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Obviously these are all on the backburner since I have my hands full with The Street Children and also the 3rd part of my Project Origin series. But, I figured it wouldn't hurt to see what everyones opinions on them are.

After watching Lawless over the weekend(great movie), I was inspired to look into creating a story game based in the Prohibition era.

The character can achieve various levels of 'success' within the illegal running of moonshine(or smuggled alcohol from the Caribbean/Canada). The type of bootlegger and the success of the business will depend on the players choices. You would be able to end anywhere from a family business at the end of the prohibition or a powerful gangster like Al Capone, dabbling in all sorts of black market business and extortion long past the end of the need for bootleggers. That is, if you survive the blockades, deputies, and crooked officials along the way. Not to mention all the dangerous competition from other big time men of the era. 

As always, I put more effort into the story than the game. But, I am going to try and even it out if I do start this. Less of an interactive novel and more game, with under three paragraphs a page instead of the 6-9 I'm averaging in The Street Children XD. And a lot of choices and various different paths. Plus I would put an item and money system in place, where you can buy/improve your car, hire on underlings, buy weapons, buy intel, ect. 

Well, what do you guys think? A good idea for a new edutainment game? Or maybe would need some tweaking? Some of the story would be based of historical events, while a few may come from my Great Grandfathers stories he used to tell me  when I was a kid(he was moonshiner back in the prohibition and kept up his operation well into his 60's). He never went big time or got into the violence of it. He only made his moonshine and sold it cheap to family, friends, and neighbors so it didn't attract attention hardly at all. But, he had some good stories XD

 

I think it would be a really interesting game!

Maybe you could even have a path that leads into a Cthulhu worshipping cult of moonshiners deep in the hills of West Virginia >_> (hint hint)

Anyway - I'm sure you could do great things with it. Let us know if you ever decide to get it going =)

Haha, I was actually thinking about something along those lines. Mountain folks are very superstitious. There are really small towns around here in the mountains where they believe all kinds of weird stuff. ;) So I would definitely throw that in there, among other little tidbits. Some of the 'bad omens' that would make my great granddad refuse to sell or do deliveries are kinda funny to be honest XD.

P.S. not gonna lie I got impatient and created it. But, I've only had time to mess with a few items and such. I haven't done any actual work besides naming the main character. XD

A company that rivals even budweiser and heineken! XD

Yeah I think he sold it $3.00 a jar back in prohibition, but after that it was $1.50. And around the last ten years he did it, he just gave it to his friends for free. He made 'Apple Pie' moonshine, White Lightning, Peach moonshine, and grape moonshine. One of my great uncles and his sons kept up the recipe and on holidays we all have a few jaws to pass around. I personally like the apple one XD

about 5 years ago i had a similar idea based off the song "Copperhead Road". similar storyline, without the shooting and killing found in Lawless (yes, a very good movie). If you can pull this story off, id love to read it. good luck with it.

nate

I am a stickler for being historically correct with this stuff. So I'm not gonna lie, the story will probably be very graphically violent in more than one part. Lawless was almost nice compared to some of what actually happened to some of the moonshiners back then(at least the ones that didn't pay off the local police/blockades) or didn't stay on good terms with their local competition. 

Didn't Nascar get its start by moonshiners tinkering with their cars to outrun the police? Maybe a mechanic element could be included (Not sure if you're using stats or which ones) If you don't work on your car enough, the cops have an easier time catching you.

Yes it did :)

And I'm going to do a little bit of that. As you make money in the game, you can buy new cars. And you can also upgrade the cars mechanically/take care of it. And each time you use the car it loses a few points on Car Upkeep. Of course the better the car you buy, the less time/money it takes to keep it in good shape. :)

But, I'm not good at scripting. So any advice on how to script that would be much appreciated :)

yes actually NASCAR did. after the prohibition ended. oh simple got to it before me

I agree, this is the perfect era for the Cthulhu mythos. Other than what sounds like an unaceptable lack of old ones and elder gods, this sounds like a great game concept. Ihope to read it soon. Cthulhu Fhatagen R'ley!

Yeah I'll definitely sneak in a little Cthuhlu cult in there, as it would be right after it was published. I'm sure somewhere out there people might have taken it on in that way. Sort of similar to how people would tune into the radio and hear War of the Worlds and actually think it was the news and that was really happening. XD

I'm also trying to figure out what POV to write it from. Typically I've been doing first person with my games. But, I'm not used to it and I mix up my tenses when I do first person for some reason. I do better writing in third person, but I don't want to take away the element of the player 'being' the character.

I don't really have a problem with reading a story from a he/she POV :)

Hmmm, I may do that. Though, I'm still not sure since I don't want to lose the whole 'you' are the character thing XD

It depends on where you want to go. Do you want to play with a meat puppet or do you want the reader to feel more like it is happening to them.      Tim lost the cops chasing him. You lost the cops chasing you.

Yeah that was my fear with 3rd person. 

If you're worried about mixing up tenses and stuff, why not ask someone to beta-read for you before you publish? Like, make them a temp co-writer. I'd volunteer if you'd feel comfortable, but yeah, there's gotta be a few people here who'd be willing.

I may take you up on that :)

I typically do demo versions to allow anyone to play through and if they find mistakes to message me about it. Or I may just put in preview mode for a day before publishing and only send the link to people interested in proof reading for me :)

I think it's a great idea. I'm looking forward to when you finish it already. I'm a history buff, myself. (Though, ancient history is my true interest in that area.) What is really cool about this is the fact that you have a real life source to draw from who was there. Not a whole lot of period-based stories here, or.... at all, really, have the opportunity to do that. If you can, you might want to also draw on any legends he remembers that were popular in his time?

And, while we're at it, the cult thing is cool. As is a good, ol' conspiracy theory. If you -do- intend it as an edutainment game? It'd also be kind of cool to add a logic / trivia puzzle or two if you find the time. Maybe not as part of the main game, but as a bonus for the exceptionally diligent player?

 

I personally love the concept, crazy ambitious though. In order to make it true I believe you would have to build a setting from historical fact and the ground up, which is why I don't think I'll ever do so. Even with my knowledge of Greek myths and what little I know of the peoples I'd fail epically at making a Greek story. Although your sources should make your story mostly accurate. I can't wait, is it like a start an empire thing? or poor beginnings look at the stars from the gutter sort of deal? or being more or less forced into the life??

It would be a mixture to a degree. This is on the backburner for the moment, but I have played around with it a little bit. 

The main character is Zebidiah Hartley, Zeb for short. So you would play as him. He is the youngest of four brothers. The two oldest brothers started the operation, while Zeb and the second youngest brother are on the fence so to speak. Basically I'll have it to where you can choose to join Zeb's older brothers, start an operation on your own completely, or start an operation with the second youngest brother. Obviously the most difficult would be to do it 100% alone to start with, but it would give you 100% profit earlier on. While with one or all of Zeb's brothers in the operation, you would only get a cut of the profit, but you would have the operation already set up along with clients and contacts. 

The authenticity of it would actually be my favorite part. Sort of like in The Street Children, I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to putting any sort of non-fiction in a story. I like it to be accurate to the time period, location, and culture. And I love researching it. Plus I'm a bit of a history buff anyways, so a lot of it is stuff I already know or know exactly where to look to find the facts quickly. ;)

I tend to be a history buff as well. I just don't have time to go through and research everything, so my "research" tends to be finding pictures of fantasy works for inspiration and description of creatures characters etc, my shade was based off arandom google image I found to look awesome    

 Granted my description is much different but the claws came from this and for some reason that kind of inspired the first part of the story completely

Yeah I do that sometimes too. It helps to give you something to base your idea off, then add to it until you have your own unique creation :)