Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

I'm currently creating a cyoa; the story revolves around a set of murders, expulsions and suicides that take place in a school. The twist? Your POV character is the one who is causing all this chaos. There will be of course many over arching plots, but that's for the story. What I'd like to know is: How would you kill somebody in a school setting? 

Bullets, duh. Way more efficient than whatever other shit the character is planning and most teenagers understand that instinctively.

Anyhow good luck with the story, careful not to cut yourself on all that edge.

One of the endings might involve something of that nature 

Replace all the blue gatorade with windshield washer fluid.

Although this is probably ironic, I love this Idea.

Glad I could help.

That's a thread title that'll put you on a watchlist if I've ever seen one.

But in all seriousness it is very hard to cause excessive harm or death to people in an area as tightly packed and heavily monitored as a school. It is even harder to kill a specific person in a school as opposed to a mass shooting. And it is astronomically harder to murder a specific person in a school and get away with it. Getting away with it multiple times is functionally impossible. You are already straying away from reality so you might as well have fun with it.

Pipe bombs in a kids locker, rat poison in the school lunch, switching a kids chemistry chemicals with something explosive, viper in the toilet bowl, or a Thunderdome type deathmatch in the playgrounds geodesic dome. Might as well have some fun with it.

I'm assuming for the sake of the story they're going to be ignoring the fact that security cameras exist.

They'll be a legitimate reason that the security cameras aren't active, but it is mostly plot convenience.

Yeah, but even just the sheer number of people around you all day in addition to the fact that (at least in my old school) teachers are aware of where you are (or at least should be) at all times makes it hard to get away with things. And believe me, I tried to get away with a lot. Either way, I still think the viper in the toilet bowl and geodesic Thunderdome are my best suggestions. But they can still stick to the pipe bombs and rat poison if they want to be semi realistic.

Love the idea of a pipe bomb in somebodies locker, it'd be easy to implement as well due to there's already ways to get your hands on explosives (kidnapping victims and selling them/ their organs to the local crime ring, ect). And yeah although I'm going for semi-realism, faking suicides: using an fire extinguisher to knock people out ect, It's going to be more on the 'just for fun' side.

 

Maybe instead of pipe bombs you could write that the portags dad was in the army or something and he somehow got his hands on a military issue grenade? I know unrealistic as hell, but that’s probably the best way to kill someone and get away with it, provided you’re not caught / recorded on camera.

I mean, it's not that difficult to make a thing that explodes from easily available materials.

Everybody in this thread is on so many lists right now, lol.

I mean the school shooter thing isn't really new. I had a whole branch like that in Repression.

Although I admire your work and find all of your story games bloody brilliant, I'm not trying to make a reskin of repression. That would be such a dick move on my part.  If I decided to add a route with a shooting,  it would likely be a dead end and/or only accessible with very specific actions.

Also, on an different note: I was inspired by how many many endings/sort of endings where in eternal.

I'd seriously consider something akin to this if I hadn't already implemented scenes with the father in them. To put it simply, due to back story spoilers I'm not willing to divulge right now, the protagonists father is a traumatized vegetable of a human being: after years of abuse he is unable to care for himself and must rely on his wife for survival. I wouldn't personally call him the 'army' type. However, due to all the suggestions about explosives, blowing your target up will definitely be an option.

Thanks for the suggestion! 

 

Put fifty carolina reaper seeds in their tuckshop/canteen food.

One of the best suggestions so far, as they are easy to get in the country the stories set in (costing only the equivalent of $9) and are pretty inconspicuous. That's definitely going into the game: great idea. 

For any one still interested: I'm still working on the story game (currently the project is over 90,000 words) !  The first chapter is 100% complete, with over 400 narrative paths to take and a ridiculous number of endings; I've been trying to calculate the amount of endings, but due to item configuration ect It's almost impossible to work out.  I'll probably update this page every few weeks with my progress. Now for my real reason for posting: do you guys prefer if cyoas have a 'good' ending and a 'bad' ending, a mixture off both or exclusively one or the other? Thanks for reading and for following my development process, Hope to see you all soon.

 

 

Whatever endings fit. Neutral endings are good too, and good endings are more satisfying to get if there are bad endings too. It makes sense that your story would have bad endings, if youbwere caught and such, and that could add to the challenge.

Ahem. Picture this. 

Forcing the student body to try the Tide-Pod Challenge. 

Drowning someone in a toilet bowl. 

Or simply feeding them excess amounts of the gross cafeteria food. :D

I just started adding the drowning route yesterday after I saw some of the Hitman 2 Gameplay; Thanks for the suggestion though

Go East German secret police on his ass and secretly ruin every aspect of his life while making it look like his fault so he ends up taking his own life.

If you like social sabotage and secret organisations: this cyoa will definetly be for you.

Poisoned lutefisk.
So just lutefisk, really.

On a completely different note than this chat: does anybody have a FULL COLOUR copy of the game A Sanguine Sakura? To explain: my story is based off the hit cyoa from the 1990's, created by yellow light media. It was played on an atari and you made choices which changed the story outcome. I've only been able to find the first chapter, which I brought from a sketchy-ass guy from ebay. Fortunately my console is fine, but a lot of the code and therefore story is corrupted. Thankfully, after transfering the code to my laptop, I basically have a complete first chapter. Rewritting has been tedious. There's an absoloute mangle of code that runs the whole system: it seems to have nothing to do with the game, but I'm reluctant to remove it. If anybody has even a vague clue of what happened to the studio that made it, or where I could get a copy, please tell me. 

(Also I just hit 100,000 words, which is cool)

Thanks for your help and continued support, I'll update you when I reach 125,000 words.

 

So I actually did find a copy the other day, but when I went to go look at it after I read your message, I found it had moved to a different part of my desk. There were also some red stains on it that have since turned rusty-colored. I think it's blood.

Old Atari games are notorious for excreting their innards when exposed to direct sunlight; I cracked my chapter 1 open and found the same substance inside. It was a sort of maroon color and acted a lot like oobleck. I've since reassembled the copy. Did you ever play the game, or know anybody that had? Any and all information would be extremely helpful in this homage of the classic game.

Thanks for the reply, looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Morbid curiosity most likely had me on a watchlist already, but I'll know for certain when the FBI knocks down my walls.

Here's a method: Stealing chemicals from an academic science storage room, then using it to poison someone. Put their corpses in the storage room, and make lines of the chemicals to make it look like a junky died trying to snort chemicals for a quick high.

Or you can stab someone to death (For the sake of academic convenience, with a sharpened ruler shiv) and bury them under the bleachers. More often than not, grass does not grow under the bleachers, allowing plenty of dirt space for stealthy burial.

This one is more psychologically demanding, but you can have the character secretly ruin the relationship between two people if one of them has extreme mental illnesses. Strangle the sane one and bury them in the insane one's yard, then strangle the insane one and hang the corpse in their room. For a couple of days, it will look like a murder-suicide, buying you time for more evil shenanigans. Make sure to include the location of the sane one's corpse in the fake suicide letter (or just the fact that he was killed to buy even more time for your character).

I have more, but I hear someone knocking on my door, and it does not sound like girl scouts or Mormons.

Chemical based murder and stabbing people where both added last month. However: I'd never thought of manipulated suicide or framed murder. Both of these ideas fit amazingly well with the mc's manipulative, psychotic, behavior. 

I love these ideas and they will definitely be adding them in the next couple of months, thanks for reigniting my writing fever with your excellent suggestion!