Thursday, April 18, 2013

Players: Marc, Megan, Jobe, Alex, Mycorah

We playtested my brother's playset for Fiasco. It's called The Breach. Here's what I wrote to him as feedback:

So I played your playset at the most recent meetup. Here's how it went down:

We had five players. Our characters were Cassie Calloway (me), Francis Miller, Moose, Ben R., and Dr. Staumbos. We ended up with these combos (listed as the items and characters who shared them):

Farmland: in a field God knows where + Romance: Last night was a mistake (Francis Miller and Cassie Calloway)
Friendship: Poker buddies + Just out of town: Broken down on the side of the road (Cassie Calloway and Moose)
Crime: Blackmailer and blackmailee + Into a virtual world: Characters in a story game (Moose and Ben R.)
A bit off: Cultists + To Get Laid: by literally anyone, please (Ben R. and Dr. Staumbos)
To Get Even: with a lying family member + Work: Doctor and Patient (Dr. Staumbos and Francis Miller)

Our Tilt was Guilt: someone panics + Mayhem: a frantic chase.

The details of our story aren't really that important for your testing purposes, I think, so I won't recount them. It was quite literally a fiasco.

I enjoyed the game and I think the items from the playset work well together. It's sort of funny that we managed to roll the "characters in a story game" option in the very first play. I guess that's how things go sometimes. Anyway, we ended up using the Anomaly as sort of a shared "concept" for the two characters who had it. We decided that while all of us might have some, full, or no knowledge of the nature of the anomaly, those two characters did have some ideas about it or were otherwise deeply connected to it in some way.

But here's the thing: the anomaly was not our central focus during gameplay. In fact, it only really came up because we forced it to come up. So I think that if you're okay with that, you don't need to change it, but if you want the anomaly to be the thing that everyone is working with, you may want to increase its presence in the game.

Furthermore, we didn't have any connections to the DHS or anyone researching the event. If this is fine, then fine, but if your intention was to have interactions between the scientists and the townsfolk, then perhaps a few more such links would be ideal. Again, it's sort of up to what you want from the set.

I also noticed that when it came to describing the nature of the anomaly and how it works, we sort of looked to the players who had that card between them. This put a lot of pressure on them to come up with stuff, which kind of made them struggle. Perhaps a note about how you want that power structure to work would be good.

All in all I think the playset works well. I'll let you know if I get a chance to try it again.

Should I ask? Or is it better left unknown?

I added this to the end of the playset. I feel like it does a decent job of explaining how the system works, but I worry that it is too long. Thoughts?

Using Anomalies
This is merely a few examples of how anomalies can be used. There are nigh infinite ways to use them.
For this example, we have four players: Sarah, Amaya, John, and Kaiden.
Let's get a basic set up:

Sarah and Amaya are Dorm Mates
Amaya and John are Adulterers
John and Kaiden are Nuclear Scientist Partners
Kaiden and Sarah are Spy versus Spy's
Sarah and Amaya need to get the truth about the town's dark history
Amaya and John need to get away with murder
John and Kaiden are at a corner booth at Young's Pub

Okay, now that that is all settled, the anomaly is decided.

Scenario 1: Kaiden and Sarah get the To the year 3000 anomaly.

Kaiden and Sarah decide that they want to make the rules of the anomaly themselves. They talk and inform the others that the anomaly is a one way door, so only those that have gone through it know where it ends up. They also decide that the first person to go through it, if anyone does, gets to decide what the year 3000 is like, but they have to keep it reasonable.
As the game goes on, John murders his target and establishes that he will dump the body in The Breach. Amaya pushes him into The Breach with the body to end their adulterous relationship. John then decides that the future is a desolate wasteland that fell to nuclear war long ago. He dies of radiation poisoning in the aftermath.

Scenario 2: Kaiden and Sarah get the To 30 seconds ago anomaly.
Kaiden and Sarah decide that the group should get to make the rules on this one. The group decides that this is a one way door, and takes you back 30 seconds every time, up until the point where the anomaly appeared. They also decide that each jump moves you to another universe where that had already happened, and that explains why no one remembers seeing themselves before.
Kaiden, being a Nuclear Scientist spy, is resolved to go all the way back to see what caused The Breach to open in the first place. The group resolves, based on his choice of a negative die outcome, that his body is cut in half by The Breach disappearing half-way through his travel, and the displacement of the two parts of his body across all the different universes at once is what created The Breach in the first place.

Scenario 3: Kaiden and Sarah get the “I don't know what it does, but it's getting bigger” anomaly.

Kaiden and Sarah decide the group should get to pick what this means. They all agree that they should make it up as they go along.
Amaya and Sarah dig into the town's history and discover ancient dark rituals that mention The Breach.
Meanwhile, John and Kaiden a measuring the effects of the anomaly when they decide that The Breach has grown so large that is starting to cut into the earth.
Later the group decides that the town's dark history is that a group of necromancers attempted to summon forth a dark god, but only succeeded in merging his realm with the earth. The anomaly is the other world trying to break through and will eventually destroy the universe.
In the aftermath, Sarah sacrifices herself to stop the merging.


Scenario 4: Kaiden and Sarah get the Where everything is in claymation anomaly.

Kaiden and Sarah decide that they want to make the rules themselves. They decide that The Breach goes both ways, but the claymation universe is an empty replica. Entering The Breach turns the person into a claymation version of themselves.
Sarah and Amaya sneak onto the DHS base on a dare and enter the claymation world. They get weirded out by it and decide not to go back. This is the only use of The Breach in the whole game, outside of being mentioned. Instead Sarah and Amaya spend their time trying to discover the dark secret of the town college and why the western wing is always closed. John, as Amaya's lover and physics teacher, turns out to be a still-at-large serial killer who murdered four other students in that wing whom he had romanced, and the school shut the wing down and hid the truth to keep their reputation intact. He plans to kill Amaya as well, when it is revealed that Sarah is an undercover cop and Kaiden is an undercover FBI agent, who have both been looking into the murders. John is taken into custody.

These few scenarios are just examples of what can be done with anomalies. They can be central to the plot, completely unimportant, or anywhere in between and it's totally up to the players.

Have fun! (and try not to die.)

I dig this.

So basically the two players can "frame" themselves or let the whole group "frame" together, much like the scenes.

This should probably take place right at the beginning of the game, or at least be decided then. It's important to let the group know who has authority over the anomaly and then maintain that status, because otherwise toes will be stepped on and feathers will be ruffled.

Great examples. Really creative stuff!