Actual Play – Regina’s Wedding (2/20/2012)

Players: Regina Joiner, Dennis Jordan, Ezra Denney, Sean Nittner
System: Fiasco
Playset: Regina’s Wedding

I had wanted to play Regina’s wedding since the first time I saw it in the Fiasco Companion forever ago. I mean, weddings, c’mon, that is like the astronaut food of Fiascos! (Make of that what you will). So, when I found out that Regina Joiner was going to play, I immediately insisted that we play Regina’s wedding, which Ezra then insisted was pronounced the Canadian “ruh-JY-nuh” rather than “ruh-JEE-nuh”. So there we had it Ruh-JY-nuh’s Wedding!

Play started with Ezra, so I’ll move clockwise around the table from him to describe the relationships and needs.

The Setup

  • Ezra – Elaine Ruthoford – Terrorist mother of the groom determined to keep wealth in the Rutheford family.
    • Need: To get even with their tormentor Brad (the Best Man)
    • Relationship: The Help – Make  up Artist and Member of the Bridal Party (by way of assassinating the rest of Regina’s family and worming her way in).
  • Sean – Francis Rutheford – Gay stylist father of the groom who blew the Rutheford fortune on drugs and sexual escapades.
    • Need: To get the girl hitched. So the will’s legal conditions can be fulfilled.
    • Relationship: Father of the Groom and someone who has dirt on him (the groom in this case, that knows all the money is gone)
  • Dennis – Chet Rutheford – “Beer me” Frat boy going along with the plan to marry Regina for her money, a plan put together by his “bro” Brad.
    • Moment: Rehearsal dinner “they may take a few liberties, but they were cheap”
    • Relationship: The Inner Circle – Groom and his worst enemy (in this case Brad, the best man)
  • Regina – Brad- Best man blackmailing Francis for drugs, sleeping with Elaine and with eyes for Regina. Beer me indeed!
    • Moment: Ceremony “I will speak now and I will not hold my peace!”
    • Relationship: Love is in the air “We loathe each other, why do we want to jump each others’ bones?” – Because in a pretty horrific reverse Ms. Robinson Brad was blackmailing Elaine into sleeping with him.
  •  Ezra – Elaine Ruthoford – Terrorist mother of the groom determined to keep wealth in the Rutheford family.

 

The story practically told it self. I mean: sex, blackmail, drugs, cabana boys, frat brothers, and ditsy rich girls are pretty much like cookie batter. Just mix it up, put it in the oven and deliciousness comes out.

We opted to make sure the rehearsal was in the first act and the ceremony was in the second. We also needed to establish why Francis and Elaine were tormented by Brad (blackmail) and what dirt Chet had on his father (knowing he had blown all the money). We each called for a few scenes that just “needed” to happen and the rest fell into the cracks.

The Tilt

  • Mayhem – A Frantic chase
  • Innocence – Collateral Damage

Innocence was actually a hard one. I mean nobody, not even the unfortunate bride Regina, was all that innocent. However, the “Frantic chase” suddenly introduced many potential targets: Bethany (Regina’s best friend), James (Bethany’s father, a lawyer trying to stop the Rutherfords from conning Regina out of her inheritance), and Pedro (Francis’s lover and drug dealer).

The chase was something right out of the Keystone Cops. The only part of the game that got really goofy, but oddly, it fit, and fed right into the cops arriving, a shootout with Elain and the wedding bus blowing up with many of us in it.

The Aftermath

You know, predictably things ended in horror. We could have used the soft aftermath but everyone wanted flamethrowers, so we played it hard. Brad did well, married to Regina, but with a baby who looked much like Chet (and vice versa). Elaine and Francis not so much. Francis was in a body cast watching his lover on Dancing with the Stars. Elaine in a federal penitentiary. I’m pretty sure being someone’s bitch.

Thoughts on the game.

Ezra is over the top awesome. I mean he, just put me to shame. Like I could not possibly be 1/10th the Francis that he was the Elaine. I think my best line was turning on the blender whenever Elaine would start to Francis. Fun times but nothing like the way Elaine would berate everyone and anyone that got in her path.

I dig the way the playset varied from the default, replacing locations with moments. They totally make sense. The reception, the ceremony, the rehearsal…all perfect opportunities for disaster! Very smart.

As my final game at DundraCon, this was a great game to end the con. Good people, fantastic game.

 

Actual Play – Nut People (1/15/2012)

Players: Dovi Anderson, Jason Morningstar, Sean Nittner, Shannon MacNamara
System: Fiasco
Playset: Nut People

What’s the lowest possible stakes you can play for? Nuts! Yep, pecans and Georgia going for a record hi nickel a pop!

Who did we have

Donna VanWert, the Nut House princess, her derelict cousin and clumsy lover that was stealing the nuts with his pot smoking buddy who had a bet with his dishwasher coworker over who was going to have sex with Donna first.

Setup

Relationship: Romance – Clumsy lovers.

Location: Honeysuckle – Dishwashers.

Need: To Get Laid – So you can brag about it at he fireworks stand.

Relationship: They are just yard nuts officer – Nut thief and honeysuckle employee.

Location: Downtown Quigley – Pecan Sandy’s Bed and Breakfast.

Object: Drug – Hallucinogenic mushrooms mixed a bag of pecans.

Relationship – The Original Georgia Nut House – Nut Roaster & Trainee.

Need: To Get Nuts – To buy toys for kids! Hah!

Tilt

Quotable “I’m just not that into you.”

Wacky hijnks including the once desirable Donna VanWert becoming the object of a bet and rejected even by her cousin. Of course there was crime, stolen pecans all over the place, people getting high on mushrooms and the threat of big bad Dale Blankenchip bringing the pain. That set across the backdrop Sheriff Dan Mason (Jake’s father) and the hot headed Deputy Junior Broadus all digging into everyone’s business.Yes!

Thoughts on this game

Jason makes a great stoner Red Sox fan with delusions of grandeur. Cap turned backward, overalls on with no shirt underneath and all. Great times.

My first time gaming with Dovi, and I had a great time. His earnest efforts amongst so many other jaded, crass and greedy bastards was great.

I rarely play high status characters that have people fawning over them. Most of the time when I play high status, it’s leader types that everyone brings their troubles to and that have to constantly fight to maintain their authority. It felt weird for me to have the other three characters pursuing mine. So after the first act during a break I asked everyone to try and put Donna in something of a predicament, turn the tables on her, and they did, wonderfully.

The story ended in tears, as it should.

 

Actual Play – Transatlantic (1/14/2012)

Players: Sean Nittner, Chris Bennet, Brian Willians, Mia Blankensop
System: Fiasco
Playset: Transatlantic

This game was so much for me, in part because it was very different from most Fiasco games I’ve played.

Three of our relationships were very close, while one was distant from the others. Mia (Elke Dubois) and I (Etienne Dubois) were newlyweds, however she did not recognize the wedding as legitimate until we were marred in a Lutheran church. She was my 19 year old beautiful mail order bride and I was the middle aged french man who fought in the great war. Because she did not see us as married in the eyes of god we had separate cabins aboard the boat, and mine had a stow away. They young American girl Sadie Beatrice Hawkins who was returning to Plano, Texas with her fathers military sabre that was lost in the war.

Sadie, being a beautiful girl, hiding out in the cabin of a middle aged French man, of course caused a giant scandal. She had been looking forward to seeing the love of her life, a man named Nikola, that she knew only as a pen pal. Meeting Nikola, however, Sadie realized that “she” was a “he”. Heart broken she fled back to he cabin and into the consoling arms of Etienne. Insert jealous hijinks here.

We had young nervous porters, stodgy old gentlemen with monocles, and a generous captain Miska… all of which died… but what we didn‘t have was a strong connection to Brian’s character (Nikola Kral). Besides the gender confusion, Nikola felt detached from the group, we didn’t have a lot of overlapping interests and her story seemed more connected with the ship captain than the other players…until it suddenly seemed like Nikola might not actually be who she said she was.
What if she was a German spy?

Hot damn. Within a few scenes Nikola was revealed as a spy bent on giving secrets transported on the Leviathan to a German Uboat that was following us. As the torpedo was fired and the ship was sinking, that’s when we realized Nikola was actually Nikolas! He is a she is he again! And “he” took my Elke hostage!

Suddenly Brian went from being off stage to center stage and the melt down that ensued was just awesome.

Thoughts on this game

Though I was technically mediating this game, because I had Mia (our improv instructor) in it, and Bennett (a veteran Fiasco himself), I hardly did anything besides offer off up the playset and a pile of dice. Fiasco, with a group of creative players excited by eachother’s happiness, is the closest thing to an RPG that plays itself.

Our game shifted forward in time a little be when we realized we needed a Uboat to exist, for WWII to be on the brink and proto Nazi’s to be in the picture. Frankly, I don’t think any of us cared, those pulpy tropes were a lot of fun.

Actual Play – A Small Southern Town (11/20/2011)

Players: Mary Matabor, Mia Blankensop, Karen Twelves, and Sean Nittner
System: Fiasco
Setting: Small Southern Town

A little bit to show Mary a new game (I think this was her 2nd or 3rd rpg), a little to give Mia, Karen and I more experience with Fiasco (in prep for Improv for Gamers) and a lot just to have fun, we all played Fiasco on Sunday.

Picking a playset this time was easy. We quickly had it narrowed down to three, then two, then one: A small southern town.

Cast:

Calendra Bouyea – A ex-beauty pageant contender, now would be actor and employee at the Calvey owned Dairy Queen. She and Leroy had plans to rip off the secret DQ recipes and open a franchise of their own. While most of the rest of the cast was constantly lying to themselves, Calendra saw everything clearly. She was the only person with any perspective in the game.

Leroy Keel – Manager at the Clavey DQ, he had romantic intentions for both Calendra and Neely, sadly neither of which every came to fruition. Leroy, who hated his boss Rick Clavey, had an arrangement with Neely (his bastard daughter) that she stole from him and Leroy “fenced” the goods, selling them on Ebay as Spitfire99, often back to the addle-minded Charlotte Clavey (Rick’s wife)

Neely Pettygrove – Bastard love child of Rick Clavey, Neely was hidden away at her mother’s house during the school year but over the summers, while her mother was illegally working her mink farm, Neely was sent to stay with the Claveys, although she was never acknowledged by them. Neely hated her half-family for the way they treated her and constantly stole from them out of spite. Her relationship with Tiara was particularly toxic. A southern Cinderella story with no prince.

Tiara Clavey – A southern princess, her mother had doted on her all her life and given her and her siblings (Cumberbund, Pearl Anne, Darlin and Poodle) everything they could ever ask for. Tiara a beautiful girl grew up going to pageants with Calendra and had a mad crush on her all her life. Though she dated boys all the time, Tiara was crazy in love with Calendra.

Thoughts on the game

I’m not going to go scene for scene here, suffice to say there was theft, unrequited love and accidental murder. Like EVERYTHING a Fiasco game needs!

I was REALLY happy that we kept the cast very tight. The only people that ever made it into scenes were our characters and the Clavey family (Rick, Charlotte and the kids). This meant that we were constantly bouncing off each other, constantly trying to manipulate one another, which is so, so much more satisfying than trying to manipulate an extra (NPC).

Favorite quote (if I remember it correctly): “And we’ll watch movies, and we’ll play games, and we’ll have a tickle party – oh, what was that? That’s so silly” – Tiara

Poodle, the six year old daughter, was ubiquitously eating herself silly, making a horrible mess of her brand new dress…in every scene. It was adorable.

When Tiara, who was turning 22, finally graduated from drinking Diet Coke to “Real” Coke, Leroy spiked her drink, and she became instantly hooked on “Real Coke”. That one scene (and of course the ones that followed) were so awesome I will ever after follow this equation: Coke + Alcohol = Real Coke!

When Neely did everything she could to kill her half-sister with Cumberbund’s poisonous snake (named Precious), the plan backfired when Leroy tried to put the moves on Calendra during the talent show where Tiara was dancing (with the snake) and she tackled him. On the roll of a die, we determined the snaked killed Leroy. It was just perfect. And I so, so, so enjoyed playing a character only in flash backs and aftermath.

The game mostly ended in tragedy, with a small inkling of hope as Tiara, still in mostly a body cast saw Calendra in jail and was just filled with glee. A beautiful closing moment for the game.

Actual Play – Fiasco High (10/21/2011)

Players: Karen Twelves, Matthew Klein, Mia Blankensop, and Sean Nittner
System: Fiasco (soft aftermath).
Playset: Fiasco High

In preparation for the improv workshop for gamers (working title), the four of us (plus Jason if we can get him out there) are putting on in January, we decided to throw down with some Fiasco of our own. Mia had never played before but it didn’t matter, she was a natural. She is the improv instructor after all, it was no surprise that she took to Fiasco like a fire to a bridge.

We went through 8 or 9 playsets before we found one we were all excited about. I find that play sets I don’t have reflexive knowledge of (like time periods or cultures I’m not familiar with) are less for for me because I spend a lot of time wondering if I’m “doing it right”. High school was something we had all done (albeit a long time ago) and we knew it would be fun and easy to pick up.

The relationships and needs were great. A pair of privileged rich kids going to public school for the “principle” of it, a Russian foreign exchange student and some trailer trash that couldn’t read, but had the drug connection (stolen from her not-dad Francis). Pretty early on it became clear that of the privileged three, we all wanted to be liked best of them all. Once one person got attention, everyone else wanted it, it was very “glee” in that way. A few not completely superficial bonds were formed but mostly we were all just trying to fill the bottomless pits of our inflated sense of self worth. The poor (as in broke, not unfortunate) Spandrelle was alternately needed, envied and ridiculed and in the end she fled our suburbia nightmare, despite her feelings for “The Bron” (aka Chester Bronston, aka Chet).

What rocked

Mia and Matt were both really good at stepping back (even if just for a second) and either interjecting some cool story element (which they kept calling hits, and I would bet money are the same thing as “bangs”) or asking “okay, what is this scene about?” We stayed really focused throughout the game, very rarely was random gonzo ridiculousness brought up because we were on the same page, telling stories about kids in high school, not about pulp action heroes.

Objects really shined in this game. One was a love letter torn into little pieces and then taped back together again. It was a pictogram that like a mad magazine depicted different things if you folded it (specifically the spurned love between teacher and student). We also had a illicit drugs, namely pot laced with angel dust. That latter elevated the stakes quite a bit, but we kept it about high school students doing dumb kid stuff (namely getting high a lot).

Fiona, aka Fi Fi, aka just Fi, and her “pet” Russian foreign exchange student were awesome frenemies. Both of them adored each other, when the were being praised or looked up to by the other, but at the same time constantly struggling for status. I don’t know if I could have done that roll, they kept the status games going back and forth all night, which was awesome, competing over who would play Juliet in the school play.

Gaming with Karen, Matt and Mia is awesome. They are a ton of fun and great storytellers. Can’t wait to do it again!

What could have improved

We all rolled very low scores (I think the best was a white 4, I know I got a 0), and it was tough to narrate that kind of horrible ending for all of us. It seemed like someone should have made it out happy.

Even though we used the “soft aftermath” rules, a 0 is still pretty horrible. I narrated Bron beat up by the drug dealers who he stole from, unsuccessfully ransomed (his parents were in the Caribbean an not taking calls) and finally thrown out of a car, off the road and into a ditch, wrapped in duct tape with his throwing arm (he was school quarterback of course) broken. It seemed bad, but I don’t know if it was bad enough for a 0 and yet still seemed like I was stretching things and going a little gonzo from the otherwise very mundane story we had been telling so far. I think next time, I’d focus on his social life being destroyed (maybe finding out he was adopted, or losing all social status, etc).

Actual Play – Fiasco on a Plane (11/4/2010)

Players: Sean Nittner, Jeremy Tidwell and Ashley
System: Fiasco, with some improvisation (we had no dice).

This was insane. This doesn’t happen. It was a gaming evangelist’s dream. I was on a plane flying to Neoncon, sitting next to Jerry, talking about gaming, and this cute, five foot nothing woman is next to me and keeps asking us what we’re talking about.

For a long time she thought we were talking about video games, eventually we broke through that and started getting her around to understanding it’s a bunch of people sitting around telling a story to each other. And get this… she still wants to know more. Cool right?

Eventually Jerry pulls Fiasco out of a bag and she starts reading it, and I mean reading it. Each page, completely. She gets through the first couple and I can tell she’s hooked. So I tell her to skip ahead to the play sets, she picks Boomtown and we start “rolling” up things by having people pick random numbers 1-6 without looking at the book.

Our game starts with spouses that hat each other, a dead body, and dollar store where all this shit is going down. Like your typical Fiasco game. We played out three scenes and then showed her what the twist would be like and what kind of end game results we could get.

The whole time she’s wide eyed and smiling, and Jerry and I are in nerdvana because someone out of the blue is gaming with us.

And it’s not real unless there are pictures so here’s a REALLY bad one I took from the plane holding my phone backwards.

http://yfrog.com/j4f64yj

All in all, it rocked. So…

What rocked

All in all of it.
Getting to play with Jerry for the first time.
Getting to play with Ashley for the first time.
Getting to play on a plane for the first time.

What could have improved

It would have been better if we had some dice as endgame was hard to explain. But we made it work.

Shutting the hell up and listening. We were trying to be “helpful” of course but there were a couple times I think we just overwhelmed Ashley with ideas. I was very proud of during the times when we just shut up and let her give us some ideas.

Actual Play – 4Ever (9/23/2010)

Players: Sean Nittner, Eric Fattig, and Chris Ruggiero
System: Fiasco
Playset: Touring Rock Band

This was my second Go Play SF Bay event and was as lot of fun. I think having a preset game (especially one that is so easy to pickup) was a great plan.

Fattig and I arrived a little late due to traffic and there was some scrambling around to find the right size play groups, but in only a few minutes we were settled in with Ruggiero and ready to roll.

Macklin had supplied the printed out play sets for us to sift through but the top one on the list instantly spoke to me: Touring Rock Band. Hell yes!

Characters – Connections

Lando – Turnpike

Relationship: The Grind (Boss/Roadie). Lando was in charge, Turnpike his miss treated (but figured out later on, very necessary) roadie.
Object: Sick as hell (Digital camera with stuffed memory card). Rocket’s camera with pictures that Lando and Turnpike took but neither of them knew how to get the pictures off.

Turnpike – Rocket

Location: Where ever the hell you are today (An elementary school). Dan Quayle Elementry, where both Lando and Rocket went to school, where Turnpike’s kid now goes, and where an interview with Lindsey Lohan would be taking place later this day.

Relationship: Bad Friends (You owe him your life). “I took a bullet for you fucker.” One day when Rocket was getting his fix some crazy meth head came to kill Turnpike and Rocket caught a bullet in his leg, something he likes to remind Turnpike of, often.

Rocket – Lando

Need: To Get Wasted (to handle the pressure of a TV interview). Said MTV interview with the recently sober Lindsey.
Relationship: Family (“Blood Brothers”). We cut our hands on a White Snake album in high school.

We decided he band had broken up and reformed three times, each time changing its name by adding a number. Naturally, the band was now named 4! 4-ever!

Game on

The game started with our beater van, filled with gear and an unimportant drummer pulling up to old Dan Quayle Elementary, parking over two spots and a median. Scaring children and ruffling the feathers of the vice principal Mr. Ferguson.

And as expected everything went downhill from there. Leon the drug dealer nearly killed the drummer shooting out the back window as Lando and Turnpike ripped him off. Rocket locked Furgeson in his “evidence” locker where he had a heart attack hearing about people defame the name of the honorable Mr. Quayle. The production agent, disgusted by Rocket and Turnpike actually has an odd attraction to Lando, which just means she follows him into all his mayham, including getting high in the boys bathroom, running from the drug dealer, and taking Linsdey the hospital after she got shot, so she could get some morphine.

At the end of the day, the drummer died (live wires are a bitch), the concert went on in the hospital parking lot, Officer Bruce Polanski arrested Lando and Rocket for possession but held off the other cops until the show could end so the guys could talk shop about bikes. Turpike and his wife (a nurse) had to go to counseling and Lindsey, well she didn’t stay sober for long… just as we all expected.

What rocked

Timing. There were five games of fiasco and they all finished in about 2.5-3 hours. The fixed scene structure and the easy game setup makes this game just awesome to fit in an evening’s time.

We kept it really mellow. For a game that can game that can go off the rails in a moment’s notice, I was really happy to keep it under 11. We all recognized that our characters weren’t going to make it big and were cool with that. Consequently we were totally callous about what color dice we were getting, I think we actually tried to keep them evenly mixed rather than going for one color or another. This really made the game shine for me.

We had so much excitement in this game. Chris and I kept giving each other high-fives and shouting “blood brothers”. It was killer energy.

All our names came up in play as part of our dialog. Like “C’mon Lando, he’s just a crack dealer, calm down.” Results: Rocket, Lando and Turnpike. We decided these were names we took in high school and never gave them up.

Memorable line of the night: Rocket (handcuffed but trying to answer a phone call from Turnpike): Kid, I’ll give you $5 if you reach in my pocket.

Lando became the inadvertent playboy, I was happy to send some love his way. None of it would last, but what does?

Three players is my favorite size.  With 4 I always feel like there’s a disconnect between the person opposite of you (since everyone has four things they are trying to juggle with the people on either side).  I haven’t played 5 but I figure that might have some trouble as well.  I really dig three though, it means everyone is REALLY connected to everyone else.

What could have been improved

An elementary school was really incongruous with everything else in the game. We tried to make it work, but it always felt like something of a stretch. Much fun being tasered in the halls until Rocket urinated in his pants, and then swapping pants with Turnpike (also in the hall) and then Turnpike taking the drummers pants (because apparently he wears swim trunks under them) in the parking lot, but still a bit of a stretch.

Dude… we totally forgot about the digital camera. That would have been a real hot potato. Ah well, the game rocked hard, regardless.

Actual Play – Fiasco: Suburbia (4/22/2010)

Players: Travis, Alec, Fattig and Sean
System: Fiasco

Two words: Cash Money! (actually spelled Cash $ by the character)

Our first attempt at Fiasco was a beautiful, awesome and awful fiasco. It revolved around a cement drive way and siding salesman named Terry, his young son William, his third wife that both he and William were sleeping with and a cock fighting bookie named Cash $.

Our first scenes started out ridiculous as William accidentally happened upon his step mom gambling in a seedy duplex with Cash $, and some stoner named Tommy the Tweaker. William came in to prime Cash $ for his dad’s sales pitch (the old father-son routine) but when he saw his step mom, everything went to hell.

Some notable scenes/quotes.

  • “Cash $ takes cash money only.”
  • “Stick it in the Money Pot.”
  • Cash $ running around in nothing but his underwear with a handgun holstered in his briefs.
  • The feds showing up and thinking Terry was a criminal named “The Graveler” who buried bodes under his cement driveways.
  • Terry breaking in the morgue to get his son laid one way or the other.
  • Cindy nearly making out with the football team, only to find out they were trying to kidnap he because of the lotto jackpot she just won.
  • William being his normal awkward self and women were attracted to him because of the internet videos of him and Cindy making out.
  • Terry telling the same girls “Now my boy is straight so he can’t do both of you girls at the same time, he’ll have to fuck you sequentially”
  • Cash $ in the end finally having his dying wish fulfilled: Two guys on one girl. A sex act renamed “The Cash $”

What rocked

I laughed so hard at Cash $ it hurt. Hell, I laughed at all of us so hard it hurt.

There was never any difficulty figuring out who had narrative authority. We all just went with the first thing someone said that sounded cool. At one point we had a super fast vote on one outcome and then flew from there.

Death, as it turns out, has nothing to do with how well you turn out. Cash $ was shot (a few times) and died in Act 2 but he became a cultural hero and his seedy duplex was made a historical monument.

What could have been improved

Wow, were we juvenile and gratuitously violent. This wasn’t as bad as our first Penny game, but I considered not writing an AP on it because I didn’t want to offend people reading this. As is, I left some of the worst parts out.

There was some times when we struggled to make any sense of the scenes we created. The narrative just became too wacky. We did fine in the end but sometimes we were really stretching. I think a big reason for this is that we didn’t know what the crime was going to be so we all kept throwing out potential crimes. We ended with lots of crime that weren’t the focus and a not-crime (i.e. the feds with bad intel) being in the spotlight. Very “Burn after Reading”.

Two of the characters (William and Cindy) lacked direction in the beginning and so they ended up in scenes with nothing to push for. Cindy became just a oversexed nympho when I know Travis wanted to do more with her than that. William was practically in shock most of the game and when he did do things “like pull a gun on his dad and demand he answer ‘Who’s the man dad? Who’s the MAN’” it was funny but a bit too late for him to actually push for something he wanted.

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