More Fiasco

So we decided to try out the Wild West setting for Fiasco. The first thing I noticed was that the historical/mythic setting kind of makes for a loosey-goosier approach to reality, which was not helped when we dragged a twelve-pound howitzer into the mix. We also played with the character cards from Bang! to add an additional element to the characters, which I'm on the fence about - On the one hand, it gave us ready-made character portraits and a vague sense of personality; on the other it put an additional requirement on the character aside from the two relationships (and a random one at that - the relationships et al. are quasi-random anyway, but there's still that sense of building which just handing out cards lacks). All this may well just be me overreacting to how the system defined my character rather forcefully - that is, by removing his face.

This week's tangled web was set in a small town on the Utah-Kansas border. The players:
Bill Noface (Me): See what I mean? Gunslinger, opium fiend, and horribly maimed by the aforementioned howitzer in a particularly deranged lover's tiff with:
Vera Custer (Matt): Mail-order bride with a Moose und Skvirrel accent and an idiosyncratic interpretation of motherly love. Currently on the run from her orderer/husband:
Johnny Kitsch¹ (Greg): Perpetually drunk Pinkerton², got lost in the desert outside town on his way to deliver justice to:
Uncle Will (Rachel): Kindly avuncular store owner, and twisted gang leader/drug dealer/faith healer/bastard. A real piece of work, this guy. Provides "Chinese medicine" to Bill Noface, closing the circuit.

The first act involved a serious discussion about the exact size and portability of the Howitzer; a flashback to how Bill got his handle in a showdown over Vera's baby that was resolved, naturally, with the Howitzer; Kitsch staggering into town and getting rolled by gang members; Uncle Will sending his goons after Noface and the latter demonstrating that his lack of a face in no way diminished his ability to hand out hot mayhem, only to be arrested by his former romantic nemesis (who didn't recognize him as such, what with the lack of a face and all); a tense showdown at Vera's hideout in the woods in which it was revealed that she'd kept her baby³ , Uncle Will menacing the tot in an attempt to compel her loyalty, and Vera gunning him down in cold blood; Kitsch convincing the drink-sodden Sheriff Perkins of his authority after his badge was stolen and finally Uncle Will crawling to his feet and prising the bullet out of his pocket bible.

With the sheer amount of craziness that went down in that first act, the second was a much more tightly-focused bloodbath, taking place almost entirely in the high street of the town (which, in retrospect, we really ought to have named - the town, not the street, although ideally both would have been good). Bill escaped from jail, met up with Vera and finally asked her the question that had been on his mind for uh, however long it has been: "Did you maim me on purpose or by accident?". The answer was drowned out by the sound of gunfire as Uncle Will arrived to settle some serious hash. Bill Noface died face - uh, front-of-head-down in the dirt, Uncle Will was torn up by all manner of karmic bulletry, and even Johnny Kitsch managed to catch one across his chops. The only one to emerge entirely unscathed was Vera, probably because she was still carrying the baby in a sling (apparently our collective censor wasn't willing to murder the child, but was willing to have him front-and-center at a gunfight and leave him with a mother who'd never been arsed to name him).

The epilogue saw Vera joining up with the Pinkertons and Johnny wandering Europe drinking expensive booze through what was left of his face. I swear there was something about an orphanage, but by that point it was pretty drunk out.

¹ Another thing about using Bang! characters is that a lot of them are goofy puns on various cowboy-related personalities, which could flavour the game in unintended ways. Haven't decided yet whether this is a bug or a feature. Also, it meant that we had a Will and a Bill to keep track of, which wasn't actually a problem since they were PCs and thus more likely to be referred to by the player's names or with the generic "my guy".

² Disappointed we didn't look up the Pinkertons on the wikipedia before playing, if only because of their spectacularly creepy slogan.

³ Although we never did find out if it was Bill's or Johnny's, or indeed if those were the only options.

Fiasco actual play and such

So I ran Fisaco with the Victoria Gamers and holy shit, does this sucker run smooth. As predicted, once I managed to wrap their heads around the basic idea of the system (i.e. your "player character" should be a reprehensible person you can and ideally should want awful things to happen to), everything else was gravy boats.

I was Brendon Stanwick, corporate lawyer and general fuck-arounder, Greg was "Cheddar" Ricky Croegstedder, drug supplier and Great Terrible Beardy Man, Brian was "Revulvih" Cockburn¹, bisexual champion fuck-arounder and drug dealer, Matt was Hugh Buntington, Revulvih's ex-spouse, now homeless and living in the local drainage canal, and Rachel was Duffy Buntington, the trophy wife I was fucking around with (also Hugh's sister). The action started with me hitting Cheddar Ricky's brother Chad with my car, instantly killing him, and my hiding his garbage-bag-wrapped corpse in my garage, with the help of the trophy wife who was implicated in my crime (and, we agreed, left horrible teeth marks on a personal area of my character because she was, uh, "busy" when the accident happened).

From there, the consequences involved my drug-addled wife, Revulvih convincing Hugh to rob my house on his behalf, Duffy's husband Herman Smalls (a Korean war vet we all agreed was played by Clint Motherfucking Eastwood) showing up, me dumping the corpse with minimal fanfare in the drainage canal and then slamming my car into a least two other vehicles (one of which was an ambulance), Revulvih fucking my wife in my bed, Hugh choking Revulvih to death out of jealousy, Cheddar Ricky fighting Herman Smalls to the serious personal injury on (and off) the roof of my house, and more or less all the main players getting arrested, although a surprising number of us survived and left jail without charges due to high rolls and odd favours. Overall, one of the best one-shots I've ever played in, and now that they know how the system (such as it is) works, I'm eager to see what they do with the other playsets.

¹ Yes, I admit that when he said he wanted to play a thuggish drug dealer, I suggested he take a tough-sounding word and misspell it. How that ended up as "Corky goes to Sex Ed", we may never know.