Scoundrels & Thieves: Writing Your Own Heist-Themed RPG Campaigns

Worldbuilding
Written By Than Gibson

Recently, Wizards of the Coast released Keys From the Golden Vault, a collection of Dungeons & Dragons adventures centered around the theme of heists. This book is a slight tie-in to D&D's new theatrical release.   By now you have most likely seen Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. If you enjoyed it, you may want to join in on the fun of a heist story. The adventures in Keys From the Golden Vault give you a great starting point for a one-shot or campaign of heists. Each adventure is built around the idea that the player characters are operatives for the Golden Vault, a clandestine organization focused on making sure powerful items stay out of the wrong hands - at any cost. The stories are creative and well-written adventures that can be played in one to two sessions but what do you do if you want to chart your own course? How can you use the elements found in Keys From the Golden Vault as well as other roleplaying games to write your own fantasy RPG heist adventures?

 

If you have ever read a heist novel like Brandon Sanderson's The Final Empire, seen a heist film like Ocean's Eleven, or watched a television series like Leverage, you may have noticed key elements that they all have in common. They are usually an ensemble cast. There is usually a specific objective - often a thing to be stolen. There's also usually an element of misdirection and complication.

 

The first two elements are relatively easy to attain for a fantasy RPG. D&D and other fantasy RPGs are built around an ensemble structure in the form of the adventuring party. The specific objective or item is often the reason the party goes into the dungeon or sets out on their quest.

 

But that third component, complication, and misdirection, is sometimes hard to grasp as a DM or GM. How do we build that into the story of our adventure? To find inspiration we'll step outside of the traditional medieval fantasy RPG and look to other RPGs for that inspiration.

 

The Setup

Every heist starts with the same background. Someone has something that someone else wants. The second party then begins the heist.

 

The first party, the target, is often someone in a position of power or wealth. In Ocean's Eleven, it's the casino owner. In Leverage, they are often corrupt corporations, executives, or crime bosses. In Keys From the Golden Vault, they are wealthy nobles or evil wizards.

 

The second party is a client, mastermind, or sometimes both. Their purpose is to take something from the target though their motivation can vary.  In The Final Empire, it is Kelsier, the mastermind with a vengeance against the Lord Ruler. In Leverage, they are people who come to the Leverage crew to find justice when they have no other option. In Keys From the Golden Vault, it is the Golden Vault, an organization that hires adventurers to attain items that should not be in the hands of their possessors.

 

Artist Credit: CoupleOfKooks

The "something to be taken" is the MacGuffin, an object or device in a story that serves merely as a trigger for the plot. This can be a tangible object, an intangible concept, or possibly both. Take Ocean's Eleven for example - Danny Ocean hires the crew to steal the money from Benedict. But, he also uses the heist to win back his ex-wife, Tess.  In the Stygian Gambit, the second adventure in Keys From the Golden Vault, the party is hired to steal a valuable statue from a casino. But, the client wants to enact revenge on the casino's owner for his betrayal.

 

The last phase of the setup is the recruitment. The Mastermind or client gathers a team with specific skills needed to successfully pull off the heist. In RPG terms this is assumed to have happened shortly before or after the start of the first game session. A great way to accomplish this in a more cinematic way is with a session zero. A session zero allows the DM to frame the kinds of characters that will be needed for the adventure or campaign. A basic session zero involves the players and GM sitting down and talking through what is and isn't allowed in the game and making characters. Going the extra step to include a short recruitment scenario to establish why the characters are working together eliminates the awkward cliché of "you meet in a tavern."

 

Some things to consider in your Session Zero are tone, type, and topics. What will the tone of the game or adventure be; a wise-cracking heist comedy or a serious espionage thriller? What are the types of characters needed? A heist is a specific genre of fiction that often relies on cunning, charm, and stealth. Is a Goliath Barbarian appropriate for this campaign? Lastly, because heists usually involve an unscrupulous criminal element, are there any topics that might be uncomfortable to you or the players? For example, if seduction becomes a method that the players use, how do you handle the result without making everyone uncomfortable?

 

Planning the Heist

Artist credit: Alexandre Honoré

After the players are introduced to the job and have their goal, it's time for them to begin planning the heist. Let the players get creative with this portion but don't let them bog down the game with analysis paralysis - being unable to proceed due to overthinking a problem. Some ways to encourage fruitful planning are to give them options. Maybe the mastermind who gathered them gives them a couple of starting points.

 

In a recent heist game I ran, I gave the players two pieces of information: the target keeps the MacGuffin at his home and he keeps a routine. This gave them the starting points of "casing the joint" and "gathering intelligence."

 

A "casing the joint" encounter should be a location-based scenario. Detail the location (rooms, traps, alarms, guards, loot) and then let them explore it as they see fit. If they are dragging behind introduce a timer like, "It takes the guard ten rounds (6 seconds each in 5e) to patrol this floor of the museum." They now know they have one minute until the guards return. Make sure that some elements have a harder difficulty to detect than others. If all of the alarm traps are a moderate difficulty and you have a specially trained trapsmith in the party, they will most likely find them all. However, if they miss one or two because they are well hidden then that will make things more interesting during the heist. In "The Murkmire Malevolence" the first adventure in Keys From the Golden Vault, the party has the opportunity to scout a museum ahead of time before a big gala in which the heist will take place. However, the patrolling guards will be in specific places during the gala and afterward. This might result in a hiding place being unavailable.

 

"Gathering Intelligence" encounters can be social or stealth encounters. This is their opportunity to learn the secrets and clues needed to bypass the trickier parts of the heist. If you are running 5e, don't let this come down to a simple Investigation check. Roleplay this portion and let the skill checks come naturally. How do they gather the info? What is the source of the intelligence? Can it be trusted? Will they be spotted trying to do so? Let the spies in the group be spies.

Once they have all the necessary info, let them bring it all together and make a plan. Again keep the ball moving and don't let them get bogged down in every minor detail. Set a time limit and then give them a way to change things they missed like "flashbacks" which we will discuss further below.

 

Working the Job

Once the plan is in place, it's time to go into action. You should have one or two of each basic type of encounter -social, stealth, and combat - ready to go and then modify them based on what the players do. Anticipate what is most likely to be encountered in each and set a base difficulty. Then use a spectrum of success. Write down five outcomes for each encounter based on how their attempt goes: Great Success, Success, Partial Success, Failure, and Great Failure. I like to break these down where a Partial Success is just hitting the DC in 5e. You succeed but there's a consequence. Whereas, a success is higher than the DC but less than 5 higher. A great success is anything 5 or higher than the DC and there is an unexpected positive result in addition to succeeding. The same applies to Failure and Great Failure but in the negative direction. This gives nuance to the gameplay and can lead to some very interesting encounters.

 

Artist credit: Evyn Fong

Social encounters involve persuasion, deception, and insight. Think about the NPCs the party is most likely to talk to and then think about those difficulties. If they are going to be charming or bribing the butler at the mansion, then you probably don't need to worry about the butler's combat capabilities! Make some easier and some harder. The bard might be able to charm the baron's son, the eligible bachelor, but can they charm the baron himself?

 

Stealth encounters are often the heart of a heist adventure. Because of that, they should be in the spotlight. Like the social encounters, don't tie this down to just one dice roll. Make it a series of checks or even a Skill Challenge where the party has to get so many successes before so many failures. Use the spectrum of success from above. What happens if the rogue has a Great Success while avoiding the "magic alarm rays" crisscrossing the room? What happens if they get a Great Failure? Let these encounters shine and inform your complications and unexpected elements as the heist plays out.

 

Combat encounters can happen in a heist. Sometimes it's intentional, often it's not. There may be a need for a combat situation like taking out a group of guards before they can ambush the rogues. In Leverage, one of the group's key members, Eliot, is "The Hitter." Sometimes you need someone to punch your way out of a situation, especially if it goes south. If you have a player who enjoys combat, make sure they have the opportunity but make sure they understand this may not be the dungeon crawl they are expecting.

 

Complications

Complications are what make heists exciting and fun. If the heist went exactly as planned it wouldn't be interesting. As a GM or DM, that means you need to make sure you include these complications. These can be intentional complications or unintentional as a result of failures by the players during their encounters. Like the encounters we discussed above, you should have a few of these planned and ready to go as well as a few one-liner ideas that you can improvise on the go.

 

There are two categories of complications that you have at your disposal; unexpected elements and missed elements. Both categories can be intentional or unintentional, though unexpected elements skew towards intentional while missed elements tend to be unintentional complications.

 

Unexpected elements are twists that you throw at the party. This category can include things like an unexpected increase in the number of guards, a newly installed trap or lock, or a change in the timetable. It can also include a planned betrayal. Examples from film include the power company messing up the "lights-out" portion of the Ocean's Eleven heist or the three armored trucks in The Italian Job.

 

Missed elements can include some of the same components of the unexpected elements, but in this case, they are things that the party may have missed in their initial reconnaissance phase or their encounters. For example, maybe they missed a trap in a room or incorrectly counted the number of guard patrols. In the case of a social encounter, this could be something like a missed clue or a bit of info they could have gained from a target of the grift.

Flashbacks

In most heist stories there is a moment where the audience is clued into a secret in the plan that allows the thieves to overcome an impossible situation. This is often a very clever reveal that you along with the target were being misdirected the whole time. The magic trick is revealed and the protagonists are victorious. For example, in Ocean's Eleven, there is an element of a shell game in which the crew of thieves are not where they are expected to be allowing them to make a getaway. When this occurs, the explanation takes the form of a flashback to where we are shown something that has been in front of our faces the entire time.

 

You can incorporate this element by borrowing from one of the leaders in heist RPGs, Blades in the Dark. Flashbacks in Blades in the Dark are very straightforward. The player calls for a Flashback, they describe what they would have done to plan for the situation, and the GM decides if that would be possible and sets a cost based on that description. The cost is paid and any checks to determine a success are made. If the Flashback is successful then the GM incorporates that into the new narrative going forward.

 

The cost for a Flashback in Blades in the Dar is paid in Stress - a Hit Points analog that measures of how well the character shakes complications off. When you're out of Stress, you gain a permanent Trauma condition and you're out of the game. So, the cost of a Flashback is significant but might just be worth the gamble. In a game like 5e, you could incorporate Flashback tokens that the players have to spend to get a Flashback or you could make it something slightly more significant like Exhaustion levels or even an HP cost.

 

 After the cost is paid play through the Flashback as you would any other scene. The spectrum of success makes this a much more nuanced outcome because even though they planned ahead, depending on how it goes, it might not have been a failproof plan. Then the GM gets to work in more complications!

 

Fallout

Finally, after the heist is complete the crew ends up with consequences. A few examples of possible fallout from the heist are:

  • They are now wanted by the law. If they failed, someone may be captured and need a jailbreak.

  • The heist took a bad turn and someone died.

  • They have gained a reputation and clients begin to seek them out for jobs.

  • The crew splits up and lays low because they are believed to be dead.

  • The target seeks retribution for having their property stolen.

  • The party splits up because the heat was just too much after the heist until the next big score presents itself.

  • An ally double-crossed them and took the prize for themselves, leading the crew to plot revenge.

 

The Wrap-Up

The key to writing a memorable heist adventure is to lean on inspiration. Heist fiction is a very specific genre that has certain elements. Don't be afraid to use those tropes because that's what your players will expect. Make use of the encounter types we discussed above. Use timers and flashbacks to create urgency and misdirection. Then once you're comfortable with those elements, make it your own. Add those details that make your setting unique and it will feel fresh and exciting.

 

If you are planning Dungeons & Dragons adventures like those in Keys From the Golden Vault can give you a great start to your D&D heist campaign but also look for inspiration from other RPG systems like Blades in the Dark that are built around the nuances that can be found within the genre.

 

Finally, here are a few works of fiction and RPGs that can provide you with more inspiration:

Novels

Television Series

Films

RPGs






Disclaimer: DMing the World received a review copy of Keys From the Golden Vault from Wizards of the Coast. Keys From the Golden Vault can be found on Amazon, D&D Beyond or at you Friendly Local Game Shop.

Than Gibson chronicle.cc
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