Unlike a more traditional roleplaying game, in Fiasco, your group creates a cinematic story inspired by films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan. 

You can learn more about Fiasco at the Bully Pulpit Games site.  It’s really worth checking it out.  They can explain Fiasco way better than I can, so the rest of this article focuses on how EpicTable supports Fiasco.

Game Setup

For this game setup, I’m using a hypothetical playset dealing with art thieves and Cthulhu relics. 

Cards and Dice

During setup, you create the characters and their relationships, objects and other things they have in common.  You use an index card to track each of these, so the basic setup consists of character portraits with index cards between them.  EpicTable makes this easy with built-in support for index cards. 

Fiasco uses white and black six-sided dice, two of each per player, and you move them around on the tabletop during character creation and during play.  EpicTable lets you drag dice onto the tabletop, change their color, and clone them to produce lots more.  From there, you can drag them around, roll them, whatever you need to do.

Characters and Players

I like to have pictures of the characters, so that I can visualize them as we’re playing out a scene.  In Fiasco, the index cards lie between characters and one of them describes the relationship between the characters, so it’s important that the characters are on the tabletop.   I’ve used plain old images (you can just drag them onto the tabletop and they’ll automatically get sent to the other players) and text fields to represent the characters. 

Another interesting point is that I haven’t made any actual characters in EpicTable for this game. In Fiasco, everything about a character is right there in the index cards, so the only thing I wanted to add was a portrait to help me visualize the characters.

Beta note: Had I made characters, I could have just dragged down character portraits but in the current beta, EpicTable turns into pogs (round tokens), which is not what I wanted for my Fiasco game, and it’s kind of pointless to create a character if all you want is a picture.

I’ve also added player portraits.  There’s no reason why you’d have to do this.  I’m not even sure it’s not a little distracting, but some of the beta testers have asked for player portraits, so I thought I’d show an example of how they could be used.  All I did, in this case, is add a portrait from each player’s Skype or Google profile, along with a text field for their name.  It’s a good example of how you can do something yourself, even if that lazy EpicTable developer hasn’t gotten around to adding it for you.

Future possibility:  There’s an outstanding feature request to be able to show character tokens in portrait mode, with captions or nameplates like those shown here.  I’m inclined ot do that just as soon as the opportunity presents itself.  That would have eliminated the need for separate text fields.

Use of Text Fields

Just a couple notes on text fields.  You have a lot of options in how you want to represent text on the tabletop in EpicTable.  I used a somewhat larger font for the character names, compared to the player names.  I also gave the character names a semi-transparent background to make them stand out a bit more.

Playsets

Fiasco uses something it calls a “playset” as a context for the story.  It’s essentially a setting, the set of relationships, needs, objects, and locations around which the story is built.  There are many playsets for Fiasco to choose from—both ones created by the makers of Fiasco as well as those created by the gaming community.  Because the playset is the scaffolding on which your story is built, you refer to the playset often during game setup and character creation. 

There are a couple ways you could do this in EpicTable.  If you have the playset as a PDF, you can likely export the relevant parts of it as images and use handouts.  Handouts in EpicTable are images that you can share with the other players. 

Another way you could go is to create a “Playset” tabletop and use one or more index cards or rich text cards to hold the various lists that make up a playset.  The rich text cards support importing RTF files, so if you happen to have your playset available in that format, you could just import it into a rich text card. 

Future possibilities:  Several people have asked about direct support for PDF.  This is something I’d love to do, and every few months, I look around at tools for integrating PDFs into EpicTable.  Why “PDF support” isn’t straightforward is a larger topic than I want to cover in this post.

GM-less-ness

Fiasco is a GM-less game.  I know that sounds a little unusual if you’ve not played a GM-less game before, but in my opinion, it’s really worth trying this form of gaming.  When everyone around the table has an equal part in building the story, you get a very different kind of game.  Rather than the surprises coming from behind the screen of the all-knowing GM, they come from other players incorporating your ideas to take the story in directions you never could have foreseen.  I don’t know that I think it’s strictly better, but it’s a different kind of fun and much more creatively demanding.  You can’t coast when no one person has responsibility for the “reality” of the game world.

EpicTable supports GM-less play out of the box in that there are very few constraints on who does what.  For instance, in the Fiasco setup, anyone can edit cards, move dice or cards around—just like your physical tabletop.  I’m actually having to add some (optional/configurable) constraints for those who want more power in the hands of the GM.

Beta note:  As of beta 13, the only constraint on non-GMs is that only the GM gets to choose any character as his chat persona.  Players can only choose characters they own.  In addition, the roles are fixed in this beta—the host is the GM and everyone else is a player.  In the released product, the host will be able to set the role of each participant, so there’s no need for the host to always be the GM.

Chat?  I Think Not.

Fiasco is such a fluid game, I’m not sure I see it working over text chat.  I’d be more inclined to use Skype and just hide the chat window, reclaiming that real estate for the tabletop.  If I had wanted to use text chat, however, it would have been worth my while to create characters, rather than just using images like I have in this setup, because EpicTable would then let me speak as my character, associating their portrait with my speech.

Wrap-up

I hope you’ve found this helpful.   Go give Fiasco a shot, if you haven’t already.  It’s a very different experience if what you’re used to is D&D, but don’t let that intimidate you.  It can be a pretty good time, especially if you have a group that is used to gaming together.  In any case, Fiasco’s a good example of a game that makes non-traditional demands of a tabletop, and hopefully, this discussion will give you a few ideas about how you can use EpicTable in ways you’ve not thought of before.

– John

Along the way to finishing the “Arrange” (i.e., z-order) context menu for the tabletop, I introduced a short-lived but extravagant bug. One of the things you can do with objects on the tabletop is duplicate them. Last night, you could duplicate them…a lot. Imagine my surprise to see pieces of eight spilling out across the tabletop. By the time I stopped it, I had more than 9,000 coins on the tabletop! They were multiplying like tribbles.

Now, if I could just figure out how to do this on my physical tabletop….

Here’s a shot of the current context menu for Arrange with a sufficiently tamed Duplicate function. To the folks from the forum who have weighed in on this, let me know what you think. I’ve not forever ruled out something more elaborate, but my thinking is that this is sufficient for version 1.

Credits and Sources: Background texture and Pieces of eight from iStockphoto.

Tomorrow, I’ll add the ability for you to move objects up and down in the stack. I’ll planning on using the context menu (i.e., right-click menu) for this, and will add a keystroke that will do it as well, as discussed in the forum.

Credits and Sources: Fanmail images by Brennen Reece. Leather texture and coins from iStockphoto.

Nothing earth-shattering, but some of the tabletop textures made it tough to tell what was selected. It’s even smart enough to look at the color directly under it, rather than the color of the whole surface, in case you happen to have light and dark areas on the surface. That’s not as likely with a tabletop, but with a map it’s more common. Since maps are now just specializations of tabletop surfaces, they get this same goodness for free.

Credits and Sources: Fanmail images by Brennen Reece. Leather and canvas textures from iStockphoto.

Around your kitchen table, it’s probably obvious when you’re talking vs. when your character is talking. Especially if you’re that guy who always plays a gnome or a halfling and has to stay in character all the time. (You know who you are. Stop it.) When your group moves to a virtual tabletop, though, you need a new way to keep track of who’s saying what.

In-Character vs. Out-Of-Character Speech

Most virtual tabletops (“VTs” or sometimes “VTTs”) support text-based multi-user chat. Many allow you to signal whether you’re speaking in or out of character when you type.

This ability to signal whether you’re speaking in or out of character is really critical and one of the things that separates a dedicated roleplaying product like a virtual tabletop from general purpose instant messaging tools.

Why Bother to Signal In-Character vs. Out-of-Character Speech?

• Everyone can tell whether it’s you or your character speaking. (Sure you know, but without the whiny gnome voice, no one else does.)
• If your GM produces a transcript of the session, he can easily filter out out-of-character speech.

Mixed Text and Voice Chat

Another way to differentiate between in-character speech and out-of-character speech is use text chat for one and voice chat (e.g., via Skype or TeamSpeak) for another.

Use voice chat for out-of-character speech:

• player-to-player banter
• calling for dice rolls
• all the mechanical parts of an RPG.

Use text for in-character speech:

• roleplaying encounters with NPCs
• discussions between characters
• battlecries
• internal monologue that you want to share with the group

Why Text Chat for In-Character Speech?

Because you’re not an actor

Let’s face it; not everyone is a talented voice actor. (No, not even you, with your gnome voice and your ridiculous woodland name.) When in-character voice works, it’s great, but when it doesn’t–and it won’t for long–it gets silly or annoying. Neither helps you convey the sense of your character.

Because even if you are an actor, the other players’ imaginations are better (unless you’re Patrick Stewart)

With text chat, the listeners’ imagination combines the character’s portrait with your word choice and subtle linguistic cues to paint a mental image of the character. I suppose that depends on where your group falls with respect to acting vs. writing ability. If Patrick Stewart is in your group, maybe you want to let him speak in character. Unless he’s playing a female gnome. Or really any gnome.

Because you need to distinguish multiple speakers

Another reason why I prefer text chat for in-character speech is the need to distinguish multiple speakers. The GM, at minimum, has the need to do this, and the players might too, if playing multiple characters.

Now, maybe you’re great at imitating your character’s voice, but are you great at all your characters’ (or non-player characters’) voices? Probably not.

This is where virtual tabletops really shine. Some will allow you to assemble your cast of characters and choose whose “voice” you want to use. The messages you type come out annotated with the character’s name, like the script of a play.

What about Actions?

Actions are weird. They’re kind of in-character, in that the character is doing something. They’re kind of out-of-character, in that there’s frequently explanation that the player has to do or game mechanics involved. Some VTs allow you to signal actions as distinct from either in-character or out-of-character. This has always seemed a little contrived to me. You have to remember how your actions show up in the chat window so you can word them in a way that doesn’t look weird. But that’s true of treating it as in-character or out-of-character speech as well. I’m not sure what I think about this at the moment. (EpicTable, at this moment, doesn’t split out actions as distinct “speech”, but I can’t say that I feel strongly about that choice.)

Confession of a Woodland Warrior

Okay, I’ve given everyone else a hassle about playing gnomes. I guess I should admit that I have had a couple gnome characters myself. Thorn Greenbriar is the one I’ll admit to. There’s one from the 80s that I’d rather not discuss. Maybe this whole article about character speech is just overcompensation for my secret shame….

Do-It-Yourself Mapping

Let me preface this with the disclaimer that I’m not the most dedicated mapmaker out there, nor the most talented. Until recently, I’ve mostly resorted to graph paper and repurposing maps from printed publications. I have, on a few occasions, downloaded trials of popular map making software and poured a weekend of my life into trying to make a good map. All these efforts came to naught until I found Dundjinni. If you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend you check it out. I’m not what you’d call artistically gifted, but even I can make maps that I’m reasonably happy with–and can do so reasonably quickly. The Dundjinni forum is an active community of people who are genuinely talented and happy to share their techniques. I consider Dundjinni pretty indispensible. (One warning: if you’re on Vista, the road to a working Dundjinni installation is a little long. I’ve been running it in on Windows XP in a VMWare VM since my move to Vista, which is tolerable, but not optimal. The problem is not Dundjinni but the version of Java it uses vs. that which ships with Vista. There’s both a patch in the works as well as a workaround recently posted.)

Textures

If you’re making your own maps, eventually you’re going to go looking for new textures. The best places I’ve found so far:

• Spiral Graphics – Lots of really high-quality, tileable textures. This is pretty easily my favorite texture site.
• BurningWell – These are often not tileable, but there’s some interesting stuff here.
• PixelPoke – There aren’t many textures here, and I don’t know how active the site is, but I like the metal textures. I haven’t figured out what I want to do with them, but….

Ready-made Maps

If you’re looking for maps that someone’s already made….

• “the User Creations” section of the Dundjinni site has plenty of maps and other user art.
• Paizo’s GameMastery and Pathfinder modules are downloadable in PDF form, if you’re a subscriber. You can buy single modules as well, and there’s still Dungeon supplemental content available in PDF form.
• Wizards of the Coast’s Map-A-Week Archive
• Blu’s Cave , the site of a Dundjinni forum member who does some good work
• RPGNow is all about digital resources for your game, including maps. There’s the occasional freebie, and the rest is pretty inexpensive.

Lots more out there

This is by no means all that’s out there. It just gives you a taste of some of the resources available to you as you go about creating or assembling a map collection for your virtual tabletop.

I can’t draw maps. I mean ,I can–I have graph paper, I’ve been drawing maps since I was 10 years old. But I can’t draw maps that look like Christopher West’s maps. And it both saddens and shames me. Worse, I have this brilliant map from Dungeon or Pathfinder or whatever in front of me, while my players are stuck with my hastily-scrawled rendition of it in wet-erase marker on a battlemat. Now, as the DM and the guy who paid for the subscription, I’m entitled to bask in the sumptuousness of the map I get to look at , but maybe my players chipped in, or maybe I’m naturally magnanimous, or maybe I just think that playing on really nice maps is an experience that everyone deserves. For whatever the reason, I feel compelled to share the beautiful, professionally-designed maps with my players.

In the past, I’ve printed player copies of some maps, but that’s really not been very practical. Often the players shouldn’t be seeing the whole map. Here’s where a virtual tabletop comes in. Some virtual tabletops (including my own upcoming EpicTable) support sending the battlemat to a separate screen or to a projector. Now, your players get to see the same map you’re seeing. It looks cool, and you don’t have to interrupt play to draw it out on the battlemat. (If you’re having trouble visualizing this, check out the tabletop projection topic over at Pen, Paper, and Pixel.

You might never go back to physical battlemaps. …Well, yes, you might–there’s no substitute for playing out the climactic battle with hand-painted miniatures in a cavern built entirely out of the gorgeous stuff from Dwarven Forge. But unless your pockets are a lot deeper than mine, your spouse a lot more indulgent, and you’re a lot faster at tile arranging than I am, it’s really not practical to run the whole adventure inside a Dwarven Forge cavern system. (The GameMastery Map Packs are nice too, and affordable, but still a bit of a pain to setup for more than the special encounters.)

Using a virtual tabletop, all your encounters can use high-quality maps, and you can still break out the Dwarven Forge stuff for that climactic battle with the evil frog-priest and his fiendish bullywugs. (Admit it, you think that’s a little cool….)