The Setup

Community Lotion 2014-08-05 15:59:42
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Arrogant, materialistic, brash and vain, Donna is, in every way, the stereotypical New Jersey Italian Princess. She's smart enough to know how to play her beauty and 'foreigner' status to her advantage with men, but is nowhere near as clever as she thinks. If asked, she'd describe herself as "a freaking whirlwind. You can't handle me, so you best step off." She arrived in Opelika a few months ago, and thinks of it as a terrible little shithole filled with losers.

She's a sophisticated city girl, and she's going places.

She lives with her uncle Rocco in his big house in the "what-passes-for-nice part of town", but spend most of her time...elsewhere. Most often, that's in the company of Drew. She has a begrudging respect for the guy as he reminds her of the guidos back home. Even though she befreinded him to ensure a constant supply of cocaine, pot, crystal meth and oxy, she kind of likes the guy despite his constant suggestions that he produce porn starring her.

Tammy's a goddamn gold-digging bitch, and she sees what she's up to. She's gonna make sure that tramp doesn't get a hold of Rocco's money. Ed - wait, who is Ed again? Oh yeah, that guy at the video store. He's harmless.
MikeS 2014-08-05 16:32:14
Drew is Opelika's sleazy underbelly operator. He deals, largely, in things that are illegal or untoward, all behind the front of his Video Emporium, but he's eager to expand, most recently into making his own pornos, and he's trying to talk Donna into a lead role.

Drew isn't smart, but he's so far been shrewd enough to make a living. He's hired Ed as his help, who is to dumb to be a threat to his dealings or to rat him out. But what Drew really wants is to be rich, rich like Rocco or even richer, and he doesn't care who he has to step on to get there. Of course, he doesn't want to work hard, either. Drew recently learned that Rocco is making a nice buck on the side by moving drugs for some bigger fish with used car buy-and-resale, and came up with the perfect plan: he's going to steal the drugs, with Donna's help, and the blame will fall on Rocco!

Dieter 2014-08-05 16:36:15
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Jersey native, Rocco Carbone grew up in the late 1950s in a blue-collar Italian home in Parsippany, NJ. His father; first generation American Salvatore Carbone, had a small garage working on rich folks’ Cadillacs and Lincolns, pissing away any money he made on numbers schemes and long-weekends with Rocco’s not-mom on the Jersey Shore. Living fast and dying young under rather suspicious circumstances, the business went to Rocco and his older brother Lou. Lou’s eldest, Donna, was always hanging out at the garage and Rocco always treated her more like a daughter than even his own children.

Running poker games and hot car parts out the back of the garage, Carbone Truck & Tow always struggled to keep it legit out front, and when the fuzz came looking for Donna's dad, Lou....Lou sold his part of the business to Rocco and went underground.

Fifteen years and a bitter divorce later, Rocco took what money he had socked away (and unbeknownst to his ex-wife Paula and that fuckhead attorney of hers), relocating to the shit-burg town of Opelika, Alabama, running a downright (ok mostly) legitimate and successful used-car dealership

Just recently, his estranged niece Donna arrived in town looking for an escape from “the Jersey-life”. Rocco’s welcomed her into his home with open arms, happy to see her again..and have some good Italian cooking...not like that ketchup sauce they serve down at the diner on Monday nights.

To this day, Rocco still doesn't know his brother Lou’s whereabouts...Donna knows though.

….and don’t even get him started about Tammy.
MikeS 2014-08-05 17:04:35
Hmmm... Perhaps Rocco doesn't know anything about the drugs Drew wants to steal. Maybe they're Lou's, and the whole drug deal us the main reason why Donna suddenly showed up... She's here to keep an eye on it. But her dad isn't giving her enough allowance, so now she wants to make a little extra with Drew's help.
Community Lotion 2014-08-05 17:07:58
I like this. In fact, maybe Donna has the idea to double-cross Lou, and set up herself and Drew with the big score ultimately.
Community Lotion 2014-08-05 17:11:33
While I like where this conversation is headed, I think it would have been more fun if, for example, on one of Mike's turns, he was to have dropped the bomb above in on the group. Its a lot of fun when a scene ends up establishing narrative no one had any idea existed until it came out.
MikeS 2014-08-05 22:53:27
I'm not used to this format yet. I'm still treating this more like an RPG in the back of my head where you shouldn't drop bombs like this when they're about other people's characters. I don't have any problems introducing heavy twists like that if they're only about my own character.

Btw, I won't be able to use any kind of chat program during the day while at work, that's why I haven't joined any of the conversations yet.
Admiral Duck Sauce 2014-08-05 23:29:31
I think the way to go is somewhere in the middle? Adjust for comfort level of course, but I think throwing out suggestions in the OOC thread is kosher. We don't have the luxury of table banter, and in Fiasco I get the feeling that table banter, while sometimes a distraction for more traditional RPGs, serves an important purpose of keeping the riff going. So call what you posted an OOC suggestion, and I'd be cool with it. It'd be Dave and Reagan's perogative whether they run with it or not, or adapt it to surprise us.

The next thing to keep in mind is now we're playing, so as a bookkeeping measure, let's move it to the OOC thread unless it's clearly a leftover from the Setup phase. Until Act I is over, and then we'll hit this thread again for the Tilt.

If you come up with a juicy idea, try to save it for one of your scenes if you can. If you can't do that, post it OOC. And no problem about the chat thing, Mike. I think today was more of a fluke where most of us all had a pretty light schedule, or we made time because hey, it's the setup phase.

If possible I'd like to try to get 1 scene done per week. I'd also like to revisit the potential decision of whether we should stick to the rules and have 2 scenes per player per Act, or cut it down to 1 scene per player per Act, well I'd like to revist that once everyone has had one scene. We can decide then, once we get a feel for how things are going.