Fiasco
THINGS CAN GO WRONG, FAST…
…Maybe some dude from youth group talked you into boosting a case of motor oil, but now your cousin is dead in a swamp and you killed him. Maybe you and your girlfriend figured you could scare your wife into a divorce, but things went pear-shaped and now a gang of cranked-up Mexicans with latex gloves and a pit bull are looking for you.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Fiasco is inspired by cinematic tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong – inspired by films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan. You’ll play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It won’t go well for them, to put it mildly, and in the end it will probably all go south in a glorious heap of jealousy, murder, and recrimination. Lives and reputations will be lost, painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, your guy just might end up back where he started.
Fiasco is a GM-less game for 3-5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with six-sided dice and no preparation. During a game you will engineer and play out stupid, disastrous situations, usually at the intersection of greed, fear, and lust. It’s like making your own Coen brothers movie, in about the same amount of time it’d take to watch one.
Praise
“Damn this Fiasco game is ingenious” – John Rogers, Executive Producer and Writer, Leverage.
“Fiasco was one of the greatest storytelling RPGs I’ve ever played. I highly recommend it.” – Wil Wheaton
“Fiasco is hands-down one of the best RPGs I’ve ever read. Can’t wait to play.” – Gareth Michael Skarka
“Fiasco … is really as good as everyone says. It’s a great pick-up game, and it runs in just a couple of hours. The game really delivers on its premise, a fast paced tale of foolish people getting in way over their heads. I’ll definitely be
playing this again.” – Brennan Taylor
“The game’s design is such a thing of beauty, making so much with so little visible effort, that any game designer, especially RPG designer, owes it to himself to play enough to understand how it works in play.” – Gerald Cameron
“You go from 0 to awesome in 2.5 hours. This is a game you can whip out on those nights when some people can’t make your regular game, and everyone who is there will have a great time telling a really solid story.” – John Marron
Honors
Winner, Best Support, 2009 Indie RPG Awards
Judge’s Spotlight Award, 2009 ENnie Awards
Playset of the Month
Each month in 2010 we’ll feature a new playset for Fiasco, providing a whole new setting with loads of details to keep the game fresh.
January
Touring Rock Band
February
Gangster London
March
Last Frontier
April
Lucky Strike
May
Flyover
June
Reconstruction
July
Manna Hotel
August
1913 New York
September
Transatlantic
October
Products
Reviews
- RPG.net Review by Jeff Moeller
- “What’s Not to Love?” – Critical-hits.com Review
- Motley is a Fool’s Uniform Review
- Here Be Gamers: Episode 26 – a Fiasco!
- Gnome Stew’s review, Part One:Rules, Dice, Friends and Trouble
- Gnome Stew’s review, Part Two: Why You Should Play This Game
- Indie RPG and the Temple of Doom – Fiasco
- RPG.net review by Megan Robertson
Actual Play
- The Debt (Gangster London)
- A Failed Suicide, A House Fire, and a Sleazy Manager Eaten by a Bear
- Fiasco in Vegas – the story (part one, part two) and the elements
- “Fiasco, It’s Not” – Chris Sims AP on Critical-Hits.com
- The Guatemalans Ate The Dolphin
- a VoIP Fiasco. a Skype-based AP
- Revenge and Murder in Suburbia
- Endgame Minicon – Fiasco Report (Gangster London)
- Prog Metal Hell
- Going for a short walk, may be some time, gotta stab a dude
- A Few Bad Apples
- It ended in tears, and smoking helicopter debris
- Tina at New Outlook
- Bag Plant Blues
- Leopards and Diamonds
- Billsborough Nocturne
- Showdown at Cornish Creek
- I Speak for the Penguins
- Man-Tool of the Spivey Clan
- Settling Scores on the Gulf Coast
- Hockey Night in Buffalo