TL;DR - My RP group took a break from our main campaign to give this a whirl, and a week later, we're still talking about how much fun we had. Can't recommend it enough.

The Long Version:

My RP group only has one night a week together, and even then, we've got about three hours max before one of us falls asleep (working dads, check). We had a week recently where one of our players was unavailable, so it presented a great opportunity to try something new. Enter Dueling Fops of Vindamere.

We got through a full game in just about two hours, which was perfect. It probably helped that a few of us got together for a half-game dry run the night before, but this was done more out of necessity for our group since our "play" time is limited, and we wanted to maximize our fun on game night instead of figuring it out. Whether you do a dry run or not, most groups should really be feelin' the groove by their second game of Fops. It was on the second / full game that we really started leaning into our characters and taking extreme offense to petty stuff. Made things a lot of fun.

We had a good time with three people, but once we added a fourth, it seemed to be the tipping point for things getting bonkers (in the best way). Part of that is probably more confidence / familiarity on our second playthrough too. There were one or two scenes where we weren't quite clear on what to do, but Fops includes "Ye Rule of Democratic Liberty" which means a consensus by the group allows play to proceed as the group wants. This makes it easy for players to contort the story events around any whoopsies. For the final scene, it also helped us make our bracket decisions based on what would be most thematically appropriate / funniest / off the rails. So this feedback isn't really "some things weren't clear" so much as it is "this game was super flexible and remained lots of fun even when we were a little confused because too much beer."

Setup and PC creation is as easy as rolling dice, though you can complicate things by making up your own names for stuff if you want. You have your own character, but our group really got attached to our Beloveds, who are randomly assigned, and come with names like "Alluring Enamorata", "Bitter Daughter" and "Goofy-Faced Failson," making them immediately endearing. They can, and often do, steal the show, but that's all for the best as it effectively gives you a few characters to play with in each scene (unless one of the scoundrels you're playing with lures a Beloved away from you). It's not a lot to juggle, as most scenes only offer a single action per character, which helps keep gameplay moving. For a new game, you can ditch your previous characters or bring them along (assuming they survived, of course).

For what it's worth, this was also relatively straightforward for me (an inexperienced GM) to set up on my own in Roll20 after some basic guidance (and committing some time to uploading documents, but this is Roll20's issue, not Fops'). I was able to share out the scenes with players as they came up, and put together a stats cheat sheet in Excel to share over Zoom so everyone could see everyone else's stats / beloved status. Again, the Excel sheet was more out of necessity for my group to keep track of everything as not everyone has access to a printer or a PDF program in which they can edit values on the fly. You likely will not need one if your players have access to Adobe or a printer (Fops comes with a nifty character sheet for your rakehell).

Can't recommend this enough for a group looking for something completely different to fill a couple of sessions with your usual gang, or as a one-off palette cleanser for an ongoing campaign. It's not too bawdy, but much like Cards Against Humanity, you're going to get the most laughs with the people you know best, so YMMV if you're trying this with a new group. Once you're familiar with the gameplay, you could probably get two or three full games in, depending how long your group has to play.

As I said at the top - we're still talking about our Fops' exploits even after resuming our main campaign, so I'm sure we'll be revisiting Vindamere for more laughs soon.