Fiasco: Liquidation

game material

Liquidation is my second attempt at a Fiasco playset. Crossings is a big chain of big bookstores (get it?!) that has just filed for bankruptcy. With the clock ticking on the local store’s inevitable closing, the employees and regular customers are scrambling to get the best deals (or steals), resolve their grudges, or just get their lives in order before the store’s doors close permanently.

I couldn’t really come up with a “Movie Night” section for this one, because it’s mostly based on real experiences, my own and those of friends who’ve worked in retail, exaggerated (in some places more than others) to make for a good Fiasco.

Liquidation (PDF) Download

12 thoughts on “Fiasco: Liquidation”

  1. Nice one Ewen.

    The theme is very topical given the current climate, and it’s nice to see some playsets that are “boring” – and I mean that in a good way. It doesn’t all have to be about Wombles with grenades, gonzo+moarsealzlol.

    “Manga hobo”, haha, I hadn’t heard of that one before. As a kid I used to sit in the aisles of the local bookstore and read Commando Comics. Were you a manga hobo perchance?

    There’s at least one typo, in the footer: “at a big bookstore… about that’s to close”, should be “at a big bookstore… that’s about to close”. Unless you were aiming for an Engrish (sic) vibe?

    Cheers
    Pete

    Reply

    1. Thanks!

      Jason has said that playsets about mundane stuff actually tend to work better, and while more genre stuff can work, this does seem to hold true. I have one or two more playsets in the works, and while they’re aimed at stuff close to my and my friends’ experiences and interests, they’re also about ordinary people doing ridiculous things.

      I actually got into anime and manga before the big chain bookstores really started proliferating, much less had manga aisles. Also, for a while now I’ve been buying manga in Japanese… and Japanese bookstores always shrinkwrap their manga.

      And thanks for catching the typo. I’ve fixed it now. ^_^;

      Reply
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  3. I’ve yet to play this game, but it really intrigues me. I think one of these days I’m going to try to write up a ninja-based scenario and see how it compares to Shinobigami.

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  4. I just have to say that my fiasco group used “Liquidation” as the playset for our game last Friday and it was awesome ! Our story started out with some disgrundled employees, a hippy manager, a jerk of a district manager, a nerdy employee, a teenage goth girl, a teenage temp worker, and another hippy. The two hippies were in a band together and the story devolved into an 80’s style teen movie. Of course it ended with the band getting back together and playing for a HUGE party at the book store, followed by the burning down of said store. It played out very similar to the old movie, “Rock & Roll High School”. It was outrageous. I have to recommend this playset to everyone !!!

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  9. This is going to be an emotional one to play, as my fellow gamers and I are all former Borders employees. But it looks like fun, too, and hopefully will provide some closure (pun intended). :-)

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  10. I’m making a Twine game loosely based on this playset (instead of being set in a thinly-veiled Borders closure, it’s set in a thinly-veiled HMV closure). Your playset will be credited.

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