I just asked my folks if they'd try a game of Fiasco with me. I figured this could be an easy-ish sell: it's quick (2 hours or less), it's simple (even by normie standards), and it's based in heist-movies-gone-awry.
They turned me down, sadly.
But their objections were interesting: my dad said, "Thanks for offering, but you don't just play those things once." To which I replied, aha, Fiasco is a one-shot game! He gave a murmur of approval, but did not change his answer. I will follow up with him - his "real" reason may be something like "I'm not interested in that activity for any length of time", or he may change his mind at some point.
My mom, in response to hearing how long the game could take, said, "A couple of hours? That's like playing a game of Risk!" To which I replied, "No, really, I mean two hours. Literally a couple." That did not change her opinion of the idea.
Conclusion: something absurdly quick and one-shot, like Happy Birthday Robot, might be in order if I ask them again at some point.
Happy *grumble grumble* Thanksgiving. I feel like kind of a tool for taking their rejection a little personally - but it's one of those awkward situations wherein someone gives a misinformed reason to not want to do something, but may also have no particular interest in doing it, even if the confusion is cleared up. We'll see.
edit: Christ, but I have no interest in doing the whole "no, really, it's fun" routine. I don't think I'm going to do that anymore; it depresses me and usually doesn't work. Blech.
Showing posts with label fiasco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiasco. Show all posts
Friday, November 26, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
I didn't know the SLA had a Yukon chapter..
The excitement of reading the following snippet of chat is one big reason why I love sharing RPGs with new people:
Rebecca: oh man! so could we maybe work together to come up with a rpg sometime? i have a couple random ideas percolating but it'd be fun to get yer thoughts and stuff
Rebecca: oh man! so could we maybe work together to come up with a rpg sometime? i have a couple random ideas percolating but it'd be fun to get yer thoughts and stuff
10:09 AM me: dude write 'em down
i absolutely want to hear your thoughts
can i quote what you just said on my blag, btw? :)
Rebecca: cool!
The game definitely suffered a little for our paucity of players in that the dice system didn't *quite* work as planned - during the Tilt, you're going to appoint only two players to share elements for the big twist, pretty much guaranteed. Only two. So, naturally, the giving-away-dice rule for Act One was a little meaningless, in our situation. Still, as a learning game, it was fine.
Speaking of which, I pulled two little tweaks (quite transparently, to my credit) to make things easier, especially at first - we rolled to see who would go first, and then I suggested, when the dice went B's way, that she be the one to *choose* who went first. She chose me, iirc ^_^ Secondly, I would often ask her whether she'd rather Establish or Resolve the scene when it was my turn (partly, admittedly, because I was cool with whatever and I didn't often have huge scene ideas between scenes, only during them).
Overall, I think the game would benefit (for me) by playing it with the recommended 3+ people, just to see how that'd go. Also, Fiasco's in-scene mechanics are very hand-wavey; dice-rolling and number-counting definitely bracket the Acts, and we have a Tilt and an Aftermath in there, too, but, man, mid-scene, it's kind of weird when violence happens and nobody has any mechanical way of saying how it's going to go down.
The setup system is so friggin' cool, though, that I think a little early-00's style "story-vision" (i.e. "like, man, we don't want our system to get in the way of your ideas!") in the design is tolerable :)
Now we're onto discussing her idea for a game about patients in a medical facility who are trying to escape. An idea for a skill/trait: I Feel Fine, used to pass for a normie when needed and, maybe, to resist the staffers' attempts to administer treatment. It's very avant garde and intriguing in its subject matter; go Becca! ^_^
This chat came on the heels of me and B playing some Fiasco the other night; as soon as we'd finished, pretty much, B told me she had some ideas for a game design of her own. I swear, RPGs just do this to people, and it's awesome.
Onto the game: a couple of adult siblings return to their childhood home, a science station in northern Canada. They find a body with an old friend's photo nail-gunned to the chest, and proceed to get into all sorts of acid-dropping, cult-following, full-auto gunfire kind of fun.
Things were a little slow at first, as B got a sense of what the game expected of her, so to speak. She relied a lot on describing the internal state of characters in her control, and we definitely (in general) had a somewhat fast and loose "ownership" of various characters.
Given that there were only two players, sometimes it got a little funky deciding who would play whom. Overall, though, we made it work.
The setup was something she really, really enjoyed (as did I), and I think that's wicked-cool: I love me some randomized plot-seed generation! Onto the game: a couple of adult siblings return to their childhood home, a science station in northern Canada. They find a body with an old friend's photo nail-gunned to the chest, and proceed to get into all sorts of acid-dropping, cult-following, full-auto gunfire kind of fun.
Things were a little slow at first, as B got a sense of what the game expected of her, so to speak. She relied a lot on describing the internal state of characters in her control, and we definitely (in general) had a somewhat fast and loose "ownership" of various characters.
Given that there were only two players, sometimes it got a little funky deciding who would play whom. Overall, though, we made it work.
The game definitely suffered a little for our paucity of players in that the dice system didn't *quite* work as planned - during the Tilt, you're going to appoint only two players to share elements for the big twist, pretty much guaranteed. Only two. So, naturally, the giving-away-dice rule for Act One was a little meaningless, in our situation. Still, as a learning game, it was fine.
Speaking of which, I pulled two little tweaks (quite transparently, to my credit) to make things easier, especially at first - we rolled to see who would go first, and then I suggested, when the dice went B's way, that she be the one to *choose* who went first. She chose me, iirc ^_^ Secondly, I would often ask her whether she'd rather Establish or Resolve the scene when it was my turn (partly, admittedly, because I was cool with whatever and I didn't often have huge scene ideas between scenes, only during them).
Overall, I think the game would benefit (for me) by playing it with the recommended 3+ people, just to see how that'd go. Also, Fiasco's in-scene mechanics are very hand-wavey; dice-rolling and number-counting definitely bracket the Acts, and we have a Tilt and an Aftermath in there, too, but, man, mid-scene, it's kind of weird when violence happens and nobody has any mechanical way of saying how it's going to go down.
The setup system is so friggin' cool, though, that I think a little early-00's style "story-vision" (i.e. "like, man, we don't want our system to get in the way of your ideas!") in the design is tolerable :)
Now we're onto discussing her idea for a game about patients in a medical facility who are trying to escape. An idea for a skill/trait: I Feel Fine, used to pass for a normie when needed and, maybe, to resist the staffers' attempts to administer treatment. It's very avant garde and intriguing in its subject matter; go Becca! ^_^
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Quick update - new games and new players
Once some actual scenes get underway, I'll have something more substantial to share.
For now - - the Dwarf Fortress character creation session was a success; we'll have an explorer, a disgraced military officer, and a heartbroken poet all trying to run a settlement in the middle of the jungle. We'll see how it rolls!
Secondly, B and I made characters - and a situation - for Fiasco. We used the On the Ice playset; we have a couple of siblings, children of scientists, who have returned to ice station McMurdo (purpose unknown yet), only to discover a body in a hunter's shed. Polaroids have been nail-gunned(!) to the dead man's chest, and there's a note, in Sharpie: "Your move". The Polaroids depict the deputy director of the station talking to someone - since the kiddos (now adults) don't really recognize anybody who's around the station these days, they aren't sure what the hell's going on. First session to follow soon!
For now - - the Dwarf Fortress character creation session was a success; we'll have an explorer, a disgraced military officer, and a heartbroken poet all trying to run a settlement in the middle of the jungle. We'll see how it rolls!
Secondly, B and I made characters - and a situation - for Fiasco. We used the On the Ice playset; we have a couple of siblings, children of scientists, who have returned to ice station McMurdo (purpose unknown yet), only to discover a body in a hunter's shed. Polaroids have been nail-gunned(!) to the dead man's chest, and there's a note, in Sharpie: "Your move". The Polaroids depict the deputy director of the station talking to someone - since the kiddos (now adults) don't really recognize anybody who's around the station these days, they aren't sure what the hell's going on. First session to follow soon!
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