The story ends. Ash ran away, desperate to leave her friends, her love, her past behind. Bill is bleeding out, a bullet chewing through his gut. Jay, surrounded by authorities tipped off by someone close to him, has one last dream of blowing it all to hell.

In Fiasco, you collect black and white dice as you play through your scenes. And once it’s all done, you get to roll these dice, tally them up, and hope for the best (or worst, if you’re a bit of a sicko). There are 19 potential outcomes, most of them really bad, some of them not so terrible. The more dice of a color you have, the better your odds. The spread for this cast, however, is already looking pretty grim.

Way it works, you roll all your white and black dice separately, tally them up by color. Whichever color got a higher total is the color of your Aftermath. Then you subtract the other color result and get your specific ending within your higher color.

If both colors are the same, your ending is the worst possible outcome, worse than death, which you could only hope for at this point.

Well, let’s dig into it.

Bill

Throughout this story, Bill had one job: put an end to this insane setup. And he failed on every single turn. His impulse control was, as a true Fiasco requires, atrocious. He failed to stop the bomb from getting on that train, failed to stop the Boss, failed to stop Jay. And when he finally had a chance to make up for it all, he instead tried to save Ash.

Bill has 1 single black die, and one single white die. It’s about as bad as things could be.

For his roll, I got Black 5, White 6. Since white is higher, we subtract the black from it, and get an Aftermath of White 1: Dreadful. You are certainly dead, probably from a self-inflicted wound. People you care about are also probably dead, maybe through your own stupid, ugly failure. To say that you fucked up is an insult to fucked-upedness. You have redefined the term.

Pretty fitting all things considered. Everything he did led to failure. I don’t think he made a single decent decision, and he paid for it.

Ash

Ash spent most of her time in the story being a quiet observer, trying to find the angle to play, the right moment to make her move. From the very beginning, she wanted out, wanted a change. At first, prison didn’t seem too bad, but then her aunt gave her another option: work for me to prove yourself. But instead of actually wanting to prove herself to her aunt, all she wanted is to get away and start over. Billy was a way out, she figured that out early on. And, in the end, she was right. But the cost for her freedom was her soul, left behind on that train, bleeding, unconscious.

Ash has 3 black and 2 white dice. After the roll, she lands on Black 2: Brutal. Wounds that will never heal, for starters: stuff sawed off, blown off, or burned off on your way to grand, ignominious failure. Kiss whatever you care about goodbye. You may die, but you may not.

Despite all of her scheming and improvising, she’s fucked. The only time in the story Ash suffered any form of physical harm was in the very beginning. The joy ride, the crash, the jail cell. I have a feeling that her aftermath will see her ending up where she started, because sometimes it’s impossible to escape your inner demons.

Jay

From career gangster, to hype man, to domestic terrorist, Jay’s journey was wild, unpredictable, and tragic. He truly wanted to lift his friends up with him, saw in them not just the past he missed so much, but a new future. Like destiny, like a higher calling. He didn’t see a bomb, he saw a golden ticket. And all that for what, exactly? For Ash to try fuck him over, and Bill lying to him from the very beginning? Jay started the story by claiming that control is an illusion, and by the end, he proved that to himself.

He ended up with 3 white and 2 black dice, and his Aftermath landed on White 6: Weak. Hey, you’re busted, beat, and broken down, but at least you’ve learned a lesson about human greed and frailty, right? It’ll serve you well in prison, which is where you are probably headed.

Funny enough, he survived. Worse for wear, sure, but intact enough to realize just what a colossal fuck up this all was. Did he learn his lesson? Does he care?

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Final Thoughts

In Fiasco, you go around the table, pushing one of your dice toward the middle of the table on your turn. Each die represents a scene in the montage of your Aftermath. “This is Bill, and we see him…” If you want a bit of extra drama, you can flavor the vibe of the scene based on the color of the die you’re presenting. A white die is a relatively good or calm scene, while a black one would be dangerous or horrible.

For the purpose of this project, I will write one last scene for each character, keeping their Aftermath in mind. Whether that’s a montage, a single moment, or some other way to show how their story ends, is up in the air for now. No more cards will be drawn—this epilogue is what it is, the sum of the parts of each of their scenes throughout this journey.

When I wrote Honeymoon, I didn’t publish the Aftermath online. Instead, I kept it as a bonus for the eventual release of the novella. This time, however, I will publish it, I think. It’s part of the game, after all, and this blog is supposed to be all about that.

But for now, I hope anyone reading this enjoyed the journey of the characters and got some value out of this writing exercise. It’s my second time using it, and I’m always happily surprised as to how well it works in the end.

Until next time,

Stefan