As part of the Kickstarter I ran for my Dangerous Games novels, I promised to create a playset for Fiasco based on the novels. For those who don’t know, Fiasco is a fantastic tabletop roleplaying game created by Jason Morningstar, which won the Diana Jones Award a few years back. It’s a fantastic game, although very different from your standard “kick down the door, kill the monsters, take their loot” RPG, mostly because instead of trying to beat the bad guys, you spend the game trying to make the story as interesting as possible. Which usually involves making things harder on the characters by consensus.
It’s great. Trust me.
I wrote the playset up in early August and then played it at Gen Con, the largest tabletop games convention in this hemisphere. As always, I had a great time at Gen Con, talking to people about games, although it was a little eerie spotting out all the places where horrible things happen in the Dangerous Games novels, especially when wandering past them in the middle of the night. (All three of the books are out and available for the public now, so be sure to tell your pals.) While I was there, I had a chance to playtest the Dangerous Games playset for Fiasco with an all-star crew.
Keith Baker (creator of Eberron and Gloom) and his wife Jenn hosted the game session in their suite. Jason Morningstar – the designer of Fiasco himself – joined us and bore with me as I confessed that while I loved the game I’d not actually played it until that day. He taught me everything with a smile and coached us all along with fantastic class. Wil Wheaton and Peter Adkison had been slated to join us, but they had to pull out due to scheduling conflicts. The fantastic Kristin Firth stepped in to fill their shoes.
We had as amazing a time as you can pack into a game in two short hours. I incorporated their suggestions into the text, gave it a quick polish with the feedback from the other playtesters, and finished it up. Jason posted the results over at the Bully Pulpit Games site earlier this week. You can go grab it now for free.
I hope you enjoy it and have just as much fun as we did playing ordinary gamers with powerful ambitions and poor impulse control. To celebrate the playset’s release, I’m keeping Dangerous Games: How to Play on sale for just 99¢ until Monday. Be sure to get it fast.
Thanks for all your support!
