HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Nov 17, 2013 0:43:04 GMT -8
The Idle Red Hands are still finding inspiration in everyday things like Jenga towers, X-Box games and bear gods. Join us for our second installment of Inspirations where we share game ideas we’ve gotten from outside of the TRPG world. In this episode, we discuss the novel Shardik, the video game Bastion, and the TRPG Dread. I think one of the hosts doesn’t quite get the concept of this series.
Duration - 1:00:56 Idle Red Hands Blog postDirect Download
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Post by guitarspider on Nov 29, 2013 12:37:28 GMT -8
I had to think of Fiasco when you talked about a narrator in an RPG. I imagine it would be the perfect game for that, provided someone in the group can pull it off.
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Lyal
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 77
Preferred Game Systems: World of Darkness, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Battletech, GURPS, DC Heroes, TORG, Dungeons & Dragons, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, Star Wars 6D
Currently Playing: Dungeons & Dragons, Starfinder, Mutant Chronicles
Favorite Species of Monkey: Why favour a species of monkey when there are gorillas?
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Post by Lyal on Nov 29, 2013 22:53:01 GMT -8
Wayne was talking about buying that game. Did you end up getting it, Wayne?
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Nov 29, 2013 23:55:49 GMT -8
Yup. I've got Fiasco and the Fiasco Companion, as well as a bunch (all?) of the playsets. I've played it once with three people and... it's hard. Not because it is rules heavy. Exactly the opposite. It is so incredible rules lite that we didn't really know what to do. Still, it's not bad. Just very different from what people are used to when you say "traditional RPG".
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Post by guitarspider on Nov 30, 2013 1:38:00 GMT -8
fiascoplaysets.com/ is trying to collect/link all the playsets, in case you're still looking for more. I've also had only one chance to play, but it went rather well after we got over the initial hump and we had a blast (1). I believe the key to a good game might be to offer several playsets with the same theme, but some variety (I offered 3, I believe Gangster London, Havana 50something and LA 1936; it would be easy to pick 3 history-based playbooks etc), and then have the group pick one where everybody feels comfortable. The "rules" during scenes are the gangster story tropes really, so the game is very dependent on everybody being able to get into a gangster-style in the respective setting. Seemed to work, so for future games I'll probably always bring more than one playset, unless everybody had already agreed to one upfront. (1) That said, at the end we had a great disaster set up (all protagonists but one were on an exploding yacht), but everybody rolled so well that hardly anything bad happened. That was a bit of an anti-climax, but it probably was a freak result given what others seem to experience.
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Nov 30, 2013 2:29:17 GMT -8
Like Cosmic Patrol, Fiasco seems like it really hinges on everyone being familiar with the themes and tropes of the chosen playset. We played "Boomtown" so everyone was on board with the old west theme, and we had no trouble in getting down the tropes and "color" of the setting. We struggled with how to resolve things in the scene, as it's all narration and group consensus. I don't think any of us had ever played a game where the dice didn't have a more concrete effect on how actions are resolved. Yeah, the black die/white die mechanic tells you how the scene ends positively or negatively for that particular character, but that's all it tells you. How exactly the indicated outcome is reached is entirely up to the group. I can understand why Stu Venable and stork jokingly say that Fiasco is not a game. It has only the tiniest sliver of mechanics. That being said, there is a strategy as to whether you initiate or resolve a scene, and who you give your die away to in the First Act. As you want mostly (or entirely) black dice or white dice at the end of the game, you can try to work things in your favor.
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Post by guitarspider on Nov 30, 2013 3:44:29 GMT -8
That's interesting. I guess we just didn't perceive that as a problem (or at least I didn't ). We just went with what had been said as a given and when one of us was stumped we collectively came up with ideas until we had found something satisfactory. The real conflict to be resolved by giving out the die (guess you can call it the stakes a la DitV) should always be clear from the start anyway and the scenes mostly seemed to lean towards a certain outcome quickly once we started roleplaying with those stakes in mind. I can definitely see how that feels like a big step away from most other roleplaying games though, and it might need some practice. It might lead to a bumpy game or even break the game completely with a very competitive group due to lack of a neutral arbitrator (not implying that that's your case, just an extreme example). And maybe our group was just "lucky" in the sense we had already played a number of games where player input, negotiation and scene setting play a big role (DitV, PTA, Polaris, The Pool, A Penny for my Thoughts)... and it's not like it was all smooth sailing for us either, we just seem to have had different problems. I apologize if you feel like I'm dissecting what you say way too much, it's just interesting to me how other people experienced a game, because it helps me understand the game better and I always learn stuff about my own group. As for Stu Venable and stork, I guess my idea of what a game is is just much more expansive. It's true that Fiasco is mostly a game of social negotiation and not a game of dice rolling and fixed rules. But as you said, there is strategy to it, the dice do frame a narrative, and the rest is just not written down as official part of the rules, because it depends so much on each individual group. That doesn't mean those rules aren't there though, they're just malleable, just the way the tropes in our heads aren't written down anywhere, but they are still there and they can change.
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Post by Stu Venable on Nov 30, 2013 16:56:32 GMT -8
I actually said didn't consider it a role-playing game. Literallists will argue with me saying it's a game with role-playing, and that's okay.
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