This was a first time play of Fiasco for all of us. We are all familiar with boardgames, and even though I was the one who purchased the game neither I nor my girlfriend, Jean, have any experience with rpg’s. My sister, Vera, has a little experience, but is not a regular rpg’er.

We chose the Zoo because we’re fond of pets and animals. Plus I really didn’t want to things to get too gonzo.

Pairings
Justus-Jean
Relationship: Community: Zoo Lover (Jean) and Zoo Hater (Justus).
Needs: To Get Control for Just one Day

Jean-Vera
Relationship: Keeper: Pachyderm (Jean) and Cats (Vera)
Location: Grizzly Habitat

Vera-Justus
Relationship: Illicit Animal Smugglers
Object: Secret: One Animal Passed off as Another.

Act One
The game starts with Justus approaching Vera with an idea that could make them a ton of money. They have worked together in the past, and some of the great cats in the baby cats exhibits have already been converted to house cats. However, he has a much more ambitious plan this time and he emphasizes he needs to just get control of the zoo for a day and he can clean house. It is clear he would end up with the lion’s share of the profits, but she would still get a decent chunk of change for her troubles.

Even though Vera has been his partner in crime, she is torn about the enormity of a full scale clearance sale and wanders off to ponder the situation, balancing the risk of losing the job and permanently ruining the zoo against her dire need for fast cash. Not only is she the cat keeper at the zoo, but at home Very is a cat lady and she has a cat who is badly in need of expensive vet attention.

Meanwhile Jean sees Vera in deep thought and walks up, starting a conversation. Jean suspects a smuggling relationship between Vera and Justus, and she casually mentions that she feels the zoo has become infested with unsavory characters. Jean hints she has some really big plans for clearing house and if Vera would help, she’d pull some strings to make sure Vera’s housecats receive world class veterinary care. Even though Vera likes her coworker, she walks away uncommitted, unsure who she wants to work with.

A few days later, Justus confronts Vera, concerned that he hasn’t heard a response from her. He strongly impresses the urgency of the situation but can’t get Vera to commit. At this point Vera is in complete cognitive paralysis, she has two people who desperately want her help, hinting at big zoo-wide power plays, but both potential partners are really cagey about their plans.

Jean notices the conversation between Justus and Vera and she intercepts Justus as he leaves the big cat exhibit. Jean clearly considers Justus is a shady character, especially since something does not seem all kosher with the cat exhibit, his favorite haunt. She does not attempt to hide her contempt for him, but Justus is a cocky bastard and doesn’t even notice. Instead he sees Jean as a potential alternate partner, asking probing questions about the elephants — especially the costs associated with the purchase and transportation of these animals.

All this is happening right outside of the big cat exhibits, so as soon as Vera notices the two of them chatting, she makes beeline to join the two of them. She knows Justus, being self absorbed and overconfident, could easily say something really stupid. Even though Vera does not join the conversation before Justus unwittingly convinces Jean of his ill intensions, Vera does manage to steer the remainder of the conversation into small talk ensuring that nothing overtly stupid or criminal is proposed. Everyone leaves uncommitted – Jean is extremely suspicious of the other two, Vera is still confused about who to help, and Justus happily wanders off with dreams of a new partner in crime.

Tilt
Paranoia: The thing you stole has been stolen.
Failure: A stupid plan executed to perfection.

Act Two
A few days later at the great cats exhibit, Justus is shocked to find out that one of the remaining prized exotic cats has been replaced with a sick helpless tabby. He freaks out because he had already committed to selling the now-missing exotic cat to a competing zoo! After a moment of complete panic, he suddenly realizes that he never gave them any photos, and realized that he might get away with passing this sick tabby as a kitten of the promised exotic cat.

Because of his previous work with Vera, he knows the zoo system fairly well. However, because he is worried that Vera may have betrayed him, he decides to go solo. He breaks into the zoo on his own, acquires the tabby, and delivers it to the competing zoo. He does a little fancy talking, selling this thing as the top kitty of the exotic cat’s litter, and manages to get the other zoo to accept it!

Even though Jean does not like Justus, she has put up with him in the past. However, this was just too much for her. She knows something is messed up, since the space had gone from an exotic cat to a sickly tabby to just being empty – and the competing zoo is advertising new exhibit with a baby exotic cat! She decides to take action and concocts a sting operation. She begins to floats rumors of a Thai Elephant exhibit coming to town. Not only is it a rare visit, the zoo has acquired a pregnant elephant so there will be a baby elephant coming very soon!

Meanwhile Vera is has become a complete wreck over her missing sick tabby. She had found the exotic cat space empty a few days ago. She assumed that Justus had jumped the gun and moved the exotic. So instead of alerting the authorities she had slipped in her own tabby, thinking it was a perfect chance to get it some healthcare. And now her precious housecat was missing! She goes to Justus freaking out about the whole situation and demanding to know where her cat had gone.

In hysteria of the heated conversation, Justus does not realize that Vera had nothing to do with the disappearance of his precious exotic. He still thinks that Vera double-crossed him and refuses to tell her anything unless she gets him some more information about this new rumored elephant exhibit. He hints very strongly that he might know some people who might know something about her missing tabby.

Vera is so distressed about her missing cat that she immediately goes to Jean, blatantly asking for details about the rumored elephant exhibit. Jean tells Vera that the zoo was not planning to publicly announce the elephant exhibit till the baby was born, but casually mentions that the pregnant mom was due to arrive on the grounds soon. This leads to a flurry of further questions from Vera, and Jean “accidentally” gives away the arrival date and location.

After the conversation with Vera, Jean calls the authorities to set up the sting.

The final scene opens with Justus filling out a bunch of insurance forms and yelling at indifferent employees at a truck rental place who are moving at a snails pace. After getting the truck he drives furiously towards the zoo, but he is already late for his appointed rendezvous to intercept the new elephant arrival. However, it turns out that being late is a stroke of good luck. As he nears the zoo he sees a bunch of cop cars in at the zoo loading dock. Looking again, he notices a handcuffed Vera getting shoved into the back of a police cruiser. He realizes that they just got stung, and he just drives past the zoo and avoids the attention of the authorities. As he does a loop around the zoo, he passes the backstage of the pachyderm exhibit. And there, tucked under in the shade, is a cage with his missing exotic cat!

Aftermath
JP: Three burly goons knocking on his apartment door.
JG: Getting a nice promotion for her great work in cleaning up the zoo from smugglers.
VP: Leaving the police station, released due to insufficient evidence.
VP: Getting fired, for her involvement in the elephant and irregularities in the cat exhibit.
JP: Flashback, In the dark of night handing a manila folder with a picture of an elephant to an executive from a different zoo.
JG: At night at the pachyderm exhibit, selling off the exotic cat to the same shady zoo executive.
VP: Starting a job as a janitor at another zoo (the one where her tabby had been sold to).
JP: sitting at a park bench with two broken legs.
JG: Newspaper Headline – “New Thai Elephant Gives Birth to a Baby At Local Zoo!”
VP: Overhearing a couple coworkers talking about the weird case of the new acquisition. A deathly ill exotic cat that has been cured by the vet, but the vet swears it’s just a stray cat.
JP: Volunteering at a local pet shelter and quietly leering at a purebred Siamese cat.
JG: Newspaper Headline – “Baby Elephant Mysteriously Disappears!”

Closing Thoughts:
My sister thought the gameplay was a bit too intense for her tastes. She generally likes to play light board games, and I don’t think she enjoyed the amount of brainpower it takes to participate in improvisational storytelling. I’m not sure how she had the patience to go though a 10+ session campaign with her husband, but that’s love for you!

My girlfriend, who likes to read spoiler scripts to movies and random soap operas had fun with the game, but she expressed concern that with the wrong crowd it would be a dud. However, I suspect that is really just the case with any game, even though the danger of a bad crowd might be particularly acute in this type of open ended game.

As for me, I always have jitters introducing new games, especially one that I haven’t played before. However, it helps that I listened to a few actual play podcasts of Fiasco. And even though it was published before our play, I strongly recommend Jason Morningstar’s demo on the BAMF podcast posted 06 March 2012. That said, its really not a complicated game. The one simplification we did was settling all the relationships before distributing the object/need/location. We did have a couple “magic” dice to choose items that caught someone’s attention instead of 100% following the rules. However, I think it worked out ok. One thing I wish we did in retrospect was to use names — and not our own. I wish we named each of our characters, and also we should have named all the key animals that popped up, it would have added a lot of color to the game. I also wish we had more first person dialogs, we were maybe describing a little too much.

Even so, I think the game was very fun, and surprisingly intense! Coming up with story ideas was a lot harder than it sounded – I was tensed up like I was playing a heavy optimization eurogame! But unlike a board game, but we managed to laugh throughout the whole time. We had our doubts about the plot after the first act – which was a bit overly focused on “court intrigue”. But we conducted the tilt and took a break to let things settle a bit. After coming back to a fresh table, things really got moving and everything came together really nicely, especially the surprise ending! I was very impressed with how a table of unexperienced RPGers, all first time Fiasco players, somehow ended up with a memorable story!

110630
one last drag,
Houston summer morning
colder than night

110705
I’m condensing
sweating for the bus
in the morning light

but I’ve decided that I should start doing some things on this blog site too just to keep it moving along after a half hear of stagnation!

So here’s the list as I wrote it down with notes, not as ordered by boardgame geek ranking.

Brass – Martin Wallace
Troyes – Dice and Hype
El Grande – A classic I haven’t tried
Tigris and Euphrates – good online, I hope its better in person
Le Havre – I liked Agricola
Modern Art – Auctions, good first play
Princes of Florence – Auctions, I didn’t like the first play but its well regarded
Hansa – Mark Johnson
Africa- Mark Johnson
Bohnanza – Mark Johnson
Caylus – Great Game
Tichu/Thirteen Combo – I’ve been trying to get this game played for a while!
Caroom – Pool meets Crokoinle
Arabian Nights – sounds crazy
Australia – area control and another continent
Manhattan – very abstract but sounds like light crazy nastiness
Aton – great 2P area control
Foppen – Trick taking AND shedding, interesting
San Marco – you distribute I pick…and a gorgeous board
Through the Ages – it seems long but well regarded
Stone Age – it was very popular at one time
Shogun / Wallenstien – seems to be well regarded
Mu and lots more – a bunch of interesting card games
Mexica – part of a trilogy where I didn’t like the first game that I played, but this one has a nice looking board.
Power and Weakness – somehow it intruiges me

So now starts my first day on the job.  Its been a hectic three weeks since I was first contacted by Mr. Ziegler during the first week in January and now its the end of the month and I’m now about get dressed up and go corporate.  Lets hope the last few years of training at John and Suzanne’s place will have been good preparation for going corporate.

I won’t go too deep into gameplay, but here’s a quick intro. The game is played with a custom five-suited deck of good looking, well designed cards printed on fairly nice stock, (a step below casino quality but fine for heavy use). As a climbing game the primary goal is to shed your cards with a secondary goal of picking up point cards during the play. A 3P game will involve all five suits of cards (each ranked 2 through 10) with each player is given a JQK which are wild cards which are kept face up (2P games involve only four suits). There are a variety of bombs, and each player actually starts with at least one available (using the JQK). For scoring, the 3,5,7 and 9 are worth 1pt each while Jack is worth 2pts, Queen worth 3pts, and King worth 5pts. When you shed of your last card you immediately score 5X points for every card in your opponent’s hand (in a 3P game whoever has more cards) and the last place player also gives his cards in hand to player who went out first. Each player keeps and scores the cards they captured during play. There is also bonus scoring if someone declares a bet that they’ll go out first. The game ends once someone suprasses 350 points.

So what did I think of the game? Well lets start with the criticisms. I still haven’t got over my initial lackluster 2P experience and even though I like the 3P game, I am very disappointed that the 2P game involves taking out one of the suits — which diminishes one of the more distinctive aspects of the game, the ease of mixed 3579 bombs and the mind twister of having to keep track of that fifth suit. Furthermore, I still find the scoring more awkward than it should be. I’m not sure how to resolve it, but I just feel that there must be a better way because we just kept finding ourselves digging around for missing point cards (moreso than Tichu). But the primary reason I don’t plan on buying the game is because I feel that Haggis, like Tichu, are great gamers’ games but I don’t think either game is particularly suited for casual play (my personal sweet spot). Just as I still prefer Tien Len to Tichu, I prefer Dou Dizhu as a lighter 3P climbing card game which just needs a standard deck and doesn’t involve nearly as much explanation. Unfortunately I fear that non-gamers may not get past the rough initial plays of Haggis to get to the zone where it really starts to shine.

So why do I think its a great gamers’ game? First, there is a huge tension between getting rid of cards as quickly as possible while keeping the big boppers in hand so you can go out smoothly. Having cut my teeth on Tien Len, I have very strong instincts to hold back during play, letting the other players deplete their hands and then slamming them right before they can go out. Unfortunately with this strategy, if you misjudge your opponents in this game, they can pick up a ton of points when they go out – and even if you win, you just don’t capture that many bonus points. So that makes me play a bit more dangerously than I generally like making it an exciting brain tickler – I almost never end my hand with a weak set in normal climbing games, but I found myself regularly stuck with a crap in Haggis. Also, the plethora of wild cards and bombs in the game adds a nicely balanced wildness to the gameplay — you can’t just chart a path and roll the opponents when you get a great hand. Because the game does not have the partnership and passing of Tichu, Haggis produces its gamery complexity by giving each player three wild cards and the ability to make bombs with those cards. And in a 3P game with 5 suits the mixed 3579 combo is fairly common, but because that combo is weaker than any of the face card bombs, its also not nearly as strong as one would wish. I really like how the fifth suit forces you to think differently in keeping track of cards. And finally, because two players can try to sit on a player and keep him from that magic 350 threshold, there are some interesting temporary partnership dynamics that come and go in a course of a 3P game.

And this is what makes Haggis interesting to me, I like the multiple dilemmas that Sean has embedded in the game. The dilemma that if you use your wilds you’ll break up your bombs, and if you use bombs you’re burning cruicial wildcards for the sets you just won the right to play. The dilemma that you can see what wild cards/bombs your opponents have…and they can see yours too. The dilemma that the awesome hidden bomb in your hand often breaks up some sweet sets you’d have otherwise. The dilemma that keeping your cards can let you unleash some awesome combos, but because everyone starts with wilds and bombs, an opponent can often suddenly dump their last few cards before you’ve made your move. The dilemma that you’re buddies with one guy now, and those points you let him take might just let him sneak past both of you. And with all these dilemmas, Haggis becomes a dynamic game and a great fun play. While I really think that the game could use a little polishing at the edges, its 99% of the way there, so if you’re a fan of traditional card games (and especially if you like them a little meatier), you won’t regret trying it out.

Bonus: I came up with a scoring variant that I think could be pretty elegant. Its very simple. Instead of scoring 5X points for cards, you score 1 point for each card in the (largest) remaining opponent’s hand. Also you score 1 point for each face card you capture. When you win a set with a 3579 bomb, the player you give the captures to sets it aside and scores 2 points for a mixed set and 3 points for a suited set. And instead of playing to 350, play to 70 points. That’s it….now lets see if I get a chance to playtest it!

Its maybe still too many photos, but hey, its half of my initial set of “good” photos. In any case, feel free to ask me about any of them…going to a different country definitely gives you lots of interesting things to shoot…just cause its all so new and different and thus “fresh”.

1. Shanghai is denser than anything you see in Manhattan, the first ring of burbs around Hangzhou comes close, and brand new luxury burbs just a little less.
2. They don’t ever just make a residential tower out here….they make several at a time.
3. Suburb seems to mean four units stacked on each other instead of a seven story apartment complexes.
4. Hangzhou suburbs, while dense, are definitely trying their best to be utterly boring like those in the good old USA.
5. But damn there’s a lot of cars and they drive like utter madmen!
6. Walking (and driving) around Shanghai and Hangzhou is an almost contact sport.
7. Food is fresher out here…bound to be when they’ve got live chickens and ducks in your supermarkets
8. But their supermarets don’t have don’t have aloe vera lotion tissue papers.  That makes it close to a barbarian society to me.
9. Other than that you can basically buy anything you want out here…and most things will be a little cheaper than the states but not nearly as much as you’d think since all the stuff in the states had to get shipped across the pacific ocean.
10. The US really needs to get its act together and start making $1 and $2 coins.
11. I wonder how obviously american I am to these folks.
12. Not knowing what the hell anyone is saying is both not nearly as bad and much worse than it may seem when you think about it.
13. I really dislike a lot of the fashion choices made by the women out here.
14. That said, Chinese TV is full of ads for skin lotions…which is a step up from being full of ads for beer and cars.
15. Guys don’t like to cut their hair too short and very few people have facial hair.
16. Chinese bed (woven strings) really is a great system.  Not sure why others don’t emulate it.  But I can still sleep on anything (pulled out sofa bed with a big cross bar running down the length of it.
17. People are very energy conscious…they all unplug their small devices.  Hell they even turn off the water heaters at night.
18. A lot of people play cards out here.  I think it must be more convenient than Mahjong or something.
19. Weddings involve a lot of firecrackers.
20. There are a lot of people standing around.  And its awfully wierd to be saluted when driving out the complex.
21. I’d love to hear how great US capitalism is compared to Chinese capitalism with a retirement age around 55 and reasonable health costs.
22. That said, the air here is WAY worse than anything I’ve seen in the states
23. I think grandma is taking this as a time to brainwash Jing into making babies.
24. It was quite an amusing lunch with Grandma and Jo-Ma watching them pressure her to make baby.
25. Food sure is fresher and better.
26. If in Hangzhou, definitely make a point to visit the Ling Yi Temple out here.  It costs 45 RMB to get into the park…skip the extra 30 RMB to get into that temple proper and go visit the other two temples that come for free with the park entry.
27. There are Chinese people selling things everywhere in this country, even at the top of a  hill accessible only by trails.
28. Chinese people are willing to buy things anywhere they are sold, even if they are silly little tchoskies on the top of a hill accessible only by trails.
29. Custmomer service is an utterly non-existant concept around here…so its quite shocking the one time we received great customer service (buying prepacked ramen!)
30. Yikes, at 58 RMB it seems that Starbucks will have been one of our most expensive “meals” out here…for a mango smoothie and a hot choc!
31. There’s a cable stayed bridge in Shanghai on the way to the airport that is almost as awesome to drive across as the Golden Gate.
32. The high speed rail on a viaduct elevated above the agricultural landscape is  a wonder to behold, it must be as impressive as the Eisenhower interstate system was to visitors from war torn Europe.  Three hours by bus, fortyfive minutes by train.

I’ve been looking around a bit about chinese-english online dictionaries…and wow….www.nciku.com seems like one of the best. It seems to have some trouble doing some searches cause apparently their servers are overloaded, but you can search with english or chinese text, pinyin, and even drawing in characters. The definitiong come out pretty thoroughly and include audio and stroke order animations and a rudimentary character composition chart (which is the weakest feature fo the bunch). Throw in easy to manage vocab lists to the mix and a lot of sample conversations and stuff and its one hell of a package.

And its all for free at the moment. For what its worth the other site of note is skritter but its a pay site and not as much a dictionary, but in the end, I’ll most likely default to flashcards on quarter size index cards, but its amazing what online stuff is coming out now….and once phone and touchscreen apps become mature its really going to be a sea change in how this stuff is taught.