I've played a fair amount of D&D on and off since I was about sixteen. It's a game, I understand it's appeal, I can have fun with it. I think my best campiegns are behind me. Every time I play the game now it feels so forced and contreived. The players just want to level up and kill things. I thought this was a roleplaying game. I thought we were trying to tell stories. Is this a by-product of the video game RPGs. Maybe a little bit but the mentality has been there before computer RPGs were a big thing. I'm fairly certian. I wasn't there in the beginning I started playing in 2004 or 2006. Yeah we had had MMORPGs for a while, Warcraft Online was starting to become a thing and Everquest showed up right at the end of the century. Before that there had been computer games based on D&D since before I was born. The Elder Scrolls series which I will admit I love, especially Merrowind and Oblivion... Skyrim as well. And way back in the early eighties before I existed there was Rogue. Most video games have little to no Role Playing elements. It's just hack and slash, at best it's a well fleshed out world you can explore. But that's what D&D is at it's core. Sure you could create a well thought out character. From what I've seen though, most D&D games turn into an elaborate award system just like it's computerized counterparts.
Fiasco doesn't really have a reward system. There is not DM creating a worl. Everyone creates the world together, we're all invested in the story in a way that's more than just the characters we play. Also we're encouraged to have our characters not only make bad choices but to make them suffer the consiquences of their actions. In Fiasco the characters are two bit thugs, hopeless romantics, desperate addicts, unstable workaholics, toxic relationships and ne'er do wells.
You commit to half brained plans, decide where they'll fall apart and how badly it will hurt for your character. No one is allowed to get out ahead or unscathed. With that approach there is no reward, only punishment. And thus all your energy is put into the narration, the plot, the characters and their relationship with each other.
Doomroar
Masochism at its finest.
NeverHundred
It really is. Sometimes one must humble themselves though.