Fiasco Reflection

Fiasco is an exciting role-playing board game that is surprisingly portable, requiring only several dices and rule books to play with. The setting up process for the game was rather quick. We used Main Street and Willow Road play-set. After rolling the dices, relationships between each neighboring player, locations, needs, objects were settled. The game Fiasco requires a great story-telling ability as well as a creative improvisation skill.
Our game took place in the Woods up around Hickory Terrace. My relationship with Austin, on my left-hand side, was the former spouse. However, the relationship between Sadie, on my right-hand side, and I was a gambler and bookie. The “double identity” of each player makes the game hard but fun to play that everyone has to keep the scripts of settings in mind and to develop reasonable plots accordingly. For instance, in the first place, I failed to set up the connection between my divorcing problem and gambling habit. The opening scene started up with Austin and I arguing and breaking up due to mundane money issue. I was expelled from our house in the county. At that point, the arguing was just about domestic duties and financial problems. Moving to my round, because of my implied relationship with Sadie as friends in the previous rounds and at the same time she being my bookie, the story was messed up a little bit. To make more sense for the divorce and gambling, I suddenly decided to make up the story of I stealing money from my ex-husband and would like to bet my future life no gambling. As my bookie, Sadie could offer me the game; however, as my best friend, Sadie tried to persuade me to keep out of it. The unexpected pieces of information due to the rash decisions formed small conflicts lead to the unsettling feature of the first scene. In Act One, although each conversation was somewhat independent, we were trying our best to combine the two needs and the objects. For example, the hoodlum murdered an elderly lady; the hoodlum and my ex-husband planned on stealing a purebred animal; and the nurse in the hospital tried to develop an affair with my ex-husband.
After getting the tilt, we realized that Fiasco, as a game building up disastrous situations, emphasizes more on the dark side of humanity, greed, lust, jealousy, and insanity. Even the player with the largest number of white dice got degraded and defamed hint that pushed players towards a more chaotic ending in Act Two. Players more actively involved themselves in the crime, even if they are not at all evil figures in the first scene. At the same time, whereas, we failed to keep on track with the details. I remembered almost every single one of us got a “bad” ending. For me, I was publicly humiliated and suffered permanent injury, and the money I stole was mysteriously stolen according to the tilt. That is to say, I ran away from the conversation in the senior care and came across the hoodlum Giovanni, hooking up with him. However, the police came up to us after a few days, and Giovanni hit-and-run, which causes my permanent physical disability. Therefore, I am also humiliated over stealing money from ex-husband and betraying him on his best friend.
The genuinely intriguing part of Fiasco is its flexibility and unpredictability. Every player contributes their idea to the overall story. It is each one of their decisions that leads to the ending of the game. The interactive mechanism makes it more engaging and fun to play. Overall, the gaming experience is a little bit struggling for me because of its chaotic nature and the mismatched expectation. I would like to try Fiasco with a better-prepared mindset if there is another chance.