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Hey,

I was making a plan for a pretty cool board game where you and friends would perform various heists, etc.. Unfortunately, since it would have to involve things such as hostages, killing civilians and crime, I wanted to know whether this would be considered offensive or in poor taste by the people of Dakka before setting off on this endeavor.

Thanks in advance,

Blap

I like the idea of heists, but I'd probably avoid things like killing innocents and taking hostages. Perhaps the board game follows the exploits of people that don't kill because of some strange thieves code?

No just as long as you involve copious amounts of scantly clad women, and a Norse god I would totally buy this game

I was thinking something along the lines of 'Payday - The Heist' to be honest...

 BlapBlapBlap wrote:
I was thinking something along the lines of 'Payday - The Heist' to be honest...

I didn't even know such a thing existed

If you were to include a mechanic like taking hostages, you'd either have to make it have a significant downside(s) e.g: increased police presence, and portray it as very wrong, or just make it gritty as gravel. Including killing innocents at all seems like a really bad idea.
Just my opinion, no actual game design experience, just seems like a good way to handle it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/24240/

Pretty violent stuff. Not really worksafe at all.

"Did you kill anybody?"

"Just cops. No real people."

...

"I don't want to kill anybody, but if you're in my way, one way or another you're getting out of my way."

"The choice between doing 10 years and taking out some stupid mother aint no choice at all, but I'm not a mad man."

Are those quotes from the game?

I think you could get away with a lot more if it was set in the 1920s or 1930s and it was with Al Capone-style gangsters. Things are less shocking when they're set in the past or a fictional environment, generally.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Are those quotes from the game?

Those are from (by memory so they may be slightly inaccurate) Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) and Mr. White (Harvey Keitel).

Funnily enough in the "What video games should be made into minis?" I posted interest in a Kane and Lynch tabletop game, just minutes before you created this thread. What I had in mind was heists, cops and killing your team mates and take their loot.

And I for one would be totally fine with murdering innocents, as long as it's cleverly represented in the rules. There are too many shining knights in wargaming.

I think a board game would be the best bet for something like this.

Why do I get to be Mr Pink?

Grand Theft Auto Tabletop version? Take my goddam money!

 Brother SRM wrote:
I think you could get away with a lot more if it was set in the 1920s or 1930s and it was with Al Capone-style gangsters. Things are less shocking when they're set in the past or a fictional environment, generally.

This seems like a safe bet. I personally don't care if innocent people die in a board game since its just a game but apparently people don't like that, have you ever played Kane and lynch?

Of course it wouldn't be offensive. And it certainly wouldn't be more offensive than genocide, torture, and all the other wonderful offensive things in 40k.

Hey Blap Blap... Have you considered something along the lines of the heists they pull in the sadly defunct TV show Leverage?

Sounds fine to me, but as mentioned you should have killing any innocents as a kind of last ditch strategy with significant drawbacks to make players think rather than just kill everyone.

 Alfndrate wrote:

 BlapBlapBlap wrote:
I was thinking something along the lines of 'Payday - The Heist' to be honest...

I didn't even know such a thing existed

I didn't either. I thought he was talking about some sort of "modernized", alternate version of the old Payday board game, like that Clue that sends you Text Messages and has you play as spies.

Hmmm, perhaps it might be worth looking at the rules for Zombicide - one way to handle excessive violence might be escalation.

If you kill hostages the cops are more likely to pen fire when they see guns in your hands, and there are more cops holding guns.

Honestly though - this sounds like something that I would never be interested in.

The Auld Grump

 BlapBlapBlap wrote:
Hey,

I was making a plan for a pretty cool board game where you and friends would perform various heists, etc.. Unfortunately, since it would have to involve things such as hostages, killing civilians and crime, I wanted to know whether this would be considered offensive or in poor taste by the people of Dakka before setting off on this endeavor.

Thanks in advance,

Blap

If you're going to go this far, you might as well make the expansions take place in: a) a mall, b) a school and c) The White House.

Good luck!

 Peregrine wrote:
Of course it wouldn't be offensive. And it certainly wouldn't be more offensive than genocide, torture, and all the other wonderful offensive things in 40k.

This, really. I have Chaos themed books where innocents aren't only "killed", no, they are tortured on the most horrible ways because it all went FULL GRIMDARK. Then killed. Then mind-raped. If there's Slaanesh involved, maybe other things.

Then there's others where the good guys killed massive quantities of civilians, either close and personal or using exterminatus, or anything the wonderful GRIMDARK decided to throw at the poor chaps.

Killing innocent people is the daily bread of 40k.

fishy bob wrote:
Funnily enough in the "What video games should be made into minis?" I posted interest in a Kane and Lynch tabletop game, just minutes before you created this thread. What I had in mind was heists, cops and killing your team mates and take their loot.

And I for one would be totally fine with murdering innocents, as long as it's cleverly represented in the rules. There are too many shining knights in wargaming.

I think a board game would be the best bet for something like this.

"hey, who'd the boss tell you to kill, me?"
"No, I'm supposed to kill the bus driver"
"bus driver!?"

I'd say don't water it down from a mechanics point of view. A very vital part of most boardgames is the theme. People need the theme to be able immerse themselves and enjoy themselves. Yeah some people will take offence, but there is always someone who will be offended by something (seriously, I once saw a 10-page discussion on BGG about Agricola being evil and anyone who plays it being equally evil because you can eat animals in it, OP was a 7th-level vegan or something...).

You don't have to go all gritty and violent about it, perhaps have a mechanic where you can take a meeple hostage to avoid being shot, but generally you want to avoid gratuitously killing civilians as they raise your 'notoriety level' which costs you points at the end of the game.

Honestly, depending on the exact type or scope of game you're going for, you could easily have "hostage execution" thrown in there.

If you have a game like War on Terror (a game of one vs. many), the One evil person could roll a die, or flip a card or something, so that executions aren't really a decision so much as an outcome of how the Many play their situation.

If it's a game where players are playing against the "board" (like clue and the like) then you have mechanics where players are presented a situation where that may be an outcome. Ie. if X happens on the board, draw a card from Y pile. If the card from Y pile says "hostage takers threaten to kill one person if demands not met" player then [flips a card, rolls a die, plays ro-sham-bo,etc.], if player's result higher than Z (or have a random second conduct the other half), then hostage safe, for now.

All in all, I think that it comes down to how you present it, how "easy" it is to go that route, and the overall outcome.

Read Faust by Tim Vigil, that is the level you should go for