Quote from: daniel_ream;561663There's also the fact that a story created collaboratively in real time by amateurs is never going to be as good as something that's been massaged by script doctors and run through an editing room a time or two.

Messier, but more immediate, and more personal (IMO, anyway).

Quote from: Peregrin;561671Messier, but more immediate, and more personal (IMO, anyway).

Well, yes - that's the tradeoff that's being made.  But it's also why watching someone else's game isn't really going to be all that interesting.

Quote from: daniel_ream;561704Well, yes - that's the tradeoff that's being made.  But it's also why watching someone else's game isn't really going to be all that interesting.

Let me tell you about my guy in our game...

Also, yeah, I kind of agree.  I think having professional actors/writers on this helped somewhat, but I still can't even really bring myself to listen to podcasts of games.

I was talking with my friend earlier9the one who i gave my copy to) and he said they've started using the game as a way to come up with strange ways to throw existing scripts of track into interesting and often madcap directions in his drama group, this has made me wonder if perhaps someone should send a copy of this game to a bunch of hollywood screeenwriters to help them come up with comedy scripts that contain actual humour instead of the dreck most seem to pump out these days

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;561717[...] someone should send a copy of this game to a bunch of hollywood screeenwriters to help them come up with comedy scripts that contain actual humour instead of the dreck most seem to pump out these days

I bought the game originally to do a The Hangover hack, which turns out to be trivial - the playset pretty much writes itself.

Bill & Ted/Dude, Where's My Car is also easily done with Fiasco.

I've played it three times, and I'd agree with the general opinion that it is fun and works well.  

It's different from most improv in that the setup phase means that you establish the characters and their relationships along with a number of concrete other bits.  These generally become the focus of the story.  

The odd thing to me is that it's undefined how you give out dice to other players.  In principle, everyone could give out same-colored dice to each other and everyone is likely to have happy endings.  In practice, it seems that players get into the Coen brother movie mood and have fun screwing each other over.  I'm not sure if this is a feature or a bug - but it's weird and interesting that this aspect of how to play is left up in the air.

Fiasco is not a game.  It is a formalized writing committee process wearing RPG drag made by and for people that want to write stories but are shit at it.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;562118Fiasco is not a game.  It is a formalized writing committee process wearing RPG drag made by and for people that want to write stories but are shit at it.

I understand why some people might want to keep storygames separate from RPGs, even if I can't say I agree 100%; but I do not understand why one would want to deny that storygames are games at all. I confess to not having played Fiasco, but between the randomness and the drive to screw each other over, isn't it game enough for you? Seriously.

I mean, the old Baron Munchausen game by James Wallis (which, unlike Fiasco, I've played a lot) fits your description almost to a T, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone argüe it was "not a game".

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;562118Fiasco is not a game.  It is a formalized writing committee process wearing RPG drag made by and for people that want to write stories but are shit at it.

Wouldn't that only be true if people actually, I dunno, wrote stuff down? I mean, when I demoed it with the guy that wrote the game, we weren't trying to "write a story", we were playing a goofy game.

And I can't see a situation in which I'd ever use it to write a story (or a situation in which I would ever want to write by committee), but I'd gladly play it every couple of months for the Hell of it.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;562118Fiasco is not a game.  It is a formalized writing committee process wearing RPG drag made by and for people that want to write stories but are shit at it.

You're being a dick, but you're also not wrong.

I've mentioned before that a lot of gamers enjoy certain genres a hell of a lot without necessarily understanding how those genres are constructed, nor how to go about ensuring that all the parts line up the way they need to.  That's  what Fiasco does: it provides the structure and necessary elements in a largely unobtrusive way such that played in good faith, you'll get a half-decent Coen brothers movie out of it without having to know very much about making Coen brothers movies.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;562118Fiasco is not a game.

It's no less of a game than D&D is if we're going to sit down and try and nail down exactly what the most relevant cultural definition of "game" is.

Thanks for your thoughts on Fiasco everybody, especially your kind words predicated on actual play.

Quote from: jhkim;562108The odd thing to me is that it's undefined how you give out dice to other players.  In principle, everyone could give out same-colored dice to each other and everyone is likely to have happy endings.

As you note this doesn't actually happen, John. There's enough dynamic tension between wanting to establish and wanting to resolve that you can't control your color spread effectively in act two, and you're totally unable to in act one. And the setup provides relationships that encourage screw-your-neighbor behavior on a social level, so a rule to explicitly control die distribution struck me as redundant.

jason, what's your take on the tabletop AP?  fairly standard experience, there?

Re: Fiasco not being a game...   I can see that for some definitions of game.  However, the important point is that as far as I can tell, no one coming into Fiasco is misled about what sort of activity it is.  The discussion and advertising is such that people know what they're getting.  

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;562244As you note this doesn't actually happen, John. There's enough dynamic tension between wanting to establish and wanting to resolve that you can't control your color spread effectively in act two, and you're totally unable to in act one. And the setup provides relationships that encourage screw-your-neighbor behavior on a social level, so a rule to explicitly control die distribution struck me as redundant.

Note that I didn't say that die distribution was a bug - and I would agree that there is no point to adding a rule to explicitly control die distribution.  

Still, I'd be interested in playing in a Fiasco game where people were not acting in screw-your-neighbor mode.  Maybe it wouldn't work, but I'm inclined to think it could be fun.  To encourage this, a variant might have guidelines that suggest, say, that you give a player a same-color die as a show to give props to their play.  This isn't a rule you have to follow, but does suggest what you're deciding on the basis of.

That hack combined with the softer Tilt and Aftermath would produce something akin to an after-school special, I bet. Outcomes would be generally positive around the table, although not guaranteed. I can think of play settings (like schools) where that might be desirable, although bending Fiasco into truly cooperative play isn't going to work I don't think.