Fiasco ’10 Playset Anthology Vol. 1 Copyright © 2015 Bully Pulpit Games LLC Digital Edition First Release December 2015 “When you play, play hard.”—Theodore Roosevelt Steve Segedy Editing Jason Morningstar Additional Artwork John Harper Cover Design Nathan D. Paoletta Layout Boilerplate This Playset Anthology is a supplement to Fiasco by Jason Morningstar and is not a complete game. The playsets in this volume were each originally published as a “Playset of the Month” in 2010. For more information about Fiasco or to download other playsets and materials, visit www.bullypulpitgames.com. If you’d like to create your own playset or other Fiasco-related content, we’d like to help. Write us at [email protected]. Special thanks to Kelly Sue DeConnick and the many authors who wrote these playsets and agreed to let us feature them in this anthology. Their contributions and enthusiasm have helped to make Fiasco great! Table of Contents foreword 6 TOURING ROCK BAND 8 GANGSTER LONDON 18 last frontier 28 lucky strike 38 Flyover 48 Reconstruction 60 The Manna Hotel 70 1913 New York 80 Transatlantic 92 Dallas 1963 102 london, 1593 114 Dragon slayers 124 Nut People 134 foreword I should not enjoy FIASCO. Like, if we were friends and you were shopping for a birthday present for me, say, and someone suggested FIASCO, you’d be all like, “oh hell no, she’d hate that!” Because if we were pals, you’d know my idea of Hell on Earth is pretty much embodied in the film TITANIC. I’ve never actually seen TITANIC—this is not a review, I’m sure the performances are stellar and all (I’m not sure, I’m lying, but whatever)—that’s not the point. The point is that you know what’s going to happen—that boat’s going down. People gon’die. Horribly. It’s the TITANIC. It’s right there in the title! Why would I want to watch that? Yeah, yeah, triumph of the human spirit, whatever, I don’t want to sit, powerless, for seven hours in squirmy anticipation of inevitable disaster (TITANIC’s seven hours long, right? Pretty sure that’s what I heard). I can’t bear it. And “humor” that relies on that kind of nerve-wracking dread? The ones where you see the public humiliation coming from a mile away? Those are made by sadistic weirdos, you guys. Like, people who have fetishes that involve tickling you until you pee. I don’t want to kink shame anybody, if that’s your thing, consenting adults and all, but you stay over there, baby. That shit’s the comedy version of TITANIC. Imagine a seven-hour long episode of THREE’S COMPANY that ends with Jack tickling Chrissy until she pees ice and freezes to death. That’s me and TITANIC. Not into it. TITANIC made a gabazillion dollars, set a bunch of records, won the Nobel Peace Prize and got declared a saint, so clearly I am alone in my character defect but my argument stands: something called FIASCO should not be for me. And yet. One time we played an Old West playset where I was a lady Pinkerton and I spoke a little too loud and a little too fast with non-rhotic Rs like Kate Hepburn for no discernible reason and I don’t remember how that one ended, but I’m sure it wasn’t ‘happily ever after’ and still it was the most fun ever. (True story: I pitched a TV show based on the character I played that night. Alas, it didn’t go. Damned shame.) 6 Oh, except for that time when I was a drug-addled roadie who ended up murdering a stadium full of people to get back at his creepy rock star brother because he never got credit for writing his brother’s songs… That actually might’ve been the best. The only time I remember a game of FIASCO that doesn’t vie for ‘the best’ is the night Wil Wheaton, Ed Brubaker, Dan Curtis Johnson and Matt Fraction played Manna Hotel and I volunteered to watch because we’re all old and lame and if we played with 5 people the game would take too long. That was the WORST. Oh, the story was fantastic— how could it not be with that crew?—but the experience was a giant drag. And that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the crux of the thing: agency. Bear with me now, I’m about to go deep: Ain’t none of us getting out of this world alive. And no matter how many people you’ve got with you at the time, everybody dies alone. It’s part of the deal; it’s in the title. But most of us are able to function outside a state of constant existential angst because even though we know we’re going to die, between now and then, we get to write our own story. We are living, breathing playsets. We can’t control everything— some shit’s a roll of the dice— but we can control enough to make a difference. And that matters. I think, for me, there’s a kind of non-Aristotelian catharsis in that active rehearsal of everything I fear and dread and also pine for; it’s a chance to dance with Poe’s Imp of the Perverse, to give in, to make the dangerous choice—it’s the same thing release I get from the act of writing. But writing is a solitary discipline for the most part and FIASCO… FIASCO is so gloriously communal. Plus, you know, if you’re really hell-bent on peeing ice, there’s a FIASCO playset called TRANSATLANTIC and as unlikely as this seems, it’s really, really fun. And TITANIC, even with all those Pulitzers, is not. So here you are at the edge of a sinking ship, my friends. I hope you succumb to the call of the void, and I hope you laugh your asses off the whole way down. Bon voyage. Kelly Sue DeConnick Writer of Captain Marvel, Pretty Deadly, and Bitch Planet 7 TOURING ROCK BAND “I AM A GOLDEN GOD!” k d cn oa RB It’s all about the music, man. It’s about becoming famous. It’s about the chicks, the drugs, the fans. It’s about burning bright and dying young, leaving behind a legend! Or maybe it’s about paying for the hotel room once the stupid legend has left the building. Touring Rock Band is an over-the-top collection of iconic rock and roll glories and unwholesome lunacy. It’s about golden gods rising to fame and falling back into addiction, stupidity and squalid failure. MOVIE NIGHT Almost Famous, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, Paanch, CREDITS Written by Jason Morningstar Cover art by Jason Morningstar Edited by Steve Segedy Touring Rock Band was Playset of the Month, January 2010. 8 9