Fiasco Actual Play Report: "Wolf? Where?"
FIASCO Actual Play Report: "Wolf? Where?"
Playset: "Dragon Slayers"
Players: Chris, Serena, Skye, Noe, Alexis
Preface: in this playset, the players take on the roles of adventurers who recently slew a mythical beast / conquered a dangerous dungeon and have just returned to a small, nearby town to celebrate / divvy up loot / cavort.
RELATIONSHIPS and DETAILS
Chris - Serena
Relationship: Adventure > Employer / Henchman
Need: To Overindulge in Rampant Thievery
Serena - Skye
Relationship: War > Fought on Different Sides
Object: Magic Item > Crystal Ball of Future Sight
Skye - Noe
Relationship: Culture > Bound by Blood Ritual
Need: To Rule by Marrying a Royal Heir
Noe - Alexis
Relationship: Magic > Werewolf (in human form) / Werewolf (in wolf form) *NOTE: the playset seems to indicate that each player controls a different side of the same WEREWOLF, but we decided to go with two individual werewolves.)
Object: Trophies > A Tome of Dark Rituals
Alexis - Chris
Relationship: Fellowship > Vicious Scoundrel / Pacifist Healer
Location: The Past > A town where people called us heroes (until we got them all killed)
BACKSTORY
SEVRIN (Noe) is a lord in a rural part of the kingdom. He has recently had the misforture of becoming a werewolf and is desperately seeking a cure. The good news: he hears about a tome of magic spells that could cure his conditon. The bad news: the tome is currently in the treasure horde of a dragon.
His solution: hire a few heroes to help him slay the dragon. Enter MORGANT (Skye), Sevrin's blood brother, and RAVINESS (Serena), two veterans of a previous, terrible war, who fought on opposite sides. During that war, they were involved in a skirmish that led the two of them deep into a cave where they found a crystal ball of future sight. It gave them both a prophecy of their own, and one they shared: they must work together or they would both die. This led them to declare a truce that lasted until the end of the war and beyond.
Morgant is a loud, excitable hero-type, who aspires to wear the crown of the realm some day. Raviness is more of a mercenary, straight-to-business type. In her employ is a sneaky, scheming henchman named FISK (Chris). Fisk is an enterprising crook and con-man who fleeces gullible peasants for all he can, whenever he can. Before working for Raviness, he made his living by following around a pacifist healer by the name of HESTER BRIARTHORN (Alexis). Hester was a werewolf. Fisk would follow her around and sell worthless "werewolf charms" to towns that she struck during the full moon. Towns would celebrate his arrival and the arrival of a talented healer, only to be decimated by the beast.
Hester is enlisted to help them in their adventure. The only one who knows her secret is the ever-scheming Fisk.
ACT ONE
The dragon falls dead. Morgant thrusts his sword into the air and crys his victory cry. He and the rest of the party begin to dig through the treasure, gold-lust in their eyes. Morgant finds a crown buried amongst the valuables that fits him perfectly, reassuring him of his proclaimed destiny. Sevrin announces that he is looking for a tome, black, with a ruby set in the cover. Unbeknownst to him, Hester agreed to come along because she was looking for the same book. She finds it in the treasure horde and pockets it. Fisk sees her.
Cut to: that night. The party has returned with its haul to a very small, very poor town near the dragon's lair. Everyone is drinking and celebrating in the small tavern / inn. Morgant drinks out of a golden goblet out of the haul, wearing the crown he discovered. Fisk approaches Hester and starts talking about the book, not directly indicating that he knows she has it, but giving her pause. Meanwhile he gauges just how important the book is to her (and therefore how much it is worth to her) and comes away secure in the knowledge that it is very, very important indeed.
Raviness is not the type to get drunk while there is still gold to be counted. She finds Fisk and asks him to help her tally up how much treasure was acquired and determine how much each share should be. Fisk tells her that he might have a way of increasing their share but he can't give her any information yet, all he asks is that she back his play when it comes to it. Raviness agrees.
The next morning, Morgant awakes with the hangover to end all hangovers. He stumbles downstairs to find a group of peasants led by the mayor, who give him a tremendous cheer. After he recovers, the mayor - a frail, trembling, weak old man - humbly asks if he and his fellow adventurers will stay another week, because the full moon is approaching and neighboring towns have been struck by a terrible beast that kills under the full moon. Morgant, still drunk on the idea of becoming a great king, sees this as an opportunity to prove his bravery and generosity. He accepts (without consulting anyone else) and immediately starts planning for the town's defenses.
Meanwhile, Sevrin is packing to return to his own lands. The book was nowhere to be found, so the quest was all for naught. Morgant approaches him and tells him about the decision to stay another week but Sevrin declines. As far as he knows, he is the very beast of which they speak, so he wants to be far, far away, locked away safely in his castle where he can hurt no one. As he rides out of town, the town mayor sees him leaving and stops him. He tries to convince him to stay, but fails. As Sevrin rides away, the mayor shouts out a question about whether or not they found a book of spells in the dragon's treasure. You see, he and other people of the town had hidden the book away in a cave years before the dragon had taken the place as its lair. The book could contain some kind of protection against the deadly beast. Sevrin hauls up on the reins. Now he knows for sure that the book HAD been there. Someone in his party had taken it.
Back in the inn, Hester finds a quiet moment and opens the book. She recognizes the language in which it is written but cannot translate it. She sees some references to something that looks like it translates as "dog-person," so she is hopeful that a cure can be found. She knows that she needs the book to be translated, but she can't risk letting Sevrin know she took it. She makes the decision to take the book to the mayor and tell him that with it and her help, they could possibly cure the beast that has been attacking local towns.
As she takes the book to the mayor, Fisk follows and watches. He sees her give the book to the mayor and scraps his previous plan of blackmail and initiates his plan B. He goes straight to Sevrin and informs him that he knows who has the book and will acquire it for him, but he expects to be well-rewarded. Sevrin is desperate at this point and agrees, though he is suspicious of Fisk.
As Fisk leaves Sevrin, he is intercepted by Raviness, who takes him with her to speak to the mayor about the defense of the town. They walk in to find the mayor examining the book with Hester over his shoulder. They inform her that it is a book of spells that it can help eliminate the threat to the town. Raviness recognizes the language as a dialect from her home country and can translate it easily. She begins searching through the book for anything useful.
That is when Sevrin storms into the mayor's office and sees almost all of his hired adventurers and the mayor standing over the book he had been looking for all along.
THE TWIST
Skye and Alexis picked the twist elements. They were:
INNOCENCE: the wrong person gets busted.
PARANOIA: what looks like dumb luck isn't; something is afoot.
ACT TWO
Morgant has completed his survey of the town's defenses and enters the mayor's office to discuss strategy, only to find an extremely tense situation unfolding. Sevrin is furious about the book and is yelling up a storm at everyone in the room. Morgant, again trying to do the kingly thing, steps in to calm down the situation. He listens to what is going on and comes to the conclusion that the only one who could be responsible for stealing the book is Fisk. He trusts Raviness from working with her for so long, Sevrin couldn't done it, and Hester, well, Hester is a healer and a pacifist, why would she steal anything? He and Raviness physically restrain Fisk despite his protestations. Fisk glowers at Raviness for not backing him up.
Sevrin isn't so sure. He turns to the mayor and forcefully demands to know where he got the book. The mayor, old and frail as he is, simply can't handle this kind of pressure and tension and has a fatal heart attack right then and there. Oops.
Hester checks him and determines that he is dead. She scolds everyone in the room for their selfishness and encourgages them to cooperate to solve their current werewolf problem. Raviness returns to the book and finds the spell they are looking for; a ritual that will cure one suffering from lycanthropy. However, the ritual requires the blood of another werewolf to work. Hester convinces Morgant and Raviness to not just defend the town against the beast, but to actively hunt it. Her best case scenario is that they injure her in the hunt, get enough blood for the ritual, and cure her after the night ends. Worst case, they kill her and innocent lives will be spared. Either way, she will no longer have to live with the terrible things she does as a wolf.
Fisk, however, is still quite fixated on the fact that he has been accused of something he didn't do. He tells everyone that it was Hester, Hester stole the book, and not just that, she's the werewolf! No one believes him. He is thrown into a jail cell to cool his heels until after the hunt. But just to be sure, Hester is placed in one next to him. She is given the key so she can come and go. Her plan now has to change; she would change into the beast while locked up and she would have to trust in the mercy of her compatriots to draw enough of her blood to cure her.
Cut to: the evening of the first full moon. Sevrin has left - he professes to want nothing to do with the hunt, but secretly he wants to return home and lock himself away during the full moon. Raviness and Morgant prepare their weapons and check their armor. They talk about the hunt and Morgant seems to be having second thoughts. He remembers the prophecy given to him by the crystal ball all those years ago. Morgant saw himself sitting on the throne, but the floor is slick with blood. Raviness also thinks of what she saw; Morgant standing over the corpse of a werewolf, with a crown on his head. If he ascends to the throne, he would bring her along and elevate her to a position of power. She convinces him that the hunt is necessary and will make him loved in the eyes of the people. He comes around and together they head out to hunt the werewolf.
They find nothing. The hunt is a complete waste of time.
Meanwhile, Sevrin is on his way back to his home and the safe room deep within his castle. But a downed bridge delays him long enough that he is out in the open when the change takes him. He transforms into a wolfman monster and proceeds to slaughter innocent farmers. Farmers working his own land.
Back in town, the full moon is about to rise. Hester has spent the last week coming to peace with the idea of her secret coming out and possibly dying as a result of it. However, now that the hour is at hand, she panics. She unlocks and opens her cell but she doesn't get far before the change takes her. The bloodthirst takes over and she lunges at the first living thing she sees: Fisk, in the next cell. He scrambles away as far as he can but she can reach him just enough to scratch him deeply across a cheek. Denied her meal, she bursts through the thin roof of the jail and runs amok through the currently undefended town.
Raviness and Morgant return from the failed hunt, disappointed and frustrated. As they enter town, Werewolf Hester charges at them, badly injuring Raviness. Morgant reacts quickly and hamstrings Hester.
With a mighty swing of his blade, the werewolf is slain. Jokingly, Morgant takes his crown out of his pack and places it upon his head, posing over the werewolf corpse. Raviness is horrified; could that have been all her vision of the future was about?
AFTERMATH
MORGANT: Miserable - you are humiliated in a big, public way, and whatever reputation you once had is now in dirty pieces all around you. You'll never think of these days without a shudder of horror at your own aggressive stupidity.
SEVRIN: Pretty Good - All things considered, you’re coming out of this smelling like a rose. You’re a little better off - maybe you got the girl, or maybe you just didn’t get caught.
HESTER: Dreadful - you are certainly dead, probably from a self-inflicted wound. People you care about are also probably dead, maybe through your own stupid, ugly failure. To say that you fucked up is an insult to fucked-upedness. You have redefined the term.
FISK: Harsh - Shit-in-a-bag harsh, a-lifetime-of-medication harsh. A big black cloud of hurt is going to rain all over you. The things you need to happen are not going to, simple as that.
RAVINESS: Not too shabby - You've made it out with dignity intact, through some fluke. There might even be a little profit, or self respect, or something. Time to throw a little party for all your friends.
Raviness pulls through her injuries and uses Hester's werewolf blood to prevent herself from becoming one. She eventually gives up the adventuring life and returns home.
Sevrin acquires his own werewolf blood and cures himself. He dedicates himself to rebuilding the lives his disease had claimed, often digging in the dirt alongside the farmers working his land.
Morgant sinks into a depression when he realizes that the town was slaughtered while he was out hunting the werewolf. He realizes that the blood-slicked floor in his dream was the blood of innocents. He loses interest in pursuing the kingdom. Eventually, though, he does ascend to the throne, only to realize that it was a more torturous, confining cage than anything he could imagine.
Hester is dead. We see key moments in her life: a young, naive healer attempting to heal someone who seemed to be having a fit, only to get bitten; the first time she wakes up after a full moon to realize that she has killed; the first time she meets Fisk; Hester as a wolf, running across a hilltop in front of the full moon; Hester, dead and returned to her human form, with a look of peace on her face.
Fisk is released from the jail the morning after the hunt. The deep scratches he received from Hester have almost entirely healed. We see him leave Raviness' employ and move into a cabin deep in an isolated forest. We see him sweating and trembling under a full moon, trying in vain to fight off the change.
The last shot is Fisk, waking up on the floor of a cabin… but it's not his cabin. He looks down at himself and sees that his hands and arms are streaked with blood. Blood is caked around his mouth. In the foreground we see blood dripping from a limp hand, a twisted leg, a mangled shape under a sheet. Fisk cries silently, looking upon himself in horror.
THE END
LESSONS LEARNED
We had a great time. I was the only one who had played Fiasco before, and it was Alexis and Noe's first RPG experience. Doing the Aftermath as you are supposed to leads to a much, much better ending to the story. Overall I was happy with how everything went, but I ran into a couple issues that I would like to work on next time I play:
* Assigning a concrete "consequence" to the black or white dice before the choice of black or white is made. This makes the game start to feel more "choose-your-own-adventure" and it stops the game in its tracks. It becomes a crutch that limits player choice and the flow of the narrative. I will make a concrete effort not to assign results to die choice until after the die has been chosen. Define what a "positive / negative outcome" is AFTER the die is chosen, not before.
* Stop running the game! I don't feel bad about doing this with new players, but I don't want to get into a habit of "steering" the game with too many suggestions, questions, or ideas. Well, questions are okay. I just don't want to feel like I am directing too much of the story. There is no GM! Don't be one!
TL;DR VERSION
We played a game of Fiasco with the "Dragon Slayers" playset. A noble has recently become a werewolf and is seeking a cure through a book of spells in the possession of a dragon. He hires a team of adventurers to kill the dragon, but the book is not to be found. That's because the healer, a pacifist and a werewolf herself, wants the book, too, and swipes it. The team is contracted to stay and defend the town against a deadly beast (a werewolf?!) that has been terrorizing nearby towns. A cure is found in the tome that requires the blood of a werewolf. The team decides to hunt the werewolf but the noble has left to go home and the healer is in a jail cell, so there are no werewolves to be found. The healer werewolf escapes and kills the town, then is slain by the returning adventurers.
That leaves out pretty much all of the interesting stuff, but I realized that I have created a huge wall of text that no one will read. So there you go.
Playset: "Dragon Slayers"
Players: Chris, Serena, Skye, Noe, Alexis
Preface: in this playset, the players take on the roles of adventurers who recently slew a mythical beast / conquered a dangerous dungeon and have just returned to a small, nearby town to celebrate / divvy up loot / cavort.
RELATIONSHIPS and DETAILS
Chris - Serena
Relationship: Adventure > Employer / Henchman
Need: To Overindulge in Rampant Thievery
Serena - Skye
Relationship: War > Fought on Different Sides
Object: Magic Item > Crystal Ball of Future Sight
Skye - Noe
Relationship: Culture > Bound by Blood Ritual
Need: To Rule by Marrying a Royal Heir
Noe - Alexis
Relationship: Magic > Werewolf (in human form) / Werewolf (in wolf form) *NOTE: the playset seems to indicate that each player controls a different side of the same WEREWOLF, but we decided to go with two individual werewolves.)
Object: Trophies > A Tome of Dark Rituals
Alexis - Chris
Relationship: Fellowship > Vicious Scoundrel / Pacifist Healer
Location: The Past > A town where people called us heroes (until we got them all killed)
BACKSTORY
SEVRIN (Noe) is a lord in a rural part of the kingdom. He has recently had the misforture of becoming a werewolf and is desperately seeking a cure. The good news: he hears about a tome of magic spells that could cure his conditon. The bad news: the tome is currently in the treasure horde of a dragon.
His solution: hire a few heroes to help him slay the dragon. Enter MORGANT (Skye), Sevrin's blood brother, and RAVINESS (Serena), two veterans of a previous, terrible war, who fought on opposite sides. During that war, they were involved in a skirmish that led the two of them deep into a cave where they found a crystal ball of future sight. It gave them both a prophecy of their own, and one they shared: they must work together or they would both die. This led them to declare a truce that lasted until the end of the war and beyond.
Morgant is a loud, excitable hero-type, who aspires to wear the crown of the realm some day. Raviness is more of a mercenary, straight-to-business type. In her employ is a sneaky, scheming henchman named FISK (Chris). Fisk is an enterprising crook and con-man who fleeces gullible peasants for all he can, whenever he can. Before working for Raviness, he made his living by following around a pacifist healer by the name of HESTER BRIARTHORN (Alexis). Hester was a werewolf. Fisk would follow her around and sell worthless "werewolf charms" to towns that she struck during the full moon. Towns would celebrate his arrival and the arrival of a talented healer, only to be decimated by the beast.
Hester is enlisted to help them in their adventure. The only one who knows her secret is the ever-scheming Fisk.
ACT ONE
The dragon falls dead. Morgant thrusts his sword into the air and crys his victory cry. He and the rest of the party begin to dig through the treasure, gold-lust in their eyes. Morgant finds a crown buried amongst the valuables that fits him perfectly, reassuring him of his proclaimed destiny. Sevrin announces that he is looking for a tome, black, with a ruby set in the cover. Unbeknownst to him, Hester agreed to come along because she was looking for the same book. She finds it in the treasure horde and pockets it. Fisk sees her.
Cut to: that night. The party has returned with its haul to a very small, very poor town near the dragon's lair. Everyone is drinking and celebrating in the small tavern / inn. Morgant drinks out of a golden goblet out of the haul, wearing the crown he discovered. Fisk approaches Hester and starts talking about the book, not directly indicating that he knows she has it, but giving her pause. Meanwhile he gauges just how important the book is to her (and therefore how much it is worth to her) and comes away secure in the knowledge that it is very, very important indeed.
Raviness is not the type to get drunk while there is still gold to be counted. She finds Fisk and asks him to help her tally up how much treasure was acquired and determine how much each share should be. Fisk tells her that he might have a way of increasing their share but he can't give her any information yet, all he asks is that she back his play when it comes to it. Raviness agrees.
The next morning, Morgant awakes with the hangover to end all hangovers. He stumbles downstairs to find a group of peasants led by the mayor, who give him a tremendous cheer. After he recovers, the mayor - a frail, trembling, weak old man - humbly asks if he and his fellow adventurers will stay another week, because the full moon is approaching and neighboring towns have been struck by a terrible beast that kills under the full moon. Morgant, still drunk on the idea of becoming a great king, sees this as an opportunity to prove his bravery and generosity. He accepts (without consulting anyone else) and immediately starts planning for the town's defenses.
Meanwhile, Sevrin is packing to return to his own lands. The book was nowhere to be found, so the quest was all for naught. Morgant approaches him and tells him about the decision to stay another week but Sevrin declines. As far as he knows, he is the very beast of which they speak, so he wants to be far, far away, locked away safely in his castle where he can hurt no one. As he rides out of town, the town mayor sees him leaving and stops him. He tries to convince him to stay, but fails. As Sevrin rides away, the mayor shouts out a question about whether or not they found a book of spells in the dragon's treasure. You see, he and other people of the town had hidden the book away in a cave years before the dragon had taken the place as its lair. The book could contain some kind of protection against the deadly beast. Sevrin hauls up on the reins. Now he knows for sure that the book HAD been there. Someone in his party had taken it.
Back in the inn, Hester finds a quiet moment and opens the book. She recognizes the language in which it is written but cannot translate it. She sees some references to something that looks like it translates as "dog-person," so she is hopeful that a cure can be found. She knows that she needs the book to be translated, but she can't risk letting Sevrin know she took it. She makes the decision to take the book to the mayor and tell him that with it and her help, they could possibly cure the beast that has been attacking local towns.
As she takes the book to the mayor, Fisk follows and watches. He sees her give the book to the mayor and scraps his previous plan of blackmail and initiates his plan B. He goes straight to Sevrin and informs him that he knows who has the book and will acquire it for him, but he expects to be well-rewarded. Sevrin is desperate at this point and agrees, though he is suspicious of Fisk.
As Fisk leaves Sevrin, he is intercepted by Raviness, who takes him with her to speak to the mayor about the defense of the town. They walk in to find the mayor examining the book with Hester over his shoulder. They inform her that it is a book of spells that it can help eliminate the threat to the town. Raviness recognizes the language as a dialect from her home country and can translate it easily. She begins searching through the book for anything useful.
That is when Sevrin storms into the mayor's office and sees almost all of his hired adventurers and the mayor standing over the book he had been looking for all along.
THE TWIST
Skye and Alexis picked the twist elements. They were:
INNOCENCE: the wrong person gets busted.
PARANOIA: what looks like dumb luck isn't; something is afoot.
ACT TWO
Morgant has completed his survey of the town's defenses and enters the mayor's office to discuss strategy, only to find an extremely tense situation unfolding. Sevrin is furious about the book and is yelling up a storm at everyone in the room. Morgant, again trying to do the kingly thing, steps in to calm down the situation. He listens to what is going on and comes to the conclusion that the only one who could be responsible for stealing the book is Fisk. He trusts Raviness from working with her for so long, Sevrin couldn't done it, and Hester, well, Hester is a healer and a pacifist, why would she steal anything? He and Raviness physically restrain Fisk despite his protestations. Fisk glowers at Raviness for not backing him up.
Sevrin isn't so sure. He turns to the mayor and forcefully demands to know where he got the book. The mayor, old and frail as he is, simply can't handle this kind of pressure and tension and has a fatal heart attack right then and there. Oops.
Hester checks him and determines that he is dead. She scolds everyone in the room for their selfishness and encourgages them to cooperate to solve their current werewolf problem. Raviness returns to the book and finds the spell they are looking for; a ritual that will cure one suffering from lycanthropy. However, the ritual requires the blood of another werewolf to work. Hester convinces Morgant and Raviness to not just defend the town against the beast, but to actively hunt it. Her best case scenario is that they injure her in the hunt, get enough blood for the ritual, and cure her after the night ends. Worst case, they kill her and innocent lives will be spared. Either way, she will no longer have to live with the terrible things she does as a wolf.
Fisk, however, is still quite fixated on the fact that he has been accused of something he didn't do. He tells everyone that it was Hester, Hester stole the book, and not just that, she's the werewolf! No one believes him. He is thrown into a jail cell to cool his heels until after the hunt. But just to be sure, Hester is placed in one next to him. She is given the key so she can come and go. Her plan now has to change; she would change into the beast while locked up and she would have to trust in the mercy of her compatriots to draw enough of her blood to cure her.
Cut to: the evening of the first full moon. Sevrin has left - he professes to want nothing to do with the hunt, but secretly he wants to return home and lock himself away during the full moon. Raviness and Morgant prepare their weapons and check their armor. They talk about the hunt and Morgant seems to be having second thoughts. He remembers the prophecy given to him by the crystal ball all those years ago. Morgant saw himself sitting on the throne, but the floor is slick with blood. Raviness also thinks of what she saw; Morgant standing over the corpse of a werewolf, with a crown on his head. If he ascends to the throne, he would bring her along and elevate her to a position of power. She convinces him that the hunt is necessary and will make him loved in the eyes of the people. He comes around and together they head out to hunt the werewolf.
They find nothing. The hunt is a complete waste of time.
Meanwhile, Sevrin is on his way back to his home and the safe room deep within his castle. But a downed bridge delays him long enough that he is out in the open when the change takes him. He transforms into a wolfman monster and proceeds to slaughter innocent farmers. Farmers working his own land.
Back in town, the full moon is about to rise. Hester has spent the last week coming to peace with the idea of her secret coming out and possibly dying as a result of it. However, now that the hour is at hand, she panics. She unlocks and opens her cell but she doesn't get far before the change takes her. The bloodthirst takes over and she lunges at the first living thing she sees: Fisk, in the next cell. He scrambles away as far as he can but she can reach him just enough to scratch him deeply across a cheek. Denied her meal, she bursts through the thin roof of the jail and runs amok through the currently undefended town.
Raviness and Morgant return from the failed hunt, disappointed and frustrated. As they enter town, Werewolf Hester charges at them, badly injuring Raviness. Morgant reacts quickly and hamstrings Hester.
With a mighty swing of his blade, the werewolf is slain. Jokingly, Morgant takes his crown out of his pack and places it upon his head, posing over the werewolf corpse. Raviness is horrified; could that have been all her vision of the future was about?
AFTERMATH
MORGANT: Miserable - you are humiliated in a big, public way, and whatever reputation you once had is now in dirty pieces all around you. You'll never think of these days without a shudder of horror at your own aggressive stupidity.
SEVRIN: Pretty Good - All things considered, you’re coming out of this smelling like a rose. You’re a little better off - maybe you got the girl, or maybe you just didn’t get caught.
HESTER: Dreadful - you are certainly dead, probably from a self-inflicted wound. People you care about are also probably dead, maybe through your own stupid, ugly failure. To say that you fucked up is an insult to fucked-upedness. You have redefined the term.
FISK: Harsh - Shit-in-a-bag harsh, a-lifetime-of-medication harsh. A big black cloud of hurt is going to rain all over you. The things you need to happen are not going to, simple as that.
RAVINESS: Not too shabby - You've made it out with dignity intact, through some fluke. There might even be a little profit, or self respect, or something. Time to throw a little party for all your friends.
Raviness pulls through her injuries and uses Hester's werewolf blood to prevent herself from becoming one. She eventually gives up the adventuring life and returns home.
Sevrin acquires his own werewolf blood and cures himself. He dedicates himself to rebuilding the lives his disease had claimed, often digging in the dirt alongside the farmers working his land.
Morgant sinks into a depression when he realizes that the town was slaughtered while he was out hunting the werewolf. He realizes that the blood-slicked floor in his dream was the blood of innocents. He loses interest in pursuing the kingdom. Eventually, though, he does ascend to the throne, only to realize that it was a more torturous, confining cage than anything he could imagine.
Hester is dead. We see key moments in her life: a young, naive healer attempting to heal someone who seemed to be having a fit, only to get bitten; the first time she wakes up after a full moon to realize that she has killed; the first time she meets Fisk; Hester as a wolf, running across a hilltop in front of the full moon; Hester, dead and returned to her human form, with a look of peace on her face.
Fisk is released from the jail the morning after the hunt. The deep scratches he received from Hester have almost entirely healed. We see him leave Raviness' employ and move into a cabin deep in an isolated forest. We see him sweating and trembling under a full moon, trying in vain to fight off the change.
The last shot is Fisk, waking up on the floor of a cabin… but it's not his cabin. He looks down at himself and sees that his hands and arms are streaked with blood. Blood is caked around his mouth. In the foreground we see blood dripping from a limp hand, a twisted leg, a mangled shape under a sheet. Fisk cries silently, looking upon himself in horror.
THE END
LESSONS LEARNED
We had a great time. I was the only one who had played Fiasco before, and it was Alexis and Noe's first RPG experience. Doing the Aftermath as you are supposed to leads to a much, much better ending to the story. Overall I was happy with how everything went, but I ran into a couple issues that I would like to work on next time I play:
* Assigning a concrete "consequence" to the black or white dice before the choice of black or white is made. This makes the game start to feel more "choose-your-own-adventure" and it stops the game in its tracks. It becomes a crutch that limits player choice and the flow of the narrative. I will make a concrete effort not to assign results to die choice until after the die has been chosen. Define what a "positive / negative outcome" is AFTER the die is chosen, not before.
* Stop running the game! I don't feel bad about doing this with new players, but I don't want to get into a habit of "steering" the game with too many suggestions, questions, or ideas. Well, questions are okay. I just don't want to feel like I am directing too much of the story. There is no GM! Don't be one!
TL;DR VERSION
We played a game of Fiasco with the "Dragon Slayers" playset. A noble has recently become a werewolf and is seeking a cure through a book of spells in the possession of a dragon. He hires a team of adventurers to kill the dragon, but the book is not to be found. That's because the healer, a pacifist and a werewolf herself, wants the book, too, and swipes it. The team is contracted to stay and defend the town against a deadly beast (a werewolf?!) that has been terrorizing nearby towns. A cure is found in the tome that requires the blood of a werewolf. The team decides to hunt the werewolf but the noble has left to go home and the healer is in a jail cell, so there are no werewolves to be found. The healer werewolf escapes and kills the town, then is slain by the returning adventurers.
That leaves out pretty much all of the interesting stuff, but I realized that I have created a huge wall of text that no one will read. So there you go.