Players: Mike, Megan, Tim, Jonathan

We only had access to the core rulebook, and thus used the Suburbia playset, which led I think to a 'classic' Fiasco experience, as will be made clear below.

Starring...

Oliver Sanders (Tim): A basically decent guy whose only crime is loving ladies accessories a little too well, especially small purses. The only customer of the extremely upscale boutique The Well-Dressed Lady, owned by...

Beatrice Gillycuddy (Jonathan): Proprietor of aforementioned boutique, which sells only the most exclusive, extortionately priced and useless of accessories, and yet which manages to stay in business. This is because it's the front for a booming marijuana-dealing op, masterminded by Beatrice and her second cousin...

Audrey Gillycuddy-Smith (Megan): Blessed with a green thumb, which she puts to use growing aforementioned crop in an isolated part of the local Megachurch's grounds. She and Beatrice are both disowned scions of a large family which seems to largely consist of sleazy uncles. Her young son Xander goes to daycare at the megachurch, which is run by...

Larry Spelnarz (Mike): Whose only crime is the four terabytes of child pornography on his computer's hard drives. An apparently upstanding citizen, who has never actually acted on his prurient urges. Has a history with Oliver which I'm not sure was completely defined in play, but which made him the perfect scapegoat in Larry's eyes.

The story began with Larry and Audrey, Audrey picking up Xander from daycare, and Larry uncomfortably watching news of a FBI crackdown on a paedophilia ring in the next town. Larry gaffed and made a possibly revealing remark about his proclivities, which unsettled Audrey and had her spirit Xander away rapidly in her borrowed minivan, which may or may not have been stuffed with the unexpected large harvest of weed she had just retrieved.

Heading over to the Well-Dressed Lady, she dropped off Xander with Beatrice, along with the minivan. Their discussion of the impending drugs deal and meet with a Dr Jones (a professor at the city university and consequent distributor) was interrupted by the arrival of Oliver, who seemed actually interested in buying something. Settling on a pair of pricy purses, he swiftly left, only for Beatrice to find his credit card was over the limit.

Consequently, Oliver got a call from a pair of creepy (and alarmingly authentically played by Mike and Megan) collections agencies. He managed to fob them off for a few days, however. Meanwhile, Larry was covering his tracks by wiping his hard-drives in as final a way as possible - electromagnets and acid were involved, thanks to a Child's Chemistry Set at the daycare. (We learned later through flashback that one of the hard-drives was planted at Oliver's house, to further put the authorities off the trail.)

While this was going on, Beatrice was on her way to the meet with Doctor Jones, but, unused to transporting such a large quantity of product, was nervous enough to invite a traffic cop's suspicions by pulling away at high speed. The trunk of the minivan as a result bursting open and spraying a huge quantity of loose leaf weed majestically across the road as she tore away may also have invited the interest of the authorities.

There were a couple of flashbacks where we discovered how Audrey and Beatrice resumed contact after their respective disgraces and how they devised their money-making scheme, and how Oliver's wife left him (hint: muskrat fur lined purses were involved).

Larry, meanwhile, decided to make sure his hard-drives were wholly unrecoverable by burning them at a certain isolated part of the church's grounds. Surprise surprise, he stumbled across both the beautiful, expansive ranks of healthy cannabis plants and a startled Audrey, who immediately fled. Larry started a blaze but, inevitably, it spread to the plants with predictable results.

The alarmed Audrey sped home, to receive a call from the beleaguered Beatrice, whose five-hour high-speed chase with the police was the stuff of live news broadcast. At that moment, the dishevelled Beatrice burst in, with a gun in one hand and an unusually placid Xander being dragged by the other. A shootout with the police ensued. Then the FBI turned up. Audrey tried to cause a diversion by calling 911 and having Xander accused 'The bad man at the church' of molesting him, but it fell flat due to Xander's less than stellar acting skills.

It did warrant a patrol car being sent to the megachurch, where the police found, by chance, Oliver, who had headed over to pray for forgiveness for his purse-related sins, and been waylaid by the gusting clouds of fragrant smoke from the blaze, which had now consumed most of the church grounds and was impinging on the building. Arresting the unfortunate fellow, the cops caught sight of a fleeing Beatrice, who had escaped the shootout and headed for safety on a scooter kept for just such an eventuality at The Well-Dressed Lady...

The denouements ended up pretty interesting, thanks to the vagaries of dice:

Beatrice turned out to have accidentally shot a FBI agent, and, after being caught after she fell from her scooter and broke her spine, went to prison for a Very Long Time. After being released, she tried to go back to the arms of her family, but was brutally spurned.

Audrey had Xander taken away from her and put up for fostering, but at least didn't suffer any legal fallout.

Oliver was released without charge, and later actually managed to find fellow accessory enthusiasts (probably via the Internet). He actually made some friends and learned to control his addiction, somewhat.

And Larry, arguably the least sympathetic character and most worthy of some sort of consequences, got away scot-free, adopting Xander and seeing him graduate from Yale, and continuing to never act on his unsavoury urges.

This story had two high speed chases, crime, and many things catching fire, and thus I think was an accurate representation of the source material. For reference, the tilts were both failure: A Stupid Plan Executed Flawlessly and You Thought It Was Dealt With, But It Wasn't, which explained some of the wackier occurrences in the second act.

This was definitely a good time. I'm sure I've forgotten something, so anyone else feel free to chip in. This is also my first 'What We Played' so any comments on that front would be appreciated too!