this arrest hanging over my head, I’m scared. If I lose my job I gotta start all over again, but I got nothing to start over with. I’ll be stuck with whatever I can get. And that shit is scarier than Ordell.

  Jackie Brown, Jackie Brown

  Don't Forget the Last Die is Wild!

  It can be either color. Make it a good one!

  Building across Act Two

  When the last die has been claimed, Act Two ends. Build toward this − the dice are a pacing mechanism, so you’ve always got a good idea where you are in the story. Your goal should be to get your guy to a satisfactory conclusion − or near one − by the time the dice run out. Once they do, you’ve only got the Aftermath to finish your character’s story, which will be fast and uncertain.

  As They Lay for the Aftermath

  That last die is wild − you can call it black or white, but use it as it lays for calculating the Aftermath. If it’s actually white, just let it be white. It’s much simpler than trying to calculate it as a special case if you used “last die wild” to make a white die black or vice-versa.

  The Aftermath

  The Aftermath is usually the game’s denouement. It’s likely that the action has peaked, and that’s totally OK. By this point we can probably see each character’s general trajectory, but there’s still time for tragic and unwholesome surprises. The Aftermath should be told in montage, and it should be fast.

  The Basics

  Roll all the dice in front of your character. Total them by color, as in the Tilt.

  Consult the Aftermath table.

  Play the Aftermath as a montage, with one “this is” statement per die associated with your character.

  When you are out of dice, your story is over.

  How It Works

  So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.

  Marge Gunderson, Fargo

  Roll all the dice in front of your character. Total them by color, as in the Tilt.

  At the end of Act Two, you’ll have a modest pile of dice in front of you − including all the dice allocated to your character from both acts. Roll your dice, and again add all the black dice together and all the white dice together, and then subtract the lower from the higher. You should have about twice as many as before, because you keep the dice you were allocated during the first act!

  Note that if you ended up with the game’s final die, and it was decided that it was the opposite color, you can ignore that now. Other than choosing the outcome for the final scene, this choice has no effect – you don’t have to remember that a white die is actually black when rolling the Aftermath.

  Consult the Aftermath table.

  The Aftermath chart will give you your marching orders for the game’s finale. Black results are generally physical and white results are generally social, mental, or emotional. You really, really don’t want those dice to cancel each other out – the further from zero your final result, the happier the ending. At this point the game enters the final phase, the Aftermath. Check out the replay for an example.

  Play the Aftermath as a montage, with one “this is” statement per die associated with your character.

  Here’s the format − you take one of the dice that ended up in front of you and say “This is (my character), (doing something).” It should be active, and it should be about your guy, not somebody else. Then somebody else takes a die and does the same thing − you’re describing the outcome of the game, maybe tightly focused, maybe meandering across many years. Your group will find its own preferred way of handling the montage. Keep it brisk, broad, colorful, and poignant.

  When you are out of dice, your story is over.

  When the dice are gone, the game is over. If you end the game with few dice (it can happen!) not only will your poor guy have a horrible outcome but you’ve got precious little say in the matter. Maybe you just disappear. That said, chances are some character’s Aftermaths will be more complicated than others, and tossing a die to a friend so they can have a satisfying ending isn’t a crime. Similarly, if you have more dice than story, that’s cool, too.

  Things to Look For

  I’m not apologizing for what I did. I’m apologizing for what I didn’t do.

  Violet, Bound

  Whatever You Do, Keep it Snappy

  A typical Aftermath lasts five or ten minutes. If everybody’s outcome is painfully obvious, maybe your game peaked really early and you only need to wrap things up. Forget the dice and montage and just craft epilogues in that case!

  Life is Full of Surprises


  The results of the Aftermath table may surprise you, or even throw your character’s story arc completely for a loop. Perhaps you’ll roll exceptionally well and have a happy ending, even though the tail end of Act Two saw your guy handcuffed in the trunk of a Corolla that had been set on fire. These things happen − maybe the “happy ending” is more metaphor than reality, or maybe he made a daring and improbable escape that changes his life forever.

  This is So Unfair

  Is it weird that you can wallow in failure the entire game, collect a ton of black dice from all those bad scenes, and then have a happy ending? I’d point to the source material – in the films Fiasco references, true sad sacks often come out smelling like a rose. And the guy who never fails, who gets exactly what he wants – well, that guy’s there so you can grind your teeth in impotent rage as he walks away scot-free. It’s the people in the middle, with some ups and some downs, who really get screwed. Help your friends be in the middle.

  Optional Craziness

  The Rules Tweaks

  Sweating the Details

  Hitting the Accelerator

  Flirting With Disaster

  Honoring the Last Die

  Good Die, Bad Die

  Tweaking Your Fiasco

  This may hurt.

  Arthur Burns, The Proposition

  These rules are entirely optional. Some of them address specific modes of play, and some of them are just fun variations. Add them to your Fiasco session at your own risk.

  Sweating the Details

  Add or subtract dice to pace the game differently. As a rule of thumb, eight dice equals one hour of play. Going over 20 dice is counter-productive (as is trying to play with six people – play two three person games instead), but 14-16 dice is great for a three-player game and 18 is good for five players as well. It’s also possible to build your situation and then discard some dice immediately for a shorter game. Obviously, add and subtract in pairs, and allow multiple Details to stack onto a single Relationship if necessary. Just make sure every character is associated with at least one Detail.

  Hitting the Accelerator

  If your game is moving very fast and is going to peak early, a protracted Act Two might be a bit of a grind. Instead of dragging things out, hit the gas and end early. Instead of two scenes per player in Act Two, just do one and make it count. Each should specifically include a Tilt Element and definitively resolve things for a particular character. You’ll end the game with one loose die per player – since the Aftermath is built with these in mind, go ahead and have everybody assign a remaining die to another player in turn.

  Flirting With Disaster

  You can stack the deck toward positive or negative outcomes. I suggest amping up the black die total a bit for a truly messed up cascade of miserable clusterfucks. This makes positive outcomes all the more precious, because they will be so painfully rare.

  Honoring the Last Die

  By default, the last die during The Setup and the last die of Act Two are wild – the color is defined by the player who picks it up. This makes them a little more interesting and a lot less pre-determined. Tossing this rule does no harm and has its own weird consequences − you might be put into a situation where you are forced to succeed, for example, or forced to make a mink farm central to your session. If that degree of determinism sounds fun, play the last die as it lies.

  Good Die, Bad Die

  Some groups will want to add a little extra morality to their Aftermath. You can do this by tweaking the endgame mechanic in a simple way − instead of each die being a “this is me” statement, require that the narration also be tied to the die color. White dice indicate generally positive or redemptive statements, and black dice indicate negative or harmful statements. Playing with this rule in effect will change die handling throughout the game in an interesting way.

  Tables

  They snatched my narcotics and hightailed it outta there. Would’ve gotten away with it, but your son, fuck-head that he is, left his driver’s license in a dead guy’s hands.

  Vincenzo Cocotti, True Romance

  Unlike the tables built into Playsets, the Tilt and Aftermath tables are shared across Playsets – any game of Fiasco can rely on the same pair of tables. The Tilt destabilizes the action mid-game, and the Aftermath points toward character’s individual outcomes at the end. Some Playsets may include a custom set of tables, in which case you should use those.

  Tilt Table

  Mayhem An out of control rampage

  A frantic chase

  A dangerous animal (perhaps metaphorical) gets loose

  Magnificent self-destruction

  Cold-blooded score-settling

  Misdirected passion

  Tragedy Death, out of the blue

  Somebody’s life is changed forever, in a bad way

  Pain, followed by confusion

  Death, right on time

  Confusion, followed by pain

  Death, after an unpleasant struggle

  Innocence Somebody is not so innocent after all

  A neighbor wanders into the situation

  The wrong guy gets busted

  Collateral damage

  Love rears its ugly head

  A well-meaning stranger intervenes

  Guilt A visit from the (perhaps unofficial) authorities

  Betrayed by friends

  Somebody develops a conscience

  Greed leads to killing

  Someone panics

  A showdown

  Paranoia A stranger arrives to settle a score

  What seems like dumb luck isn’t - things are afoot

  Two people cross paths and everything changes

  A sudden reversal (of status, of fortune, of sympathy)

  The thing you stole has been stolen

  Somebody is watching, waiting for their moment

  Failure A stupid plan, executed to perfection

  Something precious is on fire

  A tiny mistake leads to ruin

  A good plan comes unraveled

  You thought it was taken care of but it wasn’t

  Fear leads to a fateful decision

  Aftermath: Black High

  Zero: The worst thing in the universe. This probably doesn’t include death, since death would be way better than whatever this is. Be creative and don’t settle for the first “worst” thing that comes to mind – there’s something darker, more awful, more wretched in there somewhere.

  Black One: Horrible. You are probably dead. Other people, probably innocent people, are as well. There is no justice, there is no mercy, everything is utterly, painfully screwed and it is all – all of it – your fault.

  Black Two: Brutal. Wounds that will never heal, for starters; stuff sawed off, blown off, or burned off on your way to grand, ignominious failure. Kiss whatever you care about goodbye. You may die, but you may not.

  Black Three: Harsh. Shit-in-a-bag harsh, a-lifetime-of-medication harsh. A big black cloud of hurt is going to rain all over you. The things you need to happen are not going to, simple as that.

  Black Four: Savage. Savage as in “something is broken or mashed.” Maybe you’ve got a permanent limp and a bad reputation. Plus, you totally fail.

  Black Five: Rough. You are getting whipped like a rented mule, for starters, and you will remember this episode for all your diminished days. The lesson you learn will be profound, lingering, and painful.

  Black 6-7: Pathetic. You’ll suffer, oh dear God will you suffer, and everyone will know of your malfeasance, your stupidity, your lack of common sense and decency. You’re probably going to be locked up, too.

  Black 8-9: Nothing to write home about. Back to where you started. Maybe sore and broke, just like yesterday and tomorrow. You probably learned something though, like how to do it right next time. Next time…

  Black 10-12: Pretty good. All things considered, you’re coming out of this smelling like a rose. You’re a little better off - maybe you got the girl, or
maybe you just didn’t get caught.

  Black 13+: Awesome. Insanely great. You will emerge not only unscathed, but if there’s a girl involved, she’s dropping her drawers. You might even get rich off this caper, who knows? Time for a new ride.

  Aftermath: White High

  Zero: The worst thing in the universe. This probably doesn’t include death, since death would be way better than whatever this is. Be creative and don’t settle for the first “worst” thing that comes to mind – there’s something darker, more awful, more wretched in there somewhere.

  White One: Dreadful. You are certainly dead, probably from a self-inflicted wound. People you care about are also probably dead, maybe through your own stupid, ugly failure. To say that you fucked up is an insult to fucked-upedness. You have redefined the term.

  White Two: Merciless. You might not be dead on the outside but you sure as hell are dead on the inside. The emotional or mental wounds you have suffered will never heal. The future is a brick wall.