Category: Student Posts

Fiasco Reflection

In the classes leading up to the date I was supposed to play Fiasco, I kept hearing Professor Morgen reinforce the sentiment that your game of Fiasco is your work of writing. This left me with both confusion and anticipation, as I wondered how a role playing table top game could be interpreted as a body of writing; however, eventually this notion began to clear up.

Actually before it cleared up it got even worse. I read all the way through the instructions and watched a video about the game set up, and confusion remained. I pretty much was banking on the fact that my group members had a better understanding than I did. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, and we were all in the same boat. After three different attempts of setting up the game in the correct way, and an hour later, we finally set the entire game up, and we were ready to create scenes for our narratives.

Finally, I was no longer confused. It quickly became clear that Fiasco is all about creating stories and scenes. In my specific game my group chose the playlet “Suburbia,” and I had one relationship where we were church volunteers, and another labeled as conman/mark. You can see the kind of crazy personas you can create just from seeing some of the relationship options.

When creating scenes the game encourages you to collaborate with the other players so you can come up with the wackiest yet fitting story. This is an interesting aspect of the game, as most people (including me) are quite defensive about their writing, and prefer it to be a solitary activity. I found collaboration to be so successful because there are really no winners or losers in Fiasco, everyone is just playing to try to create a good story. Because it’s hard to act out of self interest, I found myself more willing to listen to other people’s advice. Additionally, in order to make it fun, creativity is vital, and I’ve found that creativity is best captured through bouncing ideas off of other people.

I am content with the story my group created, but I believe that the more experience you have playing Fiasco the better the story would become. In my game it seemed like that when we felt trapped, or if we didn’t know what move to make, we would just send someone to jail. Ben went to jail 3 separate times, and I was arrested once too. While the stories were all still entertaining, I think with some more experience we could pick up on some strategies that provoke a more developed narrative.

Overall, I think my first shot at Fiasco was a success. It certainly took a period of adjustment, but playing with people who are all playing for the very fist time, that wasn’t completely unexpected. The message that will remain with me from playing Fiasco is that I created a story I wouldn’t have ever been able to come up with on my own. In this sense I received help from the manner in which Fiasco is set up, as well as my group members. The table top game undoubtedly encourages collaboration as a learning outcome. I’d be interested to see if playing again would yield a more developed story.

Reflection – Fiasco

Suburban Zebra by flickr user MariAn[the Fog]

It is incredible that with merely dices, tables and index cards, players are able to orchestrate a story and tie all bits of seemingly irrelevant information together in a coherent chain. Before playing Fiasco, I was nervous about the fact that I have to improvise in the game, worrying that I might make up a boring story. Yet through the game, I discovered the wealth of my creative mind by piecing together scenes established by other players and identifying the logic inside it. Together we formed a comprehensive, consistent and attractive fiction with an unexpected ending.

My character, Julliet Grande, shared a criminal relationship with Crazy Carl, the character of the player sitting on my right, who made drug deals. While Crazy Carl was in urgent need to earn money from his deals, Julliet, an already respected drug lord, in fact wanted to earn appreciation from her boss (the character of the player on the left) of a medical institution where she worked as a client as her main job. The story took a twisted turn and became snaky when my object was “information”, and my boss with another player Jamie Jones, a divorced man who tried to obtain weeds, shared a mutual secret of mutilating and murdering. By joining the two facts together, I actively spoke up in the game and gave birth to the climax when I claimed I knew their secret, using it as a bargaining chip to publish my under-appreciated medical research paper, while leaking the secret to Jamie’s resentful ex-wife. This insidious act connected me with Jamie’s ex-wife, who was Carl’s sibling and thus also became involved in drug deals. Together we three formed an alliance against my boss and Jamie. The end act occurred in a shopping mall where Carl lured Jamie out on the pretense of selling drugs and intended to kill him in revenge for his divorced sibling. Yet my boss who went to meet Jamie was mistakenly shot and died immediately; at the same time the police, whom I called to investigate the secret murder, arrived and arrested both men.

It is noted that through this game-play experience, we subconsciously applied multiple principles for writing fictions. Fiasco is more like composing a story than simply having fun. The game itself resembles a brainstorming process, where we bring together pieces of information and create a whole picture, filling gaps by improvisation and imagination. For example, a need for conflict was never implied in the relationship between me and my boss, yet in order to mediate my two identities as a drug dealer as well as a normal client, I created this conflict to ensure that everything made sense. There is also an irony of situation when most people didn’t get what they longed for due to the natural development of the game. Such irony brought about an unforeseen yet understandable ending which is commonly considered as a trait of fiction.

Still, playing Fiasco is not completely identical to my traditional approach to writing a story. The game proposes a new way of writing which really helps me with rhetorical composition. The difference between this gameplay and the other work I’ve done is that “I didn’t do those with prior planning or purpose”.  While I usually have an idea of what is going on when writing an essay, the skills and strategies employed in Fiasco, such as creating the conflict and devising the vicious scheme, just came along spontaneously. There was no intention, no careful planning. The fact that we composed an appealing and structured plot despite the lack of outlining in advance shed a new light on my future writing method. As opposed to careful planning before writing, as I usually do, I learned that I could just set up a background and develop some clues, through which my thoughts are provoked and my story grows by itself.

Also, through Fiasco, collaboration of group members is invoked as we joined together to brainstorm and inspired each other during the process. A single step of one player can affect that of another. Therefore such domino effect requires us to align our thought processes in order to complete the plot.

It is wonderful to see the process of scattered information converging into a fluid and rich river. Overall, I believe that I really did improve my writing through this thought-provoking gaming experience.

Wolf in White Van Reflection

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle explores the experiences of 17 year-old, Sean. The story centers around his life before and after his experience with a trauma that not only affected him, but also engraved fear and worry in those around him, especially his parents. It may be hard to understand Sean’s trauma or where it stemmed from as it’s never stated or understood by even himself. Trauma has deep roots in any individual and how Sean coped with his can be read here. This essay explores how an alternate reality eased Sean’s deepest pains and struggles to provide an enjoyable experience for other players. I’ve learned outcomes to help me form ideas and write about a deep topic such as traumatic experiences and how to learn to live past it.

Fiasco and Frenzy

Gathering around to take part in a game you have very little knowledge of is no doubt a bit intimidating. Personally, I didn’t know what to expect and I could probably say that about my group mates as well. Automatically, I thought the process would take way longer than it actually did because of the general uncertainty of what we were doing. It was the first time any of us had played a tabletop roleplaying game, but I thought I could learn to appreciate this form of gaming as it was as our session progressed.

Starting off we all were assigned really strange, peculiar roles and it was comical at first, but then we all realized we’d have to form relations and try to connect a story amongst us all. After the relationships had been settled between all the players, we found it difficult to start of the story in a way that would make sense for all of our characters. We got a solid story started up after a while and as we moved forward, we all became better at progressing the story. I’ve never done improve before, so I’d admit it was difficult coming up with a story on the top of my head, but it became increasingly easier as the mood got lighter amongst us all. The general narrative that we created surprisingly made sense in the end and connected all of our characters. I was the only one to survive in the end, but even then I still had a very unfortunate ending by being ‘dead on the inside’.

I’m very proud of the narrative we all contributed to and felt all of us had an important part in making it such a comical yet sadistic one. At first I was unsure how this game would compare to a work of literature, but after experiencing it, I completely understand how this game is a work of fiction. Taking creative ideas and forming and organizing them into a narrative this way is no different than actually writing an essay, book, or other medium of literature. Looking at it more broadly, all games in general provide their own narrative that players experience and playthrough. Every players’ gameplay differs, so in a sense every player creates their own narratives based on their own ideals and logical thinking.

Initially, I didn’t know what role I’d take on or if I’d even be an important one, but after playing through Fiasco, it was clear every character had a huge impact on the narrative and I think that’s very unique about this game. Compared to the majority of times when I’m writing literature, this game stood out particularly because it was collaborative and was based on what the person before you wrote. I’m used to independent writing and forming my own thoughts and ideas to put in the form of an essay, but this experience definitely opened my eyes up to other forms of literature that don’t necessarily mean literally writing on a sheet of paper by yourself.

This assignment was definitely an experience that I’ll never forget and has taught me a lot about writing in general and the different forms of media a narrative can live through. I feel as I’ve progressed in this one experience alone by improving my improv and vocal storytelling skills to create stories. This assignment also allowed me to experience more collaborative approaches to literature and how many can drive a story at once. Overall, I really enjoyed playing Fiasco and wouldn’t mind playing again or introducing it to my friends in the future.

Fiasco and Frenzy

Gathering around to take part in a game you have very little knowledge of is no doubt a bit intimidating. Personally, I didn’t know what to expect and I could probably say that about my group mates as well. Automatically, I thought the process would take way longer than it actually did because of the general uncertainty of what we were doing. It was the first time any of us had played a tabletop roleplaying game, but I thought I could learn to appreciate this form of gaming as it was as our session progressed.

Starting off we all were assigned really strange, peculiar roles and it was comical at first, but then we all realized we’d have to form relations and try to connect a story amongst us all. After the relationships had been settled between all the players, we found it difficult to start of the story in a way that would make sense for all of our characters. We got a solid story started up after a while and as we moved forward, we all became better at progressing the story. I’ve never done improve before, so I’d admit it was difficult coming up with a story on the top of my head, but it became increasingly easier as the mood got lighter amongst us all. The general narrative that we created surprisingly made sense in the end and connected all of our characters. I was the only one to survive in the end, but even then I still had a very unfortunate ending by being ‘dead on the inside’.

I’m very proud of the narrative we all contributed to and felt all of us had an important part in making it such a comical yet sadistic one. At first I was unsure how this game would compare to a work of literature, but after experiencing it, I completely understand how this game is a work of fiction. Taking creative ideas and forming and organizing them into a narrative this way is no different than actually writing an essay, book, or other medium of literature. Looking at it more broadly, all games in general provide their own narrative that players experience and playthrough. Every players’ gameplay differs, so in a sense every player creates their own narratives based on their own ideals and logical thinking.

Initially, I didn’t know what role I’d take on or if I’d even be an important one, but after playing through Fiasco, it was clear every character had a huge impact on the narrative and I think that’s very unique about this game. Compared to the majority of times when I’m writing literature, this game stood out particularly because it was collaborative and was based on what the person before you wrote. I’m used to independent writing and forming my own thoughts and ideas to put in the form of an essay, but this experience definitely opened my eyes up to other forms of literature that don’t necessarily mean literally writing on a sheet of paper by yourself.

This assignment was definitely an experience that I’ll never forget and has taught me a lot about writing in general and the different forms of media a narrative can live through. I feel as I’ve progressed in this one experience alone by improving my improv and vocal storytelling skills to create stories. This assignment also allowed me to experience more collaborative approaches to literature and how many can drive a story at once. Overall, I really enjoyed playing Fiasco and wouldn’t mind playing again or introducing it to my friends in the future.

Fiasco Reflection

At the start of Fiasco, I really didn’t know what to expect. I went into the whole experience fairly blind to the world of tabletop role-playing games. I had played plenty of role playing video games before such as Skyrim or Fallout, but nothing like Fiasco before. What I found makes fiasco different and one of the most fun things about Fiasco was the fact that we, the players, were the ones who got to control the story. One of the things that video games do is provide a story for you to enjoy and you can just go along for the ride. Tabletop role-playing games however let you decide what you do with your story and how each character develops and lets you use your own creativity which make them superior to video games in that regard.

We chose to play Main Street as our first Fiasco game. During the game we took turns for who got to drive the story. I think I may have been a little more forceful than others to drive the plot forwards because I got excited about the possibilities of the story and had grand ideas for how to tie certain scenarios that we created together. However, I think that everyone had equal opportunity to participate and there were great contributions from everyone in the group. I think that we may have made an error while playing the game and given everyone too many needs and places to be. However, this error made the storytelling even more interesting. We had to be more creative about how we were going to make each individual storyline come together into one ending. We had more to work with in terms of needs for characters which forced us to be more creative on how to tie the two sometimes very different needs together. I think that these errors made the game more interesting because there was so much more guideline material to work with. If we were to play again making the same mistakes that we did the first time, it would benefit us to have more acts because there was a lot more information to be discussed. One of the things that was difficult about Fiasco was creating dynamic characters. Because we were only given a couple of needs about the characters it was easy to just make those needs define the character and not worry about the rest of the character. However, that left us all with flat characters that lacked true motivations.

Another thing about playing fiasco that was really fun was the laughter. The entire time we were playing the game we were laughing and having fun which is the most important part of playing a game in my opinion. The game made the whole experience of creating this fiasco story enjoyable which I think makes Fiasco a really successful game. Not necessarily successful in the financial sense, but successful in its goal to make everyone storytellers and express their creativity and have fun with it.

I think that Fiasco definitely fulfils the learning outcome for collaboration. Fiasco requires you to collaborate with others in order to play and create an interesting story. It requires you to listen to other people’s ideas and accept them even if they may be different then your own. This is an important part of collaboration because accepting different ways of thinking will always be helpful for obtaining a broader understanding of any topic. Collaboration can help in many ways to accomplish a task that is too great for one person and it is important to learn how to collaborate effectively. I think that this collaborative experience was important for me to have because, unlike many group projects that I have had in the past, this kind of collaboration worked really well. The way I could use this experience in the future is to give collaboration another chance and be more open to listening to others ideas more because they may end up having better ideas than I do.

Wolf In White Van Reflection

Come read my essay on the effect of trauma in Wolf In White Van. In my essay I analyze how Sean’s family isolates him from the rest of the world, and as a result he lacks a place where he can feel comfortable. I ultimately argue that his lack of a safe place causes him to create Trace Italian, which he uses as a coping mechanism.

This assignment took advantage of the Critical Thinking and Reading Resulting In Writing learning outcome. During the writing process it was essential to closely examine the text, as well as form my own ideas on how Sean’s experience relates to trauma.

Freedom of Speech, Thought, and Everything Else

As we gathered as a group of four students, knowing little to nothing about how Fiasco would work, our group found itself embracing the free-form role playing game, creating our own unique story where everyone was enthusiastic as the other to create a living, thriving story. At first I was rather weary of the game, I didn’t think it would be too much and I must admit I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it. I like things that are fast paced, that I can get through quickly and efficiently and I didn’t think a table top RPG would satisfy that need for efficiency. But, I was pleasantly surprised.

As we started the game, we were unsure about what to do. Although we read the instructions multiple times, it was still quite difficult to get a hang of it. But as we just went with it, it became easier and we understood the goal of each player. We chose “Boomtown” as our playset, the “Wild West” where I played a criminal, trying to steal a very expensive “Matched set of Colt revolvers.” I personally really enjoyed acting out the part. In a video game, you simply adopt the character that you’re put into, you teach yourself to see like them and you become a pre-designed person, following a pre-designed path (no matter how many options you have to choose from). While for table-top RPG’s such as Fiasco, you simply design your own game. You can create your own story, your own character, and how you choose to make yourself move about in this alternate universe you have just created with your group-mates. But then gain, you only have a limited number of choices in some scenarios, as in a video game. Just as how video games may have a certain number of different paths you can take, or a certain options for dialogue you choose, Fiasco only has a certain number of Playsets, locations, objects, and motivations. But, the rest of the story is yours to tell.

Although I did enjoy acting like a different person, someone completely unlike myself, I personally thought creating a story from the outside was more fun. I would rather be able to think about what might be going on in everyones heads, just as a narrator would in a book, and create a story that would benefit their perspective . I enjoyed moving the story head towards the bigger picture, but often times I found that I didn’t pay too much attention to detail, which is why my teammates were always there to help. We had a healthy balance of trying to progress towards the main goal, creating details to make the story and the characters more enriching, and having fun at the same time.

Fiasco was a very enjoyable experience. I personally felt I learnt a lot more about collaboration, from the learning outcomes. All of our group mates got together do draft a story that would be unique to just us. We worked with each other to reach common ground, talking through any problems we came across and solving them collaboratively. We were pleased by the freedom we had to create our own story, and create literature, in a rather “unconventional” fashion.

 

Picture from Flickr

 

 

 

Why You Should Read My Essay

Wolf In White Van might at first be seen as the book of a horrible event and how one goes on about his life after an incident. However, when looked closely many life lessons can be extracted from Darnielle’s work. One of them is learning what trauma is and how it affects the mind of a person. It is hard to understand a person without putting one’s self in their shoes. Wolf In White Van does exactly that by presenting a person with trauma and leading narrative from the first perspective. This gives a chance of looking how trauma affects not only the external but also the internal world of a survivor. The essay: Wolf in White Van and Trauma, explores this argument further by looking closely at the details such as novel structure, the daily hardships the protagonists faces and finally how he faces the world after his trauma. With critical thinking and reading resulting in writing as a learning skills, this essay looks how Darnielle presents trauma as not only an event but an ever-present companion. By closely analyzing the thoughts of characters it teaches the others not only how the person with a trauma feels but also what they need in order to reach recovery.

Fiasco – A Way to Heal Writer’s Block

As I sat to play Fiasco, I has mixed feelings. The games are designed for entertainment yet playing it is my English assignment. As well as that this game is the first multi player game of a sort that we encountered in our class, so group work would be crucial. However, as we started playing, we felt more comfortable with each other. From creating the relationships between the characters to interacting with each other and developing the plot we were able to design a unique story. Thus, as the game developed I was surprised how engaging it was to create a story together.

I like writing; however it is a very intimate process for me. Editing would be the only time I would be fine in working as a group when it comes to writing. Thus, the fact that we created a story altogether with such an ease was very surprising. Now that I look back I realize that we followed the same process that I would if I were to be writing alone. First the setting, then the characters and the relationship between them must be established. From then on we can slowly make the characters to interact and drive the story to the climax. The only difference from my way of creating the story and the one we used when playing Fiasco was its start.

I find it rather difficult to start a story in medias res, however Fiasco does it easily. As we established the relationships and their details, some conflicts already came under the light before we even started to play. For example, Jake’s character and mine were divorced and I was seeking revenge for the way he treated me. As well as that Christine’s and Jakes’ relationship’s detail was something they shared in the past. This already created a possible mystery. These details made the story intriguing from the start.

The way how we cooperated throughout the game was also quite interesting. At first I thought that it would be extremely hard for a person to understand what I mean and act accordingly, however we were all quick to catch the cues. Granted, sometimes the replies would raise a couple of eyebrows; for example, in Jake’s opinion the secret that he and Christine shared was a romantic relationship. However she surprised him by suddenly saying: “Someone found the body”. Little yet crucial things like that helped to not only develop the plot but added the spice to the game as you had to react accordingly and very quickly.  This reminded me of some theater exercises that my English professor did in my high school. What is said is said, and you cannot take it back. You must go along and develop the plot. If things do not go your way, then you need to adapt and still try to reach your desired result.

The last thing that I found very enjoyable in this game is that somehow by the end we tied all the characters together. One way or another all of us were connected and were in the same place during the climax. These connections reminded me of a movie Pulp Fiction where in the end all the characters are somehow related. The fact that this was not planned but happened as the story developed was even more peculiar. We were trying to make sure that the story makes sense and in the end involved everyone. Also, again without any specific intentions, we had some character developments as well. For example, my character went form a housewife that cherished her engagement ring to a drug successful drug dealer that got all the revenge she wanted.

Truthfully, I did not expect to be that engaged in a table top game. Playing this game was very like writing a story, however it has its own little differences, which is why I would recommend this game to anyone who is having a writer’s block. This game helps one to look at writing from a new perspective that can give some crucial insights. As well as that one would enjoy it if they have a good company.

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