I received my print copy of Fiasco within the last week or so, and last night, I took some time to take a look at it.  I planned to look through it a bit and maybe read a section or two before bed, but just couldn't put it down until I had read it cover-to-cover.   

Fiasco is a game where you play "ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control", and it's a total blast.  I know that because I was lucky enough to stumble into a playtest of it with designer Jason Morningstar back at MACE 2008 (in which I had a crazy good time, and "earned" a mention in the playtesters section of the book). 

The book itself looks really good, with cool, quirky art and a very easy-to-follow laylout.  Jason's writing style is entertaining while still being crystal clear in the explanations of play.  He used quotes from several "source material" movies at the start of each section, and they did a lot to help support the theme of both the game and Jason's writing style (my favorite being "He was alive when I buried him," from Blood Simple.)  But that's enough of the sncillary stuff... let's get to the actual game. 

Fiasco is a GM-less roleplaying game for 3-5 players that takes between 2 and 3 hours.  It is meant to build stories that resemble a Coen brothers movie, living in the dark humor of big plans about shady situations going horribly wrong.  And one of the most important things that you have to do right from the start is to choose your setting, something Jason calls a Playset.  These playsets are collections of tables filled with all the trappings of the setting, which the group uses to define the relationships, conflict, and scenery of the story.  Four such playsets are included in the book, and Jason will be releasing an additional one each month (for free) on the Bully Pulpit Games website throughout 2010.    

Once the setting is chosen, you roll a bunch of dice (4 per player), half of which are black and half are white.  Taking turns around the table, you choose a die and use it to define some part of the setup.  So while the relationships, needs, locations, and objects aren't really random, you still have to work within some constrained parameters from the tables of the playsets to get things established.  

After setup is done, players take turns have a spotlight scene for their character.  The cool thing here is that you get to either choose to Establish the scene or how it will Resolve.  If you want to decide on what the situation is, who will be involved, what the scene will be about, and all that kind of stuff, the rest of the players at the table will decide how well it turns out for your character.  If you want to have control over success and failure, then you have to be dependent on the table to decide what the scene will actually be about.  The player takes a die from the middle based on how the scene will be resolved: with black dice representing failure and white meaning success.  At this point, the numbers on the dice don't mean anything; just their color is important.  In Act One, players actually give their dice away to another player, but they have to keep them in Act Two.

When half the dice have been taken (after each player has two scenes), Act One ends and you have The Tilt.  Players actually roll the dice they have collected so far, and the players with the best rolls (most lopsided for a single color) get to make some decisions about how the game changes.  The Tilt itself is something new to the story that adds in even more instability to what's going on.  Again, based on some predefined tables, two new elements will be chosen and Act Two will begin, incorporating these into the evolving story.

After the rest of the dice have been taken from the middle of the table (2 more scenes per player), you have the Aftermath.  Again, players roll all of the dice they have collected and subtract the total in one color from the total of the other.  The closer you roll to zero, the worse your overall outcome will be.  Knowing where the story ended and how your character will end up, players put together a montage scene where everyone makes a series of single statements about something that happens to their character.  After that, you're done!

Based on my one play and from reading the book (which had been tweaked a little from the version I played), I think that Fiasco has definitely risen to the top of my "must play" RPG list.  Thankfully, it's short enough that I may be able to fit in in before or after another roleplaying session.  The "Nice, Southern Town" playset calls to me in a very personal way (since that's where I live), but I'd also love to explore a few of the other settings, so that means I really need to play it more than just once or twice.  

From my admittedly limited experience with story games, it seems to me that Jason Morningstar has a crazy talent for evoking... I don't know what to call it, "genre" maybe, in his games.  Whether it's Fiasco, Grey Ranks, or The Shab-al-Hiri Roach (and I'm sure in other games that I've had less exposure to), you know exactly what kind of story you'll be telling.  Theme and setting are important to some extent, but even more so is the mood and atmosphere of the story.  And every rule and choice in these games helps to support the type of story that Jason has envisioned.  But that's not to say that the stories from these games are prescripted or cookie-cutter similar, however.  Rather, creativity and uniqueness is fostered specifically because of the laser-focused game design.  It's cool to see and be a part of, and I can't wait until I get another chance!

Check out a preview of Fiasco yourself, and let me know if you'd be up for a game!       
         

*All art in this post is by John Harper and is used with permission from Bully Pulpit Games