Comprehensive Fiasco Playset Listing

Hey, I got curious and wound up with this list of Fiasco playsets. It’s as complete as I can make it; the last update was January 19th, 2011. I’ve tried to provide enough information about each one so you can get an idea of whether or not it’s up your alley. The Bully Pulpit playsets are in order of publication; the third party playsets are in alphabetical order.

Latest additions: Liquidation, a playset about modern retail.

Current count: 49 playsets (one in Italian), plus one translation.

Bully Pulpit Playsets

Rulebook

The rulebook comes with four playsets.

Main Street

A nice American southern town, although I grew up in a nice New England town and you could pretty much use this one for that, too. If you don’t have the game for some reason, this playset appears in the preview.

Boomtown

The Wild, Wild West.

Tales From Suburbia

More family connections and Edge City than you get in Main Street. Interesting study in what makes two playsets different, in fact.

The Ice

Death and life at an Antarctic research station.

Specials

Currently none of these are available, so hold onto ’em if you have ’em.

Las Vegas

You got this at Gencon 2010 if you bought the game there. I don’t think there’s any other way to get it. Here’s an actual play report.

Los Angeles 1936

Chandler-esque LA noir. This was available if you bought the Fiasco PDF download through the end of 2010.

Poppleton Mall

A holiday mall-themed playset inspired by Bad Santa and Mallrats. It includes alternate elements if you don’t want to do the holidays. It was free with the purchase of a Fiasco T-shirt during the holiday season in 2010.

Free Downloads

All of Bully Pulpit’s free Fiasco downloads can be found here.

Touring Rock Band

The best and worst of rock and roll.

Gangster London

Bad guys in London; slanted more towards modern London than (say) the Kray Twins, but you could adjust it very easily.

Last Frontier

Life in an Alaskan fishing village. Best sub-section: “Bear Insurance.”

Lucky Strike

A U.S. Army replacement depot in November, 1944, full of bored soldiers.

Flyover

The great American Midwest, anywhere from Texas to North Dakota.

Reconstruction

1867, in the Virginia, right after the Civil War. Some potential for offensive play, but you’re playing Fiasco, so you thought about that already.

Manna Hotel

A run-down motor lodge in Kansas; contains supernatural overtones.

1913 New York

Graft, anarchists, and plutocrats in New York City.

Transatlantic

An ocean liner en route to New York in 1932. (Two decades after the Titanic, by the by.)

Dallas 1963

Right before the Kennedy assassination. The Book Depository is a Location.

London 1593

Queen Elizabeth I, spies, and Shakespeare.

Dragon Slayers

The aftermath of a successful Dungeons & Dragons dungeoncrawl. The PCs, not the players.

Operation Zebra

Something very bad happened, and something very bad is about to happen, and you’re trapped on a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. During World War II. Emphatically occult.

Foreign Language

Horse Fever

This’ll show up as an English Playset of the Month at some point, but this is the original. Looks like it’s about horse racing.

Ice (Russian)

Translated from the rulebook; lives on the Bully Pulpit download page.

Third-Party Playsets

A few of these link directly to PDFs, which I have marked as such cause who wants a surprise PDF? Some link to landing pages, from whence you can download the PDF. These are noted as “PDF download” in the description. All else can be assumed to be a text page of some sort.

General

All The Damn Time

Experimental playset in which everyone plays the same person at different points in his life, because he’s a time-traveler. PDF download.

The Big Anime Con (PDF)

Otaku with as much right to screw up as anyone else. (One of two con playsets; we know our own turf, yo.)

Bravazzo!

Italy, 1435, as the Renaissance begins. PDF download.

Break A Leg!

Awful things behind the scenes at a theater. Could be community, could be Broadway.

Devil’s Night (PDF)

Vampires in Detroit on Devil’s Night; horror-themed. Discussion and art are here.

Double Down

Atlantic City casinos. Some horse racing here if you want your horse racing in English.

Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII-based dwarven community building simulation with a cult following. This is probably mostly of interest to Dwarf Fortress players, although if you read up on the original you’d get the humor and references.

Firan

Firan is a fantasy multi-player text-based roleplay environment, which is all we had before these newfangled MMOs and VTTs and stuff. I think it would be difficult to play this one without Firan players involved.

Funny Old Game

A football (soccer) playset; not yet complete.

GenCon: The Worst Four Days In Gaming

Everything bad about going to a gaming con in four short days. Awesome sense of the hobby’s less attractive side. PDF download.

Hollywoodland Noir

The Hollywood located midway between James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler.

Home for the Holidays

A holiday-themed playset from Megan of the Jank Cast.

Liquidation

A playset about a big chain bookstore closing. PDF download.

No Strings Attached

Muppets. See also discussion. PDF download.

Outrageous Fortune

Shakespeare! In contrast to London 1593, this one is about the joy of being a Shakespeare character.

Pink Mohawks

Low-lifes in the world of Shadowrun. Not official.

Science Comics

Sometimes there are third-rate supervillains, and sometimes they make mistakes too. Best sub-section: “Minions.”

Toil and Trouble

Wizarding school for youngsters. Yeah, inspired by those books. PDF download.

White Collar (PDF)

White collar crime, high finance, and mistakes.

Yokohama 1865

Foreigners, samurai, and criminals in Yokohama, just as Japan’s isolation begins to end.

RPG Geek Contest (November 2010)

The RPG Geek people ran a contest in late November for the best Fiasco playset, which is so cool I wanted to make it a special section. The title links below go to each playset’s page; the PDF links in the descriptions go to the PDF download page, because it is hard to find those if you’re not familiar with RPG Geek. The overall list of entries is here.

Bangkok 1984

Based on the musical Chess, plus spy stuff. World’s your oyster. PDF download.

The Bull

Purposefully claustrophobic British pub goings-on. Lots and lots of British cultural references, which are politely hyper-linked. Substitutes Events for Locations. PDF download.

Cults of New England

If it’s 1933 in New England, there must be Deep Ones. Lovecraftian. PDF download.

The Fallout

After the bomb falls, people will still make stupid mistakes about each other. PDF download.

Holly Jolly!

Rankin/Bass fun at the North Pole. Comes with a custom Tilt table. PDF download.

On the Rez

Poverty and pain on a Native American reservation. PDF download.

A Shot At The Show

Minor league baseball, small towns, and ambition. PDF download.

State Prison

Problems behind bars, plus Scientology. PDF download.

Resources

There’s a very nice Word template for creating Fiasco playsets. It works best if you use the Fiasco fonts. You could also use the OpenOffice template, and apparently if you’re an InDesign user you can get that template direct from the Bully Pulpit people.

Tags: fiasco