HEIST

What you need:
Three or more players. One player is the Ringleader. The rest of the players are the Crew.

The Hire: (IC RP) The Ringleader presents the heist and organizes the Crew.

The Job: (OOC RP) The Ringleader and the Crew hammer out the plan for the Heist.

The Getaway: (OOC/IC) The Ringleader and Crew each draw a hand (5) of cards from the deck describing what happened to them after the job and they each get a chance to tell their side of what happened and what went wrong. They all roll a die to determine order and then take turns in that order describing the events pertaining to one card in their hand at a time, until all the cards in each of their hands have been played and the story of the heist is over.

Cards would be things like Prison, Dead, Cop, and so forth, which variable meanings but a definite theme or idea behind them. The general idea is that by taking turns describing the events pertaining to each card in their hand one by one, they will tell the full story of the heist from an after the fact point of veiw, even if in a fractured order like Pulp Fiction, where the events are described out of order. Don't be afraid to describe yourself as dead or in prison, even with your first card, because you still get to continue to tell your story until your out of cards.

An Optional Rule or idea I'm not sure wether to implement or not: Having to describe the cards in the order you drew them into your hand (at the start of the final phase each person draws five cards all at once).

I'll consider the P19 and so forth in a bit.

I fabricated this in less than five minutes, and its mainly just an excercise in structured freeforming, which is a topic that I'm extremely interested in exploring the different narrative uses for.

So they don't actually play out the Heist?

No, wait ... posted too soon.  I get it.  They tell the story of the Heist in retrospect, right?

In reverse chronological order, I think.  Which rocks.

Also, welcome to The Forge, Mr. Johnson!  I enjoyed your work in A Boy and His Dog very much.

if you're going to plan the heist first, and then cut ahead to tell the story in a fragmented order, why bother planning. Why not reveal how the heist went down as you reveal what complicated it.

OOC planning in modern settings, especially when a heist is involved, often devolves into a lengthy debate about the specific gravity of urinal cakes or some stupid shit like that.

I like cards, simple, multiple use/meaning. Perhaps they can be incorporated into the planning stage?

I agree with what Kevin said.  As you said, your interest is in the freeform end of things.  Bounding that in with a setup step at the beginning would probably hamper later play.  Just let the players draw cards and play through them. 

I'm a big fan of using the medium to it's fullest, and by medium i mean whatever the playgroup is using to resolve mechincal issues.  Dice and cards can be used to evoke all sorts of things just through the way they are used.  Since (well, i'm assuming) your game uses specialized cards I'd probably include some kind of card game based mechanic where the cards have values which can be used to help you win or make other players lose.  A "clean getaway" versus "a stretch in the poke".  A weird, crime based version of the card game/drinking game classic Asshole i guess.  That way there's a reason for players to narrate bad things happening to themselves beyond "oh, it was in my hand". 

As always, if you're interested in crime RPGs, you might want to check out my game, down in the sig.  Or Tim Kleinert's awesomely fun Mountain Witch.

This guy fooled us, everyone.

He ripped off the content of the post from HEIST: a simple little game in progress, and spammed the private messages with penis pictures.

So all your replies are for naught, as he didn't write the initial post and does not care.

Anyway, it was an interesting penis day, but this thread is now closed for good.

Best, Ron