I said I wasn't going to give you a play by play and I won't, even though it pains me. I'm sure if you're interested you could ask me or Tim or Alex and we would gladly go on for an hour or four. Instead here are some monumental moments I noticed in the game.

DISCLAIMER: My original post was 12,000 plus characters long which APPARENTLY is too long for meetup. Whatever. Anyways if you want the setup details I can post them in another discussion or something if you find this stuff interesting.

One! The game disappears, rules are so obvious the game plays itself
...So downfall has a mechanic where the fallen after scenes can cause consequences for whatever happened in the scene. During the first few minutes of play if you had tuned into what we were doing, we would read the rules after a scene and someone would say 'so you can make consequences for that little kid hearing the conversation' and the person playing the fallen would and it was grand. The game after about an hour
however was much, much different. I think we were probably 7 or 8 scenes in, and one of us remembered oh yea the fallen can make consequences or whatever, and the other two laughed and looked at the speaker and declared 'OH YOU BETTER BELIEVE THERE GON' BE CONSEQUENCES'. The game had ceased to follow the rules and instead a story was unfolding. There were consequences not because the rules said there had to be, but
because what the people did in our scenes mattered. I want to talk about real versus make believe here but I will defer to another number Four!. 'Cause F U that's why. I do want to say that I don't mean Downfall itself wasn't needed, in fact I'm kind of saying the opposite. Downfall's rules allowed us to create SUCH a believable world that we no longer needed any prodding to make it better.

Two! Who is really the villain here?? Diamond is too human, she was not the obvious choice of big bad evil guy.
...This is an interesting one. My favorite. So in Downfall you have to create a character that is completely ingrained in the system that will inevitably fall and exemplifies the flaw. Now my initial instinct and I think Tim's as well was to make the Bearer of Weights the fallen. Easy! He's a position of power, and would make a good Big Bad Evil Guy no problem. However something that I've learned from Tim is to discard the easy answer in some circumstances. I should have just told him 'no no it's fine he makes a perfect villain.' Ugh. We went back to the drawing board, and together we thought of a different love interest for the Hero, a woman named Diamond. Diamond was vanity incarnate, she was beautiful, every aspect of her appearance was flashy, and she made a living literally just being invited to peoples houses and raising their status by being associated with her. Now this is probably my favorite part of downfall, because the fallen isn't just a villain. They are a person who exemplifies the flaw, and tries to influence the hero. So Alex was the first to play Diamond, and he stressed her genuine love for Chiselle (Hero) and even though her life completely revolved around her appearance and vanity, she identified the actual worth and greatness in Chiselle. Diamond being the fallen was destined to have a Bad Time. But she wasn't bad or evil or mean. She was just someone who found themselves in a society and realized that they could flourish. She was honest and kind. She was vanity incarnate, but that didn't make her a bad person. This ended up being my favorite kind of story. The story where the villain, if you can call them that, has genuine wants and fears that they believe in wholeheartedly. Her descent into despair as our story unfolded has left me with emotional scars. Emotional scars I can cherish. Now way back at the beginning of this I had suggested we pick the easy big bad villain. I can't stress enough how happy I am that we decided to have a real character with personality instead of a caricature that would sit behind a throne and order the orcs to invade because that's just what is expected of him.

Three! Seeing your idea, changed by someone else, and then played by the third may be the coolest experience that has ever happened.
...So while developing your world in Downfall you think of an idea, and then someone else develops that idea. This is SUCH a cool mechanic. So many cool things came from us getting an idea and adopting it as our own. This is a part of Downfall but I can't stress my gratitude toward Tim and Alex enough. They are both extremely talented individuals but that's not really the cool part, the cool part was how they think OTHER peoples ideas are cool and expand on them. I've played games where everyone kind of has
their own ideas and people take turns and wait for theirs in order to put what they had in mind in place. This however was a total integration of all ideas into a single world and it was glorious. I could go on about our world creation but instead I will give just one example. I decided on the Justice theme. I thought Alex's idea of people having chains with statues was really cool, and it only made sense that criminals would wear something to show their crimes just as regular people wore their accomplishments. Alex was next
to get the card, and described the head of the judicial system, the Bearer of Weights. The only judge, who carried with him the weight of future crimes (He had weights spiraling around him at all times). Now it just so happened that in the first scene the Bearer of weights was in, Tim wasn't actively in the scene as a main character, and so the job of playing the Bearer fell to him. So it started as an idea about weights for crimes. Turned into a man who led the system. A man who was then played by A THIRD PERSON who
had no say in his creation. Tim played the crap out of him. It was amazing seeing this character come to life, a character that emerged from an idea that I had had.

Four! A real world with real problems.
...What made our world so compelling was that everything we came up with was a logical step in the right direction. We had some weird gravity stuff and maybe not enough jobs for everyone but each idea we had made sense in our world. You could point to the reasoning and say yea that would totally happen. I'll explain why I think this is cool. So let's say you are playing a game and someone says there are flying goblins. Now all the players could just say OK flying goblins are a thing, and add more stuff.
Or you can say well dang there's flying goblins how would people deal with that. People would get real used to yelling insults at the sky that's what would happen. Now that's a silly reaction but that next level of development makes the world seem real, make it compelling as a place where characters interact and live.

Five! Thank you Alex and Tim.
...Personal story to end on. My first story game I played Fall of Magic with Ace, Evan and Patrick Brannick. I honestly thought I would never play a game that was that fun ever again. I at the time acknowledged it as a once in a lifetime experience. Then it happened again. And again. And then again with this game of Downfall. I am so happy that on a random Thursday I said screw going to a D&D meetup, this Story Game
thing seems like it could be fun. Never. Going. Back.

Written and Directed by Nick S.

Thank you for the write-up, Nick!

This game really was fantastic. One thing that really stood out for me is the way our traditions ended up playing off each other exceptionally well and then all became an integral part of how the story unfolded. And like Nick said above, it really felt like a triumph of people actually LISTENING to each other and liking and using what the other people had created.

To Nick: If your write-up ends up being too long for the board's draconian word limits, you can make your post longer (if you so desire), by replying to yourself and just using that space to continue your thought.

Thank you for an awesome game! And thank you Alex, too, wherever you are!

I honestly thought I would never play a game that was that fun ever again. I at the time acknowledged it as a once in a lifetime experience. Then it happened again. And again. And then again with this game of Downfall. I am so happy that on a random Thursday I said screw going to a D&D meetup, this Story Game
thing seems like it could be fun. Never. Going. Back.

So much love and victory in this thread. I could not be happier.