Fiasco is more like an improv game with dice, rather than your standard murderhobo RPG. The dice purely determine the setup, and after that it's almost all acting.

It generally has a lot of dark humour, in the style of Coen Brothers movies, like Burn After Reading or Fargo. A bunch of overly ambitious people make some really stupid plans, and in the pileup they all wind up screwing each other over.

The difficulty is mostly in the setup. It's probably easier to just observe how a game gets setup, than to explain it in a text post. So, take a look at the episode they did on Tabletop for a general idea. They play a little fast and loose with one element at the end, but you should get the general idea.

In fact, just watch that whole episode, and you'll probably understand it far better than my long explanation below. But in case you need a reference, I'll try to give you the gist below.

After that, it's mostly just acting. Each player gets a turn, which revolves around their character. They can. choose to establish the scene, where they act as the director. For example: "This is the scene where I confront John for cheating on me."

In this case, the other players get to decide if this ends well for you (by awarding you a white die), or badly for you (awarding you a black die).

Alternatively, you can choose how to resolve the scene. So, the other players establish the setup: "This is where you try to rob the bank" and you get to decide if it ends well or badly for you, by taking whichever die you want at some point during the scene. Having a scene end badly for you can actually result in a better ending overall for your character (or let you screw with other people's dice pools).

Whichever you choose, it's all just acting and narrative. It's not about "winning" but about telling a fun story, and doing whatever feels dramatically appropriate.

There are two acts. Each act involves two passes around the table where people establish and resolve scenes.

In the first act, you don't actually keep the die which is used to resolve the scene. You hand it off to another player. So you could choose to resolve, take a bad ending to the scene, and then award that black die to someone else.

In the second act, you keep the die. So if you choose to resolve with a bad ending, you keep that black die.

Between acts, there's a tilt. It's very similar to the initial setup, and introduces two new crazy elements into the game.

At the end of the game, you roll all your dice. Subtract the total on your black dice from the white dice. The closer your number is to zero, the worse the entire thing ends for your character.

You close out with a montage. For each die you have, you narrate a short one or two sentence scene for your character.

Puts a die Forward "We see John's face hitting the pavement. He spits out a tooth. Above him, we see a couple of mobsters with baseball bats" Proceed to next scene

Hope that helps.