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Yep, this is going to be one of many progress threads for the storygame contest. My storygame will follow the story of a man who sets his eyes on pulling a bank heist from the most secure bank in the city where he lives. He will have a limited budget to put together a team plus gather resources and equipment in an attempt to rob the bank. There will be multiple ways to complete the heist, all with their different risks, as well as benefits and rewards.

I know 10 days is a very short time to complete a storygame, but due to my real life commitments I’m going to have to go on hiatus for 2-3 days while I do other stuff. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with you guys even after that! By that time I at least hope to have a clearer idea of what I want to do for this storygame so I can get on it straight away.

Just one question until I come back. I was planning to randomise some of the elements of the bank and possibly even the people involved every time you play. E.g. the bank building's layout might change each time, or you might have different guards/potential robber buddies appear every time. Do you think this would add to the experience by giving you a different heist to complete each time, or would it distract and frustrate you because you can’t re-play and try different things on the same scenario?

Randomization would be a great way to add replayability, but given the timeframe you'll be working in, you'll have to consider that every layer of complexity means more things you'll have to test.

I realise that, but I've thought of a way to add certain elements of randomisation that wouldn't be too time consuming. Still, I might leave it out if I think it will work better without it.

Heh, this reminds me a bit of the Joker in 'The Dark Knight' when he robs the bank. Obviously this is a very different story though and I think randomisation so you have a different game each time would be brilliant, if you can pull it off. 

I also have some commitments over the rest of February, so I totally understand your situation there. Hopefully we'll both be pleased with our final stories for the contest.

Now that you've mentioned the Joker, you know that I have to include a reference to him, right? XD
 

I wouldnt really worry about it. Sounds awesome tho

Good luck. Hope you are able to finish your game in time. Sounds fun!

Unlike all you folks who are blazingly fast at doing storygames, I’m still working on the skeletal structure of the storygame before I start any writing. In fact, I haven’t even got an exact number of pages yet. But that’s more my style: spend a lot of time on pre-writing figuring things out so I don’t get confused, then rush through writing, give it a rest and finally edit. Of course, I might not get the time to rest and then edit for this one, but the point is that the building will come, I just need to get the foundations up first.

Having said all that, there are some things I am very clear about now, so I’ll give you a quick run-down of what you can expect from Grievous Heist:

• five different possible ways to rob the bank, all with varying amounts of money stolen and therefore different endings.
• the heist will be in two stages: planning, followed by the robbery. Once you’ve got the perfect heist planned, you will need to make the correct series of decisions during the robbery itself in order to succeed.
• between 6-8 hireable potential key player accomplices along with many more underlings, all giving you different types of help from security disarmament to escape assistance, extra firepower to insider information.
• different types of robberies will require very different methods - for example, having an escape vehicle might work for one robbery but not for another.
• small elements of randomisation will ensure that the player has to pay for inside information to pull off certain heists every playthrough.

Hope that whets your appetite a bit for this storygame. Which of these sounds like more fun to you guys: the speed heist or the brute force heist? Why?

Hmm... sounds interesting. What about the possibility of instead of the type of heist being random, that the reader can pick one at the start? If you're going to write all of them anyway, giving the reader the option helps with those of us who would just keep re-starting until we found all the options.

That's not quite what I meant about randomisation. Each type of heist will be available every playthrough, but a small part of the storygame will be randomised to make it more replayable.

So to give an example (which probably won't be used in the actual storygame), one particular heist might require the player to use a keycode to open a door or get into a safe. You will need to pay/hire a certain insider character to get the keycode. The next time you play the storygame, the keycode will be different (randomised). In the real thing it'll be more difficult to cheat the system and just keep pressing 'back', because it won't be clear if you've chosen the right answer straight away. But I guess you could just keep pressing 'back' anyway, it would just take longer. There's always the possibility you'll get the right answer by just picking one, even if it's unlikely, just like a real heist.

Ah I see, very cool.

Well, that sounds kickass, although the amount of work I think this would take would be very extensive for the six days left, I'd still love to play it.

In a completely predictable and inevitable unexpected turn of events, I'm going to have to drop this one, at least for now. I won't be able to make the contest deadline due to more hours than expected this week to cover for someone ill, and just general business outside of work. It's a shame but all the best for the guys who manage to submit their storygames on time! I might come back to this storygame at some point in the future, we'll see. For now, I'll be working on my teaser for my upcoming storygame Elementium instead.

That's too bad, this is one of the stories I was particularly looking forward to. I understand the feeling, my own story is going to be down to the wire, but I should have just enough time to get it done, and I have more than enough I can publish into a complete story if I run out of time. I was hoping I'd get a bit of free proof-reading from beta-testers, but it looks like I'll have to do all that myself (or sacrifice it to complete other components).

Well it's up to you and what you think would do best, but I think sacrificing proofreading in favour of adding extra components doesn't sound like a good idea. But as I said, you do what you think is more likely to be viewed more favourably by the judges.

Aww, it sounded like a fun and replayable concept though. Is there at least a demo we could try?

Unfortunately not, I only really managed to make a rough skeletal structure without any proper writing or scripting, which is kind of why I had to give it up (at least for the contest). But I might possibly get back to this storygame at some point in the future. Not anytime too soon, though.

That sucks! I was looking forward to your entry!

Hey, if the contest got you started, great! If it were me, I'd try and get one page done over a certain period of time (day, week) to try and get some consistent progress going on it!

Good luck with it!

I would but I'm more eager to get going on my other bigger storygame project right now. It's possible that I'll get back to Grievous Heist at some point, and hopefully I'll have some better ideas plus more time to polish it by then.