Actual Play – Dragonslayers (5/26/2012)

Players: Sean Nittner, Dennis Jordan and Thomas Smallberry (I need your last name Thomas)
System: Fiasco
Playset: Dragonslayers

Many props to Logan Bonner for this playset. After a day of chasing kids around, promoting Big Bad Con, and generally doing everything but gaming, I was very content to play a nice, fast pace, very vulgar game of Fiasco.

The Score

This is the score from the playbook, which we read just before playing. It pretty much summed up our entire game experience.

‘If you want to keep those hands, get them off my magic cloak.”

The bumpkins in this pissant mountain town could never have taken down that dragon. Their biggest hero hasn’t seen battle since Drozzek rode down from the Smoking Mountains three wars-to-end-all-wars ago. That old fuck they call their town wizard fried his brain with one too many “elixirs of awareness” and can’t even light a campfire
with all his spells combined.

So yeah, we rode into town, a bunch of outsiders ready to solve that problem. Solve a motherfucking dragon. And no, we don’t care what they think. And yes, we’re fucking heroes. These yokels should worship at our feet. They didn’t blast those mummies to dust or make a deathtrap built with technology lost centuries ago their bitch. And
they sure as hell didn’t slay that dragon.

That’s our dragon, and its gold is our gold. So unless you’re bringing us ale and whores, get the fuck out before we transform you into a turkey and serve you for dinner.

Our Assholes, er characters.

Dennis and I were really ready to embrace the spirit of this playset. Based on the setup we rolled, we crafted our characters, two drinking buddies.

Leglonas – Half-Elf, Half-Orc Bard with an 18 charisma, when the PHP caps Half-Orks at at 16 Charisma, because he wasted 20 damn wishes from all the rings of multiple wishes on raising it!

Halluck the Half-Hammer – Half-Orc Assassin with surprise multiclass levels in fighter, which only mattered when he was getting his level in attacks per round against 0-level peasants.

Smallberry – Our low level henchmen with promise. High stats, totally Lawful Good, and willing to put up with our shit.

The other five dead members of our fellowship, who we always poured drinks for that nobody could touch, that is until we got to drunk and forgot and drank theirs as well “this one last time”

Highlights of the story

Like any good D&D game, this story would be horrible if told from start to finish, here are just some of the “oh shit, there I was…” Moments.

We started the game with Smallberry, who had just tied up the horses in the stable (of his father’s inn) walking in to seeing Halluck accidentally murder Smallberry’s father (via fork to the eye). Halluck was still going on about how they over cooked his roast beef, when Smallberry interrupted to point out his dead father. The animosity grows.

We flashed back to how we actually killed the dragon, which involved Lelonas seducing it and then when it’s defenses were down Halluck shot it in the eye with a crossbow bolt. “Twang. Head shot.” It made a bloody mess that Lelonas was not pleased about (why came out later)

When piling all the treasure into our bag of holding, Smallberry picked up a Mirror of Opposition and his Evil Opposite (TM) stepped out, shoved him in the bag and took over henchmen duties. It turned out to be in fact the Evil Opposite (TM) Smallberry that saw Halluck kill his father.

Other adventurers were not happy with our behavior, and thus the inevitable “now we have to kill them all to prove that we’re not bad guys” battle. It was a joke really, they were 5th level maybe, with all the ridiculous classes from Unearthed Arcana like Cavalier and the Specialty Priest (2nd edition anyone?), feeling very self righteous. Lelonas summoned a lich (or the illusion of one) and we watched as they pissed themselves trying to fight it.  This ended poorly for us though as the fight knocked over our table and tipped over the bag of holding. 10,00o gold pieces spilled out and made a mess.

The gold all over the floor did two things. 1) started the discussion of what we should do with it. Lelonas wanted to hire an army, but Halluck was sure that was useless. There was absolutely nothing level 0-1 characters could do for them. One dragon breath would wipe out half of them. Instead they should by a castle!

Things went down hill from there. The bag of holding (with the rest of the treasure and good Smallbery) was stolen by the “scout” in the other adventuring party. Evil Opposite (TM) Smallbery was given a +5 dagger of evisceration that he kept trying backstab Halluck with, and the entire town rose up against us.

All in all, this just meant that Halluck got to prove his point about how worthless an army would be, while Lelonas kept insisting he could easily get an army of 3rd level soldiers, but nobody was sold on it…

Tilt

The tilt revealed there was a guilty conscience (which ended up being Evil Smallberry and Halluck forming a kind of friendship) and an unexpected love (it wasn’t just the dragon that was seduced, Lelonas had fallen for her as well).

After the tilt our game was filled with arguments about how to use rod’s of resurrection, Evil Opposite (TM) Smallberry killing good Smalls over and over in duels, out of duels, and finally Lelonas’ admission that he was in love.

We used the last charge on the rod of ressurection to bring back the dragon, which promptly swallowed by Evil Opposite (TM) Smallberry and Halluck and Lelonas had to win her love (specifically without his magic harp) to convince her to love him… and vomit up Halluck and Smalls.

Aftermath

We all had it pretty bad. Evil smalls did really well for himself until the mirror was broken, and good smalls had to take responsibility for all the evil he had done. Lelonas was loved by the dragon, but when her sister came to live with them, she turned the smitten dragon against her lover and the kept him for a time as their plaything. Halluck did the best of them all (I think a Black 5) and merely had all his wealth taken, and had to take a job for 50GP, working for the micromanaging wizard that forced him to use a Half-Hammer instead of his favored 2-Handed Sword.

The three joined up at the end (working for said wizard) as a pathetic version of their original selves. But they were still, through and through, from start to finish, douchebags.

Thoughts on the game

I really like how fast a 3 player game of Fiasco goes. We were laughing our asses off for two hours and the story was totally ready to be over when it finished. I loved it.

I was in a pretty sour mood when the game started. Having spent the entire day doing child-care while my friends games left me jealous and cranky. This game was just what I needed to blow off some steam.

Hey Thomas, Fiasco doesn’t require a GM!

Half-Hammer was a joke, in the vein of Captain Hammer. It had to do with only being able to use half of the hammer because otherwise it would be too much hammer. It was also a joke about being a half-orc. The hammer wasn’t a real hammer.

The hammer is Halluck’s penis.