No Mistakes, Only Deeper Plans

Publisher summary
For any number of players, each of whom wants to walk away with the full contents of the Vault. Think to yourself what you'd do with all that money -- debts paid, loved ones saved, mistakes undone.

This game jumps back and forth between two scenes: the planning stage of a heist, and the heist itself.

Judge Comments
Of the many great heist games I read for this year’s competition, No Mistakes, Only Deeper Plans stood out with a really neat mechanic for dealing with player failure. The game jumps between the planning phase and the actual heist as you play. Players plan their heist together, and then begin the mission. Where it gets interesting, and what really makes it a stand-out game for me is how it handles failure. When a player character fails a roll during the heist, the scene jumps back to the planning phase where it is revealed that the failure was actually part of the group’s plan all along. The player explains how this failure was “intentional” and how it leads to the next phase of the plan just like in so many heist films. Once the characters enter the vault, the game ignores the planning phase, and players have to work against each other as only one of them will be getting out with the money. Using such a clever method for turning failures into successes is for me one of the best approaches to player failure in an RPG and something I’d love to see in more games. - Armand Kossayan

A participant in the 200 Word RPG challenge 2017