By Daniel Warmke

In partnership with Jason Rose

Art Design and layout by Daniel Trout

Edited by Lee Branner

Chance Kallisti (Order #10318615)

 Boiler Plate

This work would not be possible without the permission and support of
Bully Pulpit Games. If, in turn, you would like to reference or incorpo-
rate Flying Saucer Blues into your own creative works contact us
through

www.smokeandmirrorsgaming.com

This is a playset for use with Fiasco and a copy of that game will be
necessary to get the full use of this product.

Fiasco is copyright 2009 by Jason Morningstar. All rights reserved.

Flying Saucer Blues is copyright 2015 by Daniel Warmke. All rights

reserved.

Dedication

We offer our apologies and this work to anyone associated with: Dr.
Who, Rudyard Kipling, Damon Knight, Star Wars, Douglas Adams, The
Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Sheb Wooley,
Plan 9 From Outer Space, Alien, The Thrilling Adventure Hour, H.P.
Lovecraft, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Man or AstroMan?, Star Trek,
Jules Vern, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Chuck Jones, Orson Wells,
H.G. Wells, Futurama, and all the others that we may have intentionally
or unintentionally referenced. Even more than our gaming predecessors
FSB would not be possible without these greats of science fiction.

All references made under fair use or to put it another way:

ºIf we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear...

smokeandmirrorsgaming.com

Chance Kallisti (Order #10318615)

 Th
T he
e
a l a c t i c
IInterg Sc
S or
co re
e

Greetings, my friend.

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember
my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the
mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here.

And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are
bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this
terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the
guilty. Let us reward the innocent.

My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?

-Plan 9 from Outer Space, 1959

Flying Saucer Blues is a balanced blend of two things: flying saucer

based aliens and stupidity. On the one hand, there are the aloof aliens
who held the world in their hands in all those late night flicks and on
the other are all the mean and shortsighted problems that we have no
reason to believe are native to our world alone. We peel back the
Saucer's aluminum siding to show you what humanity was never meant
to see: the real reason why the invasions always fail (it ain't human
ingenuity), why redneck colons and eviscerated cattle hold such
fascination for supposedly superior intelligences, and what happens
when the Saucer fails to land on the White House lawn.

There are three things that set this apart from the vast majority of Fiasco
playsets; and if you have a problem with any of them you may want to
swap to a more conventional playset filled with lust, understatement,
and humans.

1.
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 1) We keep things family friendly and generally G rated (an honest G
rating, not an Andromeda Strain what-was-the-board-thinking sort
of G). In case you didn't notice, most Fiasco playsets are solidly in
the R to hard PG range, making them unsuitable for parent/kid
groups and some new groups still trying to get comfortable with each
other. Having said that, the playset is G but your group's imagina-
tions may not be. Your game, your call.

2) One of the most common pieces of advice for playset developers is to

tone it down that too many extreme options on the tables will lead to
an overly intense mush of a game. We ignored all that advice from
people smarter than ourselves; this is an absolutely gonzo, over the
top, ice cream for dinner experience where each and every one of
your choices should be ripe enough with possibilities to fill the
Saucer with problems. Go big or go back to Omicron Persei 8.

3) No one is going to be playing humans. You are going to have to make

challenging characters work; how do you play a computer with an
addiction to 1970s TV, a cardcarrying robo unionist, a creature that
lives as much in the future as the past, or perhaps the Saucer itself?
That is for you to figure out but our
suggestion is: with gusto.

Power up your viewscope and try to remember where you left the
Annihilator Beam;

This is going to be a Fiasco!

2.
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 How to use this book
On one level, this is a playset like other playsets and you can just plug it
into the Fiasco rules and play. Needs are called Missions and we make
some other substitutions but these are always marked with the original
term in parentheses. There are some rules hacks that you can use to get
the most flavor out of your game, however; those are all listed in
Appendix A (3 Ways to Play) in the back.

The basic structure of play is this: characters are all aliens/monsters of

varying species that are on their way to the Earth in a flying saucer.
They may or may not know anything relevant about the Earth except
(perhaps) what they are supposed to do when they arrive. Feel free to
alter this formula but the tables will encourage something along these
lines.

The Setup is played similarly to normal unless there are rules hacks in
play. World building is far more important here than in a regular game
of Fiasco. When your group collectively closes their eyes to imagine the
Old West for a session of Boomtown everyone agrees on what a horse is
and that it will not rain fire down on the Missouri Territories if it grows
wrathful. For FSB you are imagining the unreal and everyone may
disagree.

Is the saucer a massive craft with a crew of thousands of

unimportant extras or is it the size of a sports car complete with 1950s
turn signal fins?

Are the characters basically large-eyed grays or salivating monstrosities?

Or human looking except for silver one-piece outfits and colander hats?

Everything doesn't need to be spelled out in The Setup but some

common ground should be established.

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 Act One is primarily foreshadowing which takes place in the
flying saucer and in flashbacks to the set up of the mission. Faultlines
will doubtless begin to appear as well as misconceptions
about Earth and flaws in the plan.

First Contact (the Tilt Table) comes into play as soon as you
land. In addition to the previously identified issues, something major
rears up to throw a hydrospanner into the works. Ideally this
should be picked to be an extension of your old problems or to be so
radically different from what was expected as to shellshock the hapless
space invaders.

Act Two is where all the characters’ poor planning (and masterful
planning from the players) comes to fruition and the mission falls to
pieces. There will be sulfuric blood spilled and tears streaming from
compound eyes. If it is a Fiasco in Act Two you did everything right.

Finally, the Aftermath is all about outcomes — good and

bad. It is often a good idea at this point to return to the civilization that
sent the mission in the first place in order to see how it reacts to mission
failure; will a millennium old civilization collapse for lack of human
reality TV stars to guide them? Has the whole affair already been lost in
the shuffle of data chips on an alien bureaucrat's space desk?

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 Relationships
1. Physical
Tentacles in all the wrong places

Spines: physical and metaphorical

All seeing eyes and a wish that they were not

Bodily fluids that can melt a deck plate

A native of this strange world and his/her handler

Imperfect clones

2. Emotional
Dramatically incompatible pheromones

Dramatically compatible pheromones

An eldritch horror among eldritch horrors

Slave in all but name

Always there are two; master and apprentice

Evil universe doppelgänger

3. Mental
Grad student and Professor from Omniscient University

"Who let a telepath onboard?"

Mentally deficient management

A creature beyond the ken of other sapients

"The Laws of this primitive dimension are strange"

A user and hologram

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 4. The Past
"Gods I miss the war!"

"Gods I miss peace!"

Robot(s), created to stave off boredom

Victor and vanquished

One word: onus

"Not you, anyone but you!"

5. The future
Together, as foreseen in the time orb

"I am you with a warning from the Future!"

Precognition is an evolutionary dead end

Oath that must be fulfilled

Oath that should never be fulfilled

Feeling of foreboding shared

6. Crew
Saboteur and engineer

The couple whose emotions are our fuel

The weapons officer and the pacifist

The missionary and the disbeliever

Incompetent commander and gifted subordinate

The child Emperor of the Universe and lackey

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 Missions
1. Conquest in the name of
...
...the Emperor

...love

...peace

...profit

...the gods

...wait, why would we need a reason?

2. Research without...
...compromising our guiding principle

...being seen by natives

...contradicting the dogma

... a budget

...a debacle (unlike last time)

...interference from Them

3. Childish equations
Crop circles + selfies

Laser guns = big fun

Cattle internal organs

Abandoned planet + universal homing beacon = crazy rave

"We have come for your celebrities."

If you ______ with _______ then you get so high

7.
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 4. Grownup stuff
Set up a new home for our species on this uninhabited planet

Recruit an army for the war at the end of time

To capture a galactic fugitive

Grave robbing, obviously

Warn the natives that the end is coming

Three wise aliens visiting the birth of the Galactic Messiah

5. Fortune and glory

Finish line for "Around the Galaxy in 80 Days"

The primitives are willing to trade precious roaches for worthless gold

Extrasolar distribution rights to 1970s TV shows

A dramatic misreading of popular culture

The Monsters Who Would Be King

Dinosaurs are selling at a premium and the planet was full of them last time we visited...

6. Bureaucratic buffoons
A mission so secret that only the captain can know it

A mission so secret that the captain can't know it

Missionaries spreading the word

Planetary demolition to make room for planned expansions

Test the X371 where it can't damage anything important

Marketing

8.
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 Objects
1. A box that...
...we don't have the key for

...does not hold the supplies

..."contains" a "safe" blackhole

...must never, ever, be opened

...contains the most sought after thing in the galaxy

...is not a box at all

2. Tools
Automatic examination table

Partial manuscript: "How to Serve Mankind"

"Break to reset last 300 seconds"

Toolbox missing only one thing

Slightly less than universal translator

Portable hole

3. Ship's computer with a...

...prime directive different from the crew's

...sense of humor

...sense of honor

...crush

...addiction

...inferiority complex

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 4. A foolproof cover
Rubber suit

Poorly maintained cloaking device

Small, furry probe

Lifelike, but water soluble, makeup

Slightly psychic paper

Bag full of tiny distractions

5. Weapons
The most advanced knife in ten galaxies

Slaughtermaster v.5 battle droid that is considering a career change

Time in a bottle

100 laser beams

Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator

An extradimensional armory

6. Transportation
Technology that turns any ordinary door into a portal to any other door

Velociraptors with saddles

Teleporter for one

Time machine with switch stuck on "sideways"

Slave collar and crew mates

Untested rocketpacks

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 The Saucer Locations
1. Engineering
The Saucer's broken heart

Leaking fuel tank

The Oscillation Overthruster

A very important and very loose wire

The fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy

Sentient fuel

2. The bridge
The Saucer's broken mind

"There is no need for backup controls on this ship"

Tea, Earl Grey, hot

Copy of “The Infallible Truth”

Two keys that must be turned simultaneously

An unlocked wet bar

3. Below decks
A matter duplicator with unlimited power

A perfect space for stowaways

A suspended animation room set to defrost

Unionized robots

Disposable crewmen

A hidden title from the Saucer's real owners

11.
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 4. Battle stations
Only one escape pod

Boy-who-cried-wolf automatic alarms

Pacifist disintegrator beams

Shields impenetrable to everything, except for that

"Objects in the tactical display may be closer than they appear"

Over active automatic self-defense system

5. Crew quarters
A room mysteriously bigger than it should be

A room mysteriously smaller than it should be

A secret site for romance

A poorly planned brig

A holographic rec room that can make all that you desire

A shared room, that should not be

6. The laboratory
Diabolical mazes prepped for experimental subjects

Telescopes so accurate you feel you are really there

The last specimen of a defeated alien race

The madman's final masterpiece

A still made from components that will be missed

A tiny city from which, they say, escape is impossible

12.
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 The First Contact Table Tilt TablE
1. A cool reception
NORAD thought they were tracking Santa Claus at the North Pole

The MIBs know everything but...

The MIBs know nothing but...

"This planet is so dangerously cold that water is hard!"

Plan 9 activates and the dead rise

Crashed on the ice, only a small outpost within reach

2. A matter of perspective
"They are 100 times our size!"

"We are 100 times their size!" (possibly in Tokyo)

You have traveled, not in space, but in time, to your own past

The small, furry quadrupeds are clearly the masters of this world

"Mostly Harmless" may have been an understatement

Vastly different perceptions of time

3. Historical errors
Dinosaurs with teeth and ray guns

"Finally, the pyramids got somebody's attention!"

Arthur's knights are so pissed

Crashing the Constitutional Convention

On the radio: War of the Worlds

Welcome to Earth, 3000 AD

13.
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 4. Where is everybody?
Grown beyond your comprehension

Extinct, and you are next

Hidden until the right moment

They know something you don't know

They are coming, in force

They have all gathered together... Why?

5. A warm reception
Hailed as gods

Landing site is in a war zone/weapon test range

Saucer splits in half for two very different receptions

Crop circles, the universal language, but full of lies

UFO convention parking lot

Landing at the end of the world

6. Second contact
The whole planet is a Star Law sting operation

Whatever you wanted to do They have done better

The stars are right and something is rising

The worst Giant Purple People Eater infestation you can remember

"More space invaders? We dealt with the last ones we will deal with you!"

An interstellar ship wreck and desperate castaways

14.
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 Appendix A

3 Ways to Play Flying Saucer Blues

Technically you can just play FSB without bending or breaking a single
normal Fiasco rule. There are some problems with this but, as they say,
when life gives you velociraptors make dino steaks (if they don't say
that they should).

The primary glitch that arises from running FSB with

unmodified rules is that all of your locations are tied to the Saucer. This
is fantastic for Act One but afterwords you may need a little help to
visualize the implied location for Act Two, The Earth.

Any of these three hacks will fix the problem and add to the fun as well.

1) Saucers for Life: Instead of making the earth more interesting this
hack keeps the saucer relevant in Act Two. Science fiction authors
and show runners often mention that the ships are some of their
franchise's strongest characters.

When setting up the game, one player volunteers to be the Saucer.

Instead of having Relationships that character will have
Locations shared with others. These Locations will have Objects or
Missions associated withthem like regular relationships.
Look at the quick start layout (Appendix B) for an example.
How do you play a space ship? However you want. Is it an intelli-
gent space ship that will keep in touch with the crew members
through comlinks combined with a sophisticated
accent? Perhaps it is just a cantankerous bucket of bolts that seems
plagued with mechanical gremlins who rear their heads at the
exact wrong time. This is a role for someone who wants a little
challenge with their roleplaying.

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 2) Brave New World: This hack fleshes out the Earth during the Tilt
between Act One and Two. At the beginning of play, create
relationships and details from FSB normally but also designate
another playset (all the playsets in the Fiasco main book work). After
the Tilt, the high black and high white player get to pick a couple
more things using the pool of unused dice in just the same way as
you would for the Tilt Table. Select a location from the new play set
to add as a bonus not tied to a relationship. Thus a game with "Ten-
tacles in all the wrong places" layered with “Intelligent Fuel" in
engineering may get "The Chicken Hut" "Down by the interstate"
added in. Obviously your characters will not have a previous connec-
tion with this place (or do they?) but it gives your away team an
interesting spot to hit. If you are roleplaying pros you can add more
details in this way by also stacking on Objects, Relationships, and/or
Needs (the later would necessarily create earthlings who would have
to be played by someone) but this will make a game very cluttered
very fast.

3) The Blind: The separation between character knowledge and player

knowledge is a fantastic source of drama but acting when in the dark
as a player is even better. One player (ideally one whose character
was killed off in Act One or who did not play in Act One) is
nominated to pick a location from one of the standard Fiasco play sets
without revealing it to the other players. They may do this by any
method they choose including random rolling. That player must set
all of the physical scene details outside of the Saucer. The trick to this
is making everything feel alien and not letting on what exactly the
characters are seeing even to the players. A can of pop becomes "A
metal cylinder, cold to the touch, covered in bright markings ---
warnings perhaps? --- while a big rig could become "a creature, vast,
armored, and with powerfully luminescent eyes charging along the
strange lined path it seems either unable or unwilling to cross the
lines." The downside to this should be obvious: the designated player
who sets scenes is effectively acting as game master... which many
would consider a great leap backwards in gaming technology.

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 Appendix B
Instant Set up : 3 Player

Zorgar
Relationship : Physical
"Tentacles in all the wrong places"

Object: : Weapon
"100 laser beams"

Monster
Relationship : The future
“Precognition is an evolutionary dead end"

Saucer Location: Laboratory

"The last specimen of a defeated alien race"

The Professor
Relationship: Mental
"Grad student and Professor from Omniscient
University"

Mission : Need
Research without: "...contradicting the dogma"

17.
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 Appendix B
Instant Set up : 4 Player

Zorgar
Relationship : Physical
"Tentacles in all the wrong places"
Object: : Weapon
"100 laser beams"

Monster
Saucer Location: Laboratory
"The last specimen of a defeated alien race"
Mission : Need
Fortune and Glory: "The Monsters Who Would Be King"

The M3800 Flying Disk

Saucer Location : The Bridge:
A copy of “The Infallible Truth"
Object
Ships Computer with a "...prime directive different
from the crew's"

The Professor
Relationship: Mental
"Grad student and Professor from Omniscient
University"

Object: Tool
"A partial manuscript: How to Serve Mankind "

18.
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 Appendix c

Technobabble Generator
What really separates aliens from monsters is their stuff. Glorious
doohickies that do improbable things cloaked in impossible language is
the bread and butter of the invading alien (possibly literally). FSB
characters will already have access to Objects from the setup portion and
for many groups and many sessions this will be plenty of gadgetry. If
you feel like you need more we humbly present the following chart.

How to use the chart

During either Act a player determines that there is a need for a
technological thing from another world (see Why to Use the Chart for
optional rules governing what could trigger the chart). The player to the
initiator's left then rolls three dice (making sure to put them back where
she found them if already in game play) and totals the results. That
player can now look at the chart and choose one of the three columns to
apply the results to: A, B, or C, and writes the result on an index card.
The player to her left then repeats the process adding her term. The third
player can either choose to put the device in play without further
alteration, add another roll, or delete an existing result. This continues
until someone elects to put it in play. If this sounds like it would break
up your group’s groove, then one player can just roll three times on the
chart and take what you get. In any case, the item will generally remain
in play for the rest of the game.

When to use the chart

The simplest way to use the Technobabble Generator is to establish that
any player with a character in a scene can whip out a device at any time
(no more than one per character and no more than one per scene).

The awesomest way to use the Technobabble Chart takes planning and
buy in from all the players before play begins. Replace one black and
one white die from the normal pool with another color (if you have a
pair that are chromed or dripping with alien ichor that would be
awesome but any distinct color will do.) During gameplay, these are
used like regular resolution dice but do not necessarily indicate positive
or negative outcomes: the fate of the scene is wide open but resolution
must stem directly from a device created on the spot.

19.
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 This has a few overt and a few subtle effects on the mechanics of
gameplay not least of which is that these dice will not count for the
Aftermath Table, for a full discussion, look at the rules hacks in the
Fiasco Companion.

Roll A B C
3 Hyper- Roll D6 Cube
1. Red
2. Violet
3. Green
4. Azure
5. Black
6. White

4 Multi- Eternity Coupling

5 Intra- Temporal Monkey

6 Infinite- Fission Generator

7 Mega- Acoustic Matrix

8 Pseudo- Dimensional Projector

9 Trans- Flux Capacitor

10 Ultra- Graviton Link

11 Proto- Velocity Imager

12 Micro- Temporal Drone

13 Cyber- Atomic Singularity

14 Anti- Density Portal

15 Auto- Fusion Blade

16 Sub- Gamma Spanner

17 Quasi- Improbability Manipulator

18 Hypo- Stellar Crystal

20.
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