Edit: If you want to know what this is all about, follow me to the very beginning, where I lay out the concept that brought this outline.

Now that we have established the characters, their relationships to each other, and some background for each of them, it’s time to think about the actual story.

Normally in Fiasco, the player that grew up in the smallest town would go first (I know, right), establishing or resolving a scene with their character in focus, receiving a black or white die at the end of it (depending on a “good” or “bad” outcome for their character), and handing the focus off to the next player. Everyone gets to act twice as main character in the scene, while they may stand in as supporting character in other player’s scene, either as their own character, or as random NPC to flesh out the narrative.

Since I’m doing this all by myself, I simply chose who gets to go first, and no picking and choosing of dice needs to happen. Based on my initial thoughts, I decided whether a scene ends good or bad for that character, giving it a black or white tag. In the actual Fiasco game, during act 1, each players receives a die, but has to give it to another player (in act 2, each player keeps their dice as they get them). I’m thinking of ways to establish a distribution to allow for each character to end up with a number of black and white dice at the very end to be able to roll on the Aftermath Table. I might, if enough interest arises, run a poll at the end for each scene to see what you think each character should have received at the end of that scene. Or some-such thing.

Anyways…

Here is the first written-out outline for Act 1. Everything is subject to change. For each scene, once I start writing the actual narrative, I also draw a card from the Writer Emergency Deck, contemplate its meaning for that scene, and try to built in the ideas coming from it. That means that some scenes might end up going in a completely different direction — so be it. The goal of this exercise is to venture into ideas and concepts I wouldn’t otherwise think of.

I’ve chosen a back and forth in time, starting off gritty, and swapping back and forth between a current disaster, and the wedding just before, giving each character (by the end of the act) one wedding-related scene, and one scene related to the current events it all leads up to.

Let me know what you think, what you would have done differently at this point, and so on. I’m looking forward to actually writing this thing out.

Spoilers beyond this page. If you don’t want to follow the process in detail, and rather just read the story as it develops, do not go to page [2], do not read the following outline, and do not spoil it all for yourself.

For those interested in the actual process behind this project of randomized story-telling, follow me to page [2]. Or skip right ahead to page [3] for the actual outline of act 1.