Fiasco Playset Design Day at the February Meetup

[w00hoo]

Thanks for the response. I'm too used to people (in general, not specifically here, or even in gaming) doing nothing that a lack of information tends to make me edgy...

Loads of great stuff

I'm guessing there will be no option to print stuff out, is there a stationers anywhere nearby that might do print on demand from a USB stick?

A physical artefact does have a lot of appeal, but in all honesty I'd just chuck my copy in the bin and wait for the polished PDF download.

I'm totally open to more folk saying "dude, make with the giving out of physical copies of the playset on the day already". If even a sizeable minority are keen for that, then we'll do that.

Not thinking of an artefact, much more that after all the scribbling we'll want something to pass on to the next group to use. If what we can do is scribble - transcribe to digital - print out then that will both create a much easier to use playtest sheet and will also ensure that the data isn't held on one copy that's potential barely legible and being schlepped around the gaming table and may end up lost, covered in beer, or scrawled on with some more with suggestions that might not be run with in the end.

Final output, email me the .pdf whenever, I'm just trying to think of ways to make the experience on the day work as well as possible.

[Pete]

On the topic of printing, how about a model where if folk specifically ask for a physical copy on the day, then they'll get a physical copy?

In other words, we have an "opt in" model instead of the "all in" model that I'm not so keen on?

[ncmreynolds]

one copy that's potential barely legible and being schlepped around the gaming table and may end up lost, covered in beer, or scrawled on with some more with suggestions that might not be run with in the end.

I could bring my laminator.

[w00hoo]

On the topic of printing, how about a model where if folk specifically ask for a physical copy on the day, then they'll get a physical copy?

In other words, we have an "opt in" model instead of the "all in" model that I'm not so keen on?

Personally, a .pdf would do me fine. I can print it if and how I want it that way.

[w00hoo]

one copy that's potential barely legible and being schlepped around the gaming table and may end up lost, covered in beer, or scrawled on with some more with suggestions that might not be run with in the end.

I could bring my laminator.

Likewise, but I'm not sure it would solve the hand writing issue

I'll try and remember to find, and then throw in, some clear plastic pockets at least.

[w00hoo]

Quick thanks to Pete and Ash for the work they did on the Fiasco side of the day. Everything went pretty swimmingly and there were plenty of resources for everything.

[Avatar]

So, how did the created Playsets work out then?

[Pete]

Hiya

Here are the playsets that were created on the day:

• 1890 Shadows of the Empire
• A Day At The Fair
• 1930 Egyptian Expedition

I added some blurbs for the playsets, but otherwise transcribed them as-is, with minor corrections for grammar and the odd word choice. I just scanned the covers in as-is as well, with scant regard for polishing them up, so as to preserve their delightfully arts-n-crafty fun-with-crayons feel.

You can find photos of the event here.[^1]

Thanks to y'all for stepping on up. I'm all typed-out right now, so I'll post my thoughts on the day later this week, but cheers!

Cheers
Pete

[1] If anyone doesn't want to be in a photo - for whatever reason - just tell me and I'll take the photos down.

[w00hoo]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/indianapet ... 037841772/ I love the way the hand looks like it's a glove

[ncmreynolds]

I ducked out of the design phase because there were a ton of people who wanted to do it, but playing the result was good.

What happens at the fair stays at the fair.

[purpledragonwitch]

Thanks for a great day guys!
I really enjoyed creating the play set, probably more than playing the funfair play set.
No AP reports will ever appear for that game!
I can't wait to give some other sets a go.

[Steven]

Yes, thanks all for a great day out. Especially thanks to Pete and Ash for putting it together and helping us hone our unbounded creativity. I feel a strange blend of pride and shame regarding my artistic handywork.

See you next time.

P.S. As woohoo said, I too love how the moustache-on-a-hand under my nose in one of the photos looks like a glove.

[NimbyDagda]

Thanks to everyone who was involved. It was a really good day and everyone seemed to have fun and we made some interesting playsets.

I am going to use this to give my feedback on where I think the playsets could be polished a bit to make them better for Fiasco as a whole. They are all good in their own right, they just each need some time to create what could be brilliant playsets. So this feedback may seem harsh, but its really there to help polish them up if people should so desire, and if you don't they are still perfectly fun playsets to play as they are.

Egyptian Expedition
--------------------------
Far, far, far too much going on. There are too many little threads being run through the playsets, which means one of two things. You either have (as happened when we played it) all the crazy stuff coming out and the only thing that made it about Egypt was the fact that we had the Temple at Karnak as a location and the missing piece of the Rosetta Stone but these could quite easily have been generic mystical place and macguffin and we could have played the same game. The other thing that might happen is people pull all the things from one particular thread, leading to stale and predictable situations. If I am honest it mostly stems from the Miscellaneous relationships thrown together for the last section and thats probably the place the most improvement could be made.

1890 Shadows of the Empire
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This is the closes to being polished, probably because of the way the group designed it. The one complaint (and its a pretty big problem) is that all but one of the relationships is an "and" relationship. Whilst these are important and generally the starting off points for designing the fiasco, you need more flexible equal relationships. Otherwise you can require some severe mental gymnastics to get the relationships to work. Whilst this is fun and interesting for maybe one relationship in a game, having to do it for lots of the relationships can seriously endanger the feel of the game. I would suggest that in each of the relationships categories 1 or 2 of the choices are replaced with looser or at least more equitable relationships (e.g. Served in the First Boer War or Estranged Siblings)

A Day At The Fair
----------------------
Has some really cool ideas in it, and some interesting things, the main issue with this playset is there is quite a bit of filler. Pretty much every category in every group has either a boring option that offers nothing from the setting or has what amounts to the same thing just worded slightly differently. With a bit of time to go through and think of better options for the dull ones and duplicates, this could be really interesting. I also think there is more opportunity to give a feel of the setting by using more Parlyaree (since its a British setting) although too much could end up like the New York playset where you need a seperate page to explain things, which would detract from it.

So those are my suggestions, if any of the authors want to take them up. Even if you don't for two hours work, you all produced really impressive playsets and they can definitely deliver fun games of Fiasco, so well done to all of you.

[Avatar]

.

1890 Shadows of the Empire
------------------------------------
This is the closes to being polished, probably because of the way the group designed it. The one complaint (and its a pretty big problem) is that all but one of the relationships is an "and" relationship. Whilst these are important and generally the starting off points for designing the fiasco, you need more flexible equal relationships. Otherwise you can require some severe mental gymnastics to get the relationships to work. Whilst this is fun and interesting for maybe one relationship in a game, having to do it for lots of the relationships can seriously endanger the feel of the game. I would suggest that in each of the relationships categories 1 or 2 of the choices are replaced with looser or at least more equitable relationships (e.g. Served in the First Boer War or Estranged Siblings)

So those are my suggestions, if any of the authors want to take them up. Even if you don't for two hours work, you all produced really impressive playsets and they can definitely deliver fun games of Fiasco, so well done to all of you.

Glad people found that 1890 played OK, the thing with us all swapping is that none of us playtested our own material. If anyone wanted to publish it I'k sure we could swiftly take on board the above comments and make the few small changes required.

Very entertaining day - nice one to everyone involved.

[w00hoo]

The one complaint (and its a pretty big problem) is that all but one of the relationships is an "and" relationship. Whilst these are important and generally the starting off points for designing the fiasco, you need more flexible equal relationships. Otherwise you can require some severe mental gymnastics to get the relationships to work.

This did get mention from the Play Testers (and, I know you'd also pointed it out while we were writing and we ignored it.) I was impressed with how the group managed to push all the threads together so that they made sense and it didn't feel ridiculously contrived. I don't know if it is something that would cope with people who do Relationships right from the start and then add the others, but might break more easily if people ended up sorting Relationships with less dice to choose from.

One of my reasons for keeping with it was that I felt the very specific relationships forced a more Victorian feel on the whole and it was a very good age for the polymath so could be got away with. Having said all that, I'm more than happy to spend some time going through the playset and seeing if we can't 'vague up' a couple of the relationships in each category to get this feel. When we were revisiting the only reason 'Rival Engineers' stayed in was because it was the only truly vague link we had, and I guess even that is a bit specific...