HALF A MILLION DOLLARS

IN A GROCERY BAG
A FIASCO PLAYSET BY JASON MORNINGSTAR
half a million dollars
in a grocery bag

CREDITS

Written by Jason Morningstar

Edited by Steve Segedy

Cover art by Brennen Reece

Boilerplate
This playset is an accessory for the Fiasco role-playing game by Bully
Pulpit Games.

This playset is copyright 2019 by Jason Morningstar. Fiasco is copyright

2009 by Jason Morningstar. All rights are reserved.

For more information about Fiasco or to download other playsets and

materials, visit www.bullypulpitgames.com.

If you’d like to create your own playset or other Fiasco-related content,

we’d like to help. Write us at info@bullypulpitgames.com.

“When you play, play hard.” –Theodore Roosevelt

The Score
A LITTLE MATH, QUICK NOW

A stack of one hundred greasy street-worn bills, American, takes up 6.89

cubic inches, or 112 milliliters. A paper bag, like the one you get your
groceries packed in or like the one you are looking at right now, holds
1,428 cubic inches, or just north of 23 liters. That’s 207.25 stacks of cash
if you filled it with mathematical perfection, which its previous owner
clearly did not, but close enough. And if each stack was composed of 100
twenty dollar bills, the contents of the bag you are touching with such
tender longing would be worth four hundred thousand of somebody
else’s dollars, give or take. But there are some stacks of hundreds mixed
in, and the bag you are holding lovingly in your arms isn’t full-full, so
it all evens out at half a million dollars like somebody planned it.

Because somebody did. And chances are they are going to miss their
grocery bag as much as you love it.

Movie Night

A Simple Plan, Dope, No Country for Old Men, Money for Nothing, Shallow Grave,
Millions, Too Late for Tears, Million to Juan, La Horse, Dreizehn Stühle, The
Million Pound Note

NOTE

The Object in this playset is fixed, but will acquire two dice during the
Setup just like everything else. In practice you can treat it like a normal
Object, because the first die will tie it to a Relationship. The second
will probably be the last one chosen. Regardless, you don’t need to do
anything special to make it work.
Relationships...
1 WORK
1 My third job; your fourth job
2 Competing ambitious toolbags
3 Boss and minion
4 Customer and employee
5 The brains (without brains) and the money (without money)
6 Brand new and been around forever

2 MARINA BONIFERRO AND...

1 … her part-time enforcer
2 … her totally legit spouse
3 … her secret lover
4 … her rival from high school
5 … the Assistant District Attorney investigating her
6 … an aspiring politician

3 FRIENDS
1 Since forever
2 Since it became convenient
3 With weird benefits
4 And also enemies
5 Of the same cool person, but not friends themselves
6 Bonding over a shared hobby
4 FIENDS
1 Meth
2 Coke
3 Pot
4 Sex
5 “Gingitsune: Messenger Fox of the Gods” and related anime
6 Booze

5 ROMANCE
1 Sickeningly happy and successful couple
2 In love with the same person
3 Ex-spouses
4 It’s new, it’s intense, it’s sort of gross
5 Flirtin’
6 Extremely unrequited lov

6 THE FAM
1 Siblings
2 Parent and child
3 Grandparent and grandchild
4 Uncomfortably close step-siblings
5 Former exchange student and host
6 Separated by a pointless ancient feud

...AND A GROCERY BAG

Needs...
1 TO PAY
1 … the piper and call the tune
2 … the half million dollar debt Liberty Guns & Surplus owes creditors
3 … a visit to the country club as a member instead of a caddy
4 … attention, despite the many distractions
5 … a professional hit man you found on the Internet
6 … respect to the Boniferro organization

2 TO TURN
1 … half a million dollars over to the police
2 … the other cheek
3 … into somebody else
4 … over a new leaf, and help those less fortunate
5 … up the heat
6 … a profit - half a million in working capital should be easy to double

3 TO RUN
1 … the numbers again, and again
2 … the Poppleton Park half marathon, to prove a point
3 … for Mayor
4 … the Boniferro crime family out of town
5 … from the people who want their half million dollars back
6 … the County Social Services office like your private fiefdom
4 TO BURY
1 … half a million dollars in some dark secret place
2 … your inappropriate feelings
3 … Marina Boniferro
4 … your face in a gallon of artisanal ice cream
5 … a Poppleton Standard reporter’s article before it runs
6 … your father, after a memorial you also need to arrange

5 TO BE
1 … loved
2 … feared
3 … smart - like, really smart
4 … the life of the party
5 … important again
6 … a good person with half a million dollars

6 TO MAKE
1 … a deal with the people who want their money back
2 … your dad proud
3 … out with Marina Boniferro
4 … America great again
5 … half a million dollars do your talking for you
6 … art

...AND A GROCERY BAG

Locations...
1 REDBUD COURT
1 Freshly-dug hole in the woods behind the trailer park
2 Back seat of a police cruiser
3 National Guard armory
4 Liberty Guns and Surplus
5 Dag Larsen’s meth trailer
6 The Chicken Hut

2 POPPLETON MALL
1 Corner booth at Friar Tuck’s Diet Delight
2 Manager’s office in the back of Muscle Logic
3 Trash compactor/shredder room
4 Right in the middle of T. Esquire Kids!
5 Versace’s Pizza, closed and boarded up for ages
6 The Cookie Wheel

3 PROMISE HILL
1 Dr. Ratnapriya Anand’s mansion on Patriot Lane
2 Skeleton of a subdivision in the Ellis Tract
3 Inside a demolished mailbox
4 Promise Hill Country Club
5 Ornamental duck pond
6 Promise Hill itself, surmounted by the stump of an oak tree
4 APPLE VALLEY SUPERMARKET
1 Between two SUVs parked under a sodium arc lamp
2 Behind the Globe CM-22 Chefmate grinder in the meat department
3 Inside a shopping cart
4 Dairy department store-room and cold case
5 Taped to the bottom of a cashier’s till
6 Aisle five - International foods, condiments, beans

5 FURTHER AFIELD
1 The Crossroads School, Santa Monica, California
2 I-95 northbound freeway median, Mamaroneck, New York
3 Crotone, Calabria, Italy
4 Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando, Florida
5 The White House, Washington, DC
6 General Mariano Escobedo International Airport, Monterrey, Mexico

6 GROCERY BAG
1 The depths of the bag, where there’s a lonely slip of paper that you
missed the first time

2 Beneath the Apple Valley Supermarket logo, where a crabbed note

is scrawled in pen

3 The kraft paper handles, primed to break at the worst possible time
4 The exterior bottom, vaguely damp with something that is not water
5 The pile of money, where one banded stack is weirdly heavier than
the rest

6 A different-but-identical grocery bag, filled with banded stacks of

money-shaped office paper
...AND A GROCERY BAG
Object...
The Object is half a million dollars in a grocery bag.

It is an Apple Valley Supermarket grocery bag with a pair of kraft paper

handles. If you want to get technical it is a 1/6 57# bag.

There are about 200 banded stacks of 100 bills each, all used, mostly
twenties. One in five is a stack of hundreds.

It’s surprisingly heavy, about 11 pounds (5 kilograms).

Whoever owns the bag and its contents surely wants it back.

No matter what die numbers you choose, the end result is always Object:
Grocery Bag: Filled with half a million dollars.

For three, four or five players…

**Half a million dollars in a grocery bag

A Half MIllion Dollar
Insta-setup
Relationships

For three players…

**Friends: And also enemies

**Work: My third job; your fourth job

**Marina Boniferro and: Her secret lover

For four players, add…

**Romance: Sickeningly happy and successful couple

For five players, add…

**The Fam: Siblings

Needs

For three players…

**To bury: Marina Boniferro

For four or five players, add…

**To pay: Respect to the Boniferro organization

LOCATIONS

For three or four players…

**Grocery bag: A different-but-identical grocery bag, filled with

banded stacks of money-shaped office paper

For five players, add…

**Redbud Court: Freshly-dug hole in the woods behind the trailer

park

OBJECT

For three, four or five players…

**Half a million dollars in a grocery bag