Fiasco Reflection

My experience was certainly a new one as I had never played a tabletop game before fiasco but overall I can honestly say it was a worthwhile experience and something I could return to in the future. My first impression of fiasco and tabletop games in general was of confusion as I didn’t understand where or what the gameplay was. I didn’t understand that the players create the game in a sense by developing the story and the characters. The main way I prepared to play Fiasco with my group members was to skim the rulebook and to watch the entire wil Wheaton play through of the game. In all honesty, because I watched the entire series I had a decent understanding of the game and this made me the “head” of the game. My other members knew other bits and pieces of the rules and we all created a set of rules where we could follow the story. In order to start the game we really talked over the rules and how to play in each stage of the game. After we made some clarifications we decided to start the game.

We all sat around in the Raoul lounge at about 5:15 PM. We rolled the die and initially there was definitely some hesitation to get into character. Most of us at the start wanted to keep our own names believing it would be easier. However, as we began to tear down some walls of awkwardness we were able to pick up the story. People started throwing out ideas in terms of our created relationship and a story began to slowly develop. Although it seemed very random and confusing at first, we created the basis to start what I may say a classic Fiasco tale. Before I get into the actual plot of our fiasco, I have to comment on the cultural differences between all of the players of the game. Some of our group were not born or lived in the US and so there was definitely some generated confusion among the players. I even at one point used the term “in cahoots” meaning collusion and got some dumbfounded looks by a couple members of our group. Anyway here is how our fiasco went in simplest terms.

The main story was probably based on a feud between a recently divorced couple in which the wife wants to kill the husband. She employs her distant relative who happens her husband’s drug dealer and she pays him in order to kill his husband at the main setting of the mall. Simultaneously, THe drug dealer’s boss is a chemistry student looking to get her masters making money by having a drug empire. She requires validation from her professor but also has some leverage on her. She knows the her professor and the aforementioned husband disposed of a body used for experimentation in the chem lab. Essentially, there were two storylines revolving around a search for disposed the body and the wife trying to murder her husband. This was all to climax at the main setting.

What ended up happening was a very divided ending in which some characters met an unfortunate fate while a couple others ended up on top. The drug dealer missed the husband and instead hit the professor and sher wound was fatal and painful. The husband however was caught in regards to the body and spent the rest of his life in prison inevitably dying. The drug dealer was caught by police however they thanked him for his killing of the suspect. But he was still charged and spent the rest of his life at a high security prison. The wife on the other hand took over the drug business ending up ok and the drug kingpin became the new professor and abandoned her old dirty ways. Overall, I feel this assignment conquered the learning objective of writing as a process. We had to create ideas in order to drive the story forward a process nevertheless. This process allowed us to create an interactive and multi layered thus proving how writing always changes.