Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Fiasco + Mythic GM Emulator Part One

Fiasco 2nd Edition (Bully Pulpit Games)
Designed & Written by Jason Morningstar 

Mythic GM Emulator 2nd Edition (Word Mill Games)
Designed & Written by Tana Pigeon

You can purchase Fiasco here
You can purchase Mythic GM Emulator here

As I’ve mentioned, my first foray into tabletop gaming didn’t happen until I was in my late 20s. Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition had just come out, and I was curious. I found pdf scans of the three core books online and tried DMing as my first outing. I never really liked how many rules there were, and I found they got in the way of trying to tell stories. I still wanted to roleplay, but it would have to be with a different game. This is around the time I stumbled across Fiasco on r/rpg. It seemed like the perfect fit, and I had a lot of fun in multiple sessions of this game. I was all-in when the Kickstarter came along in 2019 for a 2nd card-based edition. Due to COVID-19, I never played it with anyone until the previous weekend, from when I wrote this. I brought it over for dinner at a friend’s house in the Netherlands. Fun was had by all. But I was wondering if Fiasco could be done single-player. It would not be the same game, but it could be a robust storytelling tool.

The Mythic GM Emulator is a set of tools developed by Tana Pigeon, who also publishes a monthly Mythic Magazine that adds even more ideas and tips. While I wouldn’t use every piece of this system in my solo Fiasco game, I would use a lot. Before I explain which tools I will use, let’s make sure you understand what Fiasco is. 

Fiasco is a GM-less game about characters who are connected in some way and make poor decisions that increase the chaos of the events in the story. Think of a Coen Brothers film like The Big Lebowski or Blood Simple as a good example. There are multiple themed playsets ranging from a wedding to a haunted summer camp to a shopping mall and more. Players are given the option of framing their scene or choosing the outcome; whichever they don’t pick is given to the rest of the table to decide. In the case of the 2nd edition, a negative or positive outcome for a scene is determined by a finite amount of cards meaning the further you get into the game, the fewer options there will be for either. During Act One, play goes around the table, with each player getting two scenes. Then there is the Tilt, where two players will get to determine two twists that are now in the story. Act Two is much like Act One. And then there is the Aftermath, where players find out the ultimate fates of their characters.

The Mythic tools I used were Fate Questions & the Chaos Factor influenced scenes. Fate Questions are a system where you track the Chaos Factor of your game. It starts at 5 and goes down in the next scene if things deescalate, while it goes up in the next if things are getting crazier. In the case of Fiasco, the Chaos Factor is going up a lot. There’s a table you roll a d100 on when asking your question to determine a Yes or No answer. In the case of Fiasco, I only have one question per scene: “Does this turn out in favor of the player character?” This would be my substitute for choosing the outcome of a scene.

For scene framing, I used Mythic’s method of delivering unexpected scenes. It uses the same Chaos Factor as before, with the rule that if you roll over the Chaos Factor, you get an expected scene. If you roll odd under the Chaos Factor, you get the expected scene but with a significant alteration. If you roll under the Chaos Factor and it is even, you get an interrupted scene, which is not what you had planned. I believe these two mechanics might enable a player to partially emulate how Fiasco plays. Of course, playing with a group of people is always best, but I intended to write a story. 

For this playthrough, I used the Tales from Suburbia playset deck. Here are my characters and their connections to each other:

Ginette LaFever – local girls’ softball coach in Poppleton, USA. She also runs Scents, the smell therapy store at a nearby strip mall. Ginette is connected to Yu Kim, one of the players on her softball team. Their connection is a Need – To Get Respect by Standing Up For Yourself. It seemed apparent to me that Ginette was a bully, and her player needed to stand up to her.

Yu Kim – Thai/Cambodian second generation in America, a very athletic girl with a stockier build, 16 years old, family has moved to Poppleton in the last 18 months. She is dealing with her softball coach bullying her but also has a connection to Tweedy Bradley, her neighbor across the street. They share an Object between them, Transportation – a Ducati 1098 sport motorcycle. Yu wants to steal it from Tweedy as revenge for his treatment of her family since they first moved in.

Tweedy Bradley – a former cop, was kicked off the force for excessive violence. He must be pretty bad for the cops to fire him. Tweedy is a guy who blames every other person around him for his problems, especially if they are a woman or non-white. He loves to torment the Kim family across the street while washing his treasured Ducati motorcycle in the driveway before locking it up with a special code in his garage. Tweedy is also connected to Clifton, a cop still on the force. They share an important Location: Historic Downtown – Statue of Hezekiah Poppleton. There is a growing protest movement around removing the statue due to Hezekiah’s ownership of slaves. Clifton is trying to just hang back like the department told him, while Tweedy is hungry to antagonize and cause trouble.

Clifton McLean – an officer on the Poppleton police force- is a friend out of pity to his former colleague Tweedy. He’s also the brother of Ginette. She is trying to convince him to take an ownership stake in Scents, but Clifton is very skeptical. Ginette promises that he can make enough money to help him retire early if he does this. Clifton can’t help but think of how Ginette’s previous business ventures have panned out. 

In our next part, we’ll see how this story pans out for our four characters.