I had a great time at the EndGame MiniCon Last Saturday (2010/04/03). I will try and get a full review of the Con going soon, but I wanted to gush on my new Game De Jour, Fiasco.

First let’s talk about what happened at my table.

We played the Gangster London play set, and had a very West London Underground experience that could be the pitch for a Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels sequel. The aspects defined by those adjacent to me were (left) Relationship – Odd: Alcoholics Anonymous and Location: The Pub “The Crown and Anchor”; (right) Relationship – Friends: “That bloke down the pub”, and Object – Valuables: An arse load of diamonds. Looking at these relationships I didn’t know how the Diamonds worked in yet, but from the other connections I inferred that I was the Irish owner of “The Crown and Anchor” one of the last British pubs in West London, surrounded by Tea Houses and Curry Shops. The three other characters were a pair of east Indian Curry Shop Owners who were secretly gay (relationship: secrete romance). One of whom (to my left) had hidden drinking problem (the AA connection), and the other (across the table from me) was a criminal boss using the Curry shop as a front; on the reverse wall from our Curry shop was my characters Pub. The player to my right was a down on his luck bigoted crime flunky who in desperation was working for this “Pakie” (Relationship – Crime: Boss and Lackey).

Our basic setup was this story about a large package of stolen diamonds that our lackey tries to hide away from his boss, hoping to skip town and run out on his Foreigner boss. Mean-while, my Pub Owner is informed that his daughter had been murdered (in association with the diamond theft, but only us as the audience knew) and I was expecting a huge insurance disbursement. This was happening the same time that our Indian Crime Boss was arranging a large shipment of “Special Curry Powder”; which was code for large shipment of money to be laundered through the curry shop. Our twist came shortly after our other younger Indian Shop owner was seen embracing another man by our crime lackey (who of course informed his boss that his partner was “A Fairy”).

Our twist came in the form of “Someone’s not so innocent after all” and “A Stupid plan goes horribly right”

We develop our younger Indian shop owner as being “not so innocent” and connecting him to the diamond theft in flashbacks. We ride the second act hard; having our Lackey turn into an informant against in Foreigner boss, while his diamonds are safely in the cooler of the Pub next door. His failed sting attempt leaves the money from the sting operation also in the cooler (next to the diamonds). Our Indian Crime boss flees the failed sting operation and goes and murders the man he thinks his lover was cheating on him with. We end with an arrest of the Lackey informant, who leads the police back to his boss (who is still covered in blood from his murder); and my pub owner finding the diamonds and sting money in his cooler, in addition to thinking he is still getting the insurance wind fall.

In the closing montage, the Lackey “comes out clean”, the second owner “is fairly well off”, and both the Crime Boss and my Pub owner are “In the Deep shit”. I narrate myself as being found by my police blokes while counting the money and diamonds, getting arrested and convicted of embezzlement and insurance fraud, and winding up in prison. Our Crime Boss ends up in a Prison with very white inmates. Our second Curry Owner ends up with both the Curry Shop and my Pub, and our Lackey ends up escaping and getting free of his criminal past.

Now let’s talk about the game.

The Good!

I really liked how the scene economy worked, it made this GM-less game really sing. You could either choose to narrate how your scene starts OR decide how (good or bad) the scene affects your character. I had a little confusion about who had retained narrative control at the end of the scene; Was it the person narrating from the start, or was it the player. We figured it out after the game. But even so, it did not impede our game play at all.

I loved the way that you set up the situation and relationships based on some dice rolls and some charts. It allowed people to choose things that were interesting to them, but also confined the players to using things that were very evocative for the play set. I can see how that REALLY shines when playing this game for slightly different flavors of this type of genre play.

Our facilitator, Chris “That’s My Leopard” Bennett, said that when the game works well it is because of the cooperation of all the players at the table. I have to agree, I need to thank the rest of the players, Matt “Matt’thulhu” Steel, and Noam “I’ll play the Dead Girl” Rosen; you guys made that game so awesome.

The Bad!

The only part of the game that did not resonate with me was the end game mechanics. The way it was described was that the players with more positive scene endings (white dice) had bad endings, while those with more negative endings (black dice) had good endings. While I like the idea that the end montage can throw additional character twists (sudden windfalls, or rapid descent into shit) that help capture the genre, it doesn’t feel like it adds to the story or rhythm that was built at the table. It will need some more exploration in both text and play, but I didn’t like the taste it left in my mouth. Overall it was not enough to dampen this excellent session in the slightest, but was the most detracting aspect.

The Ugly!

I blew my creative wad on this game. My second session was awesome but I could feel myself dragging through it, and I didn’t want to over-extend myself because I was running a MouseGuard game in the final slot of the day. But I think it was worth it. Fiasco was Awesome!

The show starts off talking about the organization of the con itself. Sign ups, time slots, venue, etc.

The rest is a review of the games they played: Mutant City Blues, A Penny for My Thoughts, Mouse Guard, Houses of the Blooded and Don’t Lose Your Edge (Carl Rigney’s Shadowrun hack of Don’t Rest Your Head).

Check out their site, or download the show directly: TMD_43_2009_07_21.mp3

It’s a much different and yet very similar game to the old world, I think. Though the origins of the Changelings and their ultimate goals are much different, and the “True Fae” are out there, and are frightening. The way they should be.

So, in celebration of that, I’m going to talk about three different Fairy Tale games I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and/or playing, in the past few months. These are all mini-reviews.

Fairy’s Tale
This game runs pretty fast. It’s very freeform, with nothing but guidelines really for how powers work. The GMs decision is law, but it’s not that strict. (And in my case, I tried to help each player shine at different points in the game that I ran.) The game also has great write-ups for how to run it for children at different age ranges, and so it’s a great kid’s game.

The overall premise is that you play Fairies who live in a place called “Brightwood.” There’s a town / village / whatever where humans live, and the children can see you and interact with you. You try to stop the activities of the goblins and the “dark” fairies.

Your power is measured in Essence, which you regain through heroic deeds or the like. Essence is also used to track damage – each round of combat you lose costs you an Essence point. (Only one Essence Point, regardless of how poorly you did.)

It uses D6, you look for evens, and on 6′s, you re-roll.

I like this game for one-offs. You could potentially run it as an ongoing game, moreso than most indie games (that is the biggest flaw of most indie games, as far as I’m concerned – I can’t see an extended game of any of them.) But I give this game a big thumbs’ up – though I’d have to try extended play to see how that ran.

The Zantabulous Zorceror of Zo
Man, I hope I spelled that right, since I’m doing it from memory.

Chadu Underkoffler and I seem to have a lot of common interests and devotions – superheroes, fairy tales, the state of the soul – though I’m only judging this from the games he’s released (1). (Truth & Justice, ZZZ, and Dead Inside, respectively.) Truth & Justice, as I stated earlier, was clearly a labor of love, and is useful for any super-hero game. I’ll now say that ZZZ is the same in regards for fairy tales. Even if you don’t run ZZZ, the advice and research in it are worth it for ANY fairy or fairy tale based game.

ZZZ uses a simplified version of the PDQ system, which I didn’t think was possible. (My original skepticism came, I think, with a statement like “Yeah, and here’s the rules light version of rock-papers-scissors as well.”) But it’s in there – it’s not too different, but it definitely is simplified. So I’m not going to dedicate much time about the system. My thoughts on the PDQ system

There’s a lot to like about ZZZ, and not much to dislike. I’ve heard people complain that it seems like a campaign diary, but those things are useful – they give insight into how one GM can handle problems, and frequently it’s different than you would. GMs sharing information is a great idea. (Which reminds me that I need to post more real-play stuff up here.)

The handling of supernatural powers and such is pretty intriguing, and I’d adapt some of those rules for a game like T&J as well, at least when dealing with ‘big powers.’ (If your power does more than one thing, that is.)

My favorite part, though, is that the game rewards you for failing dice rolls. You can get Learning Points – which are a kind of XP – and it’s about time an RPG does this. We learn best from failure, and so while people who succeed at dice rolls might move the plot, those who fail dice rolls should get more XP or something.

Again, I give ZZZ a big thumbs up. It’s informative, and a fairly solid game.

Seven Leagues
First off, I think this book wasn’t originally written in English. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, since I’m sure if I were to try to write something in French, it would be clumsy. This is just an observation I’m making.

That said, this game is yet another surprise treat. It was purchased for me by a friend, and I’m very grateful now.

Setting wise, this book is pretty sparse. It’s mostly rules. It talks a little about the nature of fairy tales and such, but really, I would like to see more background.

But the system? I’m in awe.

It works like this – it’s all narration at first. If combat starts, you make a “courage” roll (for initiative), and then starting with the first player you declare your intentions, and then you begin to narrate your actions. Each time, you gain a bonus of +1 to +3 (or maybe, maybe higher). Bland explanations could net a penalty.

This continues until one of the players declares this to be over (and this could be the GM), then everyone rolls a die and adds appropriate attributes, ‘aspects,’ and the sum of their bonuses. The highest roll wins.

It’s the narration part I like. It’s a nice touch.

And for that reason alone, it’s worth the $20 to pick it up.

That’s it for now, folks. Another post will be coming in the next few days.

(1) Despite similar interests, I think we take different approaches to it. Fortunately, the games he writes can take my tendency towards starting out bleak and moving towards hope – I like to start with ruined worlds, and then get people to move forward to hope.