Schlocky superhero fantasy!

The Chef, aka Bryan Tallin (Drew): head chef of Pinnacle's finest restaurant, Top Pot (no relation), with mystic sauce-based powers driven by his wooden-spoon staff. Very dedicated - in the past, his mistakes cost innocent lives, and he cannot allow that ever to happen again. Costume palette: white, red and yellow. His sidekick is:
Kid Kumin, aka Billie Ritter (Lizzie): cuisine student and spice-based hero. Costume palette: orange & yellow. Her parents, Betty and Harold, were better-known as Mr. and Mrs. Justice - slain by Black Goat, who, unbeknownst to all, is also Billie's BFF and room-mate...
Black Goat, aka Callie Metaxas (Sam): no inherent powers, but a genetics <i>wunderkind</i>. Her deal is making monsters: she has a big arm-monster that fits over her normal arm for fights, but right now her main project is Andromedan brain slugs. Costume palette: black/green/gold. She tries to adhere to a brutal utilitarian policy, which is why she killed the Justice duo - they attracted so many supervillains that their collateral damage outweighed their benefit. Acts as a crimefighting mask, but most see her as a villain. Strict utilitarianism is pretty brutal for an actual human to live by, though, but she gets by thanks to her masked-only cathartic sex arrangement with...
Vigilante, aka Dave Johnson (Seth). A gadget-based billionaire type. Not entirely opposed to killing, but really not keen on the utilitarian thing. Palette: black/grey/purple. Puts on a gravelly voice when masked, which hurts his throat when maintained too long. Fiance of The Chef, both out-of-mask and in.

At the outset, Black Goat had already used Billie as a guinea-pig for the mind-slugs, mostly using them to make her a tidier room-mate. In the early story, we mostly did establishing capers: Black Goat ran around stealing rare DNA to improve her brain-slugs (a Patagonian death-fish from the tank in Bryan's restaurant, a string of Alien Sausage from the International District), hooked up with Vigilante (and overheard a phone call revealing that he was in an out-of-mask relationship), and barely concealed her secret identity from her roomie. Kid Kumin developed suspicions about Vigilante's involvement with Goat, and repeatedly tried to persuade Bryan about this.

Jealous of Vigilante's unmasked relationship, Black Goat sent a mind-slug after him, with instructions to dedicate himself solely to his masked life. Vigilante shows up at his own wedding to break up with the Chef; the Chef suspects something weird is up, and Vigilante goes rogue. End of first half.

After the Tilt, a Main Plot emerged: the President was visiting the Chef's restaurant, and Black Goat intended to use this as an opportunity to brain-slug him. A heartbroken Bryan was neglecting his Chef persona, while Vigilante sold his mansion and dedicated himself to an exhausting, 24-hour crimefighting schedule - one that left no time for getting busy with Black Goat. Those brain-slugs are pretty literal about their commands. Frustrated, Goat started making mistakes, giving away vital clues to her identity and scheme.

With brain-slugs distributed to key players in government, a sudden bipartisan mood instated universal healthcare, ended wars and began massive programs to end poverty. But the net was tightening around Black Goat, who abandoned her experiment-riddled room and fled to Washington, availing herself of the security services to fight back against her pursuers.

Ultimately, the coup worked perfectly. Kid Kumin, defeated in her Final You-Killed-My-Parents showdown, was exiled to life imprisonment on a spice island; the Chef was not so fortunate, and ended up languishing in a CIA prison. Vigilante... was left on a cliffhanger, marching to a second showdown with Black Goat.

Installed in Washington, Black Goat rebranded herself as Dark Liberty, first superhero of the nation and kingpin of the secret government. Having destroyed the only two people she was ever close to, however, she had no protection from her own guilt and angst. Eventually, she fixed her own misery by shutting it off with a brain-slug: we left her perfectly content, perfectly isolated, the living embodiment of her own principles, and with an alien parasite sucking on her brain. (Gloomiest Fantastic ending ever.)

The cool thing about this was that Callie's troublemaking in the first half totally distracted the heroes for the second. Her chickens didn't so much come home to roost as spread out and form a commando advance guard; the heroes were so busy being pissed off about their own ruined lives, chasing revenge, moping and fighting with one another that they didn't get around to doing anything about the A-plot.

Anyway. I had an awful lot of fun, but in retrospect I was a bit worried that I had hogged the limelight. Part of that was that there were three obvious heroes and one potential villain, so Black Goat got into other people's scenes a lot; and the basic superhero plot has the heroes being reactive, responding to villainous threats rather than coming up with schemes.

Part of the issue might have been that we didn't have very active Needs, so there was a need for more external scheming. And things were slowed down a bit by incomplete knowledge about masked identities. This gave us some cool moments - Black Goat inadvertently giving Kid Kumin beneficial mind-slugs because she was guilty about leaving her room-mate Billie with the lease - but overall it was tricky to work with.

Still, one of the more enjoyable Fiascos I've played in a while - I hope everyone else had as good a time.

One thing that worked really well was getting the right amount of parody of the setting. We got to have our fun getting various superhero tropes in (Seth doing the more modern super gritty super hero shtick, Lizzie and I doing the 80s style try and cram as terrible puns into your dialog as possible superhero and sidekick deal), but never got weighed down by having to strictly adhere to anything. I've played games of Fiasco where the setting didn't really seem to matter a whole lot, and also games that got a little railroaded by the setting. I think this game was a good example of why Fiasco tends to work best with a group of people who all have a basic grasp of the setting but are willing to let the setting take a step back if necessary for the benefit of the story.

Also the need to get laid between Vigilante and Black Goat was a huge driving force for the whole plot. So actually the needs were partially what was responsible for injecting Black Goat into some of the scenes rather than being completely absent. So yes, our setup did help set the stage for Black Goat being a main focus of the story, but I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. Ultimately we told and interesting story and everyone was involved and for me that's all that really matters.

So yes, our setup did help set the stage for Black Goat being a main focus of the story, but I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. Ultimately we told an interesting story and everyone was involved and for me that's all that really matters.

Yeah, I just tend to second-guess myself in games where my character takes the spotlight. I mean, I know that spotlights are Good Things for narrative, and that just because they happen sometimes doesn't mean I'm automatically being a pushy jerk.

I think this game was a good example of why Fiasco tends to work best with a group of people who all have a basic grasp of the setting but are willing to let the setting take a step back if necessary for the benefit of the story.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Genre is at its very best in Fiasco when everybody's got a comfortable level of knowledge about it but nobody's heavily invested or inclined to take it all that seriously - this is why Boom Town is, for my money, one of the most reliably fun playsets. (And why Los Angeles 1936 is difficult - most people don't know noir all that well, and it encourages you to take it a little more seriously.)

Yeah, I just tend to second-guess myself in games where my character takes the spotlight.

I know exactly what you mean, Sam. I do the same thing.

It's weird isn't it? I think we're just so geared towards making sure everyone has a voice that as a veteran it feels weird to be the center of a game.

Mmm. In my case, anyway, this waaaaay predates storygames.