On the most excellent TableTop web-show, a two-part episode on the RPG Fiasco, which Mordicai Knode on Tor.com sums up perfectly:
…a game in which you capture the dark comic confusion of the Coen brothers, where snappy Tarantino dialogue in the midst of mounting carnage is provided by the players, where the good-hearted charm of Simon Pegg’s bumbling runs smack dab into the harsh realities of a Greg Rucka spy comic. Quirky characters in unfortunate circumstances with the odds piling up against them, turning on each other and going out in a blaze of…well, going out in a blaze of glory might even be asking too much.
In this episode, Wil Wheaton and his pals Bonnie Burton (late of Lucasfilm and a frequent suggester of awesome Boing Boing stuff), John Rogers (showrunner for Leverage and former Cosby writer, and Alison Haislip (late of Attack of the Show, now on Hulu's Battleground) play out a round of Saturday Night 78, a 1970s nightclub module co-written by Wheaton (it's a free download). The four players improv a series of short scenes, each funnier and more improbable than the last, collaboratively making a complete (and fantastic) debacle out of the lives of their characters.
There's a bonus episode as well, showing the character generation sequence. This is a great look at a very different kind of RPG, played out by a gang of extremely hoopy froods and happy mutants, and by the time it was over, all I wanted to do was hop on a plane to LA and ask to sit in on another round. I've embedded part one above, the other two episodes are after the jump.
TableTop’s “Fiasco” Captures the Heart of Roleplaying
