Two weeks ago, I posted about a game called Fiasco and its potential use as an outlining tool. Since that post, I’ve been working on a custom Fiasco playset, step one along the process. While there is no shortage of playsets offered by Bully Pulpit Games, with new ones posting every month, I decided to start with the creation of my own for two reasons. First, I really wanted to set the story on Mars, largely because I’ve been reading a lot of Ace Doubles lately. Second, I thought it would serve as a fantastic world building tool.
In terms of the latter, I was very happy with the process. I chose to create the four sets of lists required of a Fiasco Playset in an order intended to start with the most unique to the story and drill down to the most universal ones. That order: Locations, Objects, Needs, and Relationships.
Locations was a fantastic process. The table required 36 elements broken into six wider categories, so it meant not just thinking about the broad areas of Mars where a story may happen but specific elements within each broad area. It meant questions about both what mundane locations would still exist on my Mars, as well as what locations could spur intriguing stories. Objects, likewise, ended up being a mix of what we might consider the mundane as well as bizarre.
While I’ve created both Needs and Relationships tables, those are the ones I’m most likely to revisit. Perhaps that says something about my writing style, or perhaps it says something about underestimating those particular tables. While it’s true that people tend to have similar needs and relationships wherever they go, I have concerns that either or both tables are underwhelming. The next step in the process will probably involve refining both how I plan to use these tables to outline, and the actual elements in the tables. Relationships, especially, is important as it’s the most used tables. A standard four person game tends to have four relationships, two needs, one object, and one location. So, yes, I’m happiest with the least used tables.
At this point, even if I don’t end up using the playset to create the basis of a story, the world building that emerged from the Locations and Objects tables has been very helpful, and let me build a planet I’m excited about telling a story, or stories, in.
So I’ll share. Keep reading after the break, and I’ll provide a short background on my Mars and the Location and Object tables. Expect another post in one or two weeks that talks about the actual outlining process, and provides more finalized Needs and Relationships tables.