FIASCO: Rat Patrol

FIASCO is an award-winning storytelling game inspired by cinematic tales of small-time capers gone disastrously wrong. You’ll tell a story about ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control! Lives and reputations will be lost, painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, you just might end up back where you started. You probably won’t be lucky.

Please note that FIASCO is an... R-rated game. It may (and most likely will) include such topics as naughty language, sex, drugs, rock and roll, lying, cheating, stealing, violence, double-dipping your chips, and generally just being an unwholesome Coen Brothers movie character of a person. Not graphic depictions of any of that, mind you, but you may not want to bring the kids, is all.

FIASCO is a single-session RPG designed to be played as a one-shot. The game is easy to learn and the host is happy to teach; everything needed to play will be provided.

This month's playset: RAT PATROL by Jason Morningstar

One day you are miserable experiments, destined to have your brains extracted to see what makes you tick, and the next you are blinking in the sunlight, smelling new smells that aren’t disinfectant and terror, dumped on a lawn by kids in balaclavas. You recognize the balaclavas because you have had encyclopedias injected into your brains. First worn by British troops, whoever they were, during the Crimean War, whatever that was. You could recall the details if you thought hard enough but really, now is not the time.

Now you are free, and you know how rats are supposed to live, and what the dangers of a rat-centric lifestyle are. Behind you is a gleaming tower full of terrible people who did unspeakable things to you and your friends. In front of you is a forest full of encyclopedic dangers you can name but whose scent is entirely unknown. On either side are others like you, rats you lived with, nearly died with, got really smart with. Rattus norvegicus, Sprague-Dawley strain, mostly the offspring of a very special pair named Linda and Milky.

Time to get moving. Maybe to survive. Maybe to get revenge.