RealAlHazred
Frumious Flumph (Your Grace/Your Eminence)
Originally posted by bawylie:
There's lots of different adventures you might want to run and might have difficulty fitting into your game. Here, we're gonna discuss Heists, their structure & components.
In case you don't know, a Heist is a scenario wherein a group of people try to steal something. This examination will assume your players are the filthy thieves.
Heists in film usually unfold in 3 acts. -Mostly the first act is used to introduce the major players, pull the team together and frame the challenges (also set up whatever twist happens in the third act).
-The second act is the heist itself. Sometimes this jumps back and forth between the planning (in flashback) and the execution.
-The third act unravels the plan, twists the plot, and resolves the outcome.
We're not writing a film or a story, though, so our needs are going to be different. We already have a team together, so that's done. What we need to do is frame the adventure. Fortunately, this is easy.
Ok! We have all we need. Now we gotta RUN IT.
In the first act, some NPC has to tell your players about the enticement & about the person who holds it. Frame it how you like, but don't detail the Stuff. Just let them know NPC failed at getting the enticement. That's all, the rest is on them. Most likely, they'll try some kind of Approach. If they're cautious, they'll scout. Good, start dropping info. (It's a Mansion, well guarded, high walls). If they hit the streets for gossip, tell them about an upcoming event (The races, prize fight), the types of security. If they stake out the place, give them the map & let the scout observe (and be nearly caught by) One Bad Dude. Act One Frames The Adventure.
Act 2. They'll start planning how to get the enticement. Maybe your Heist turns into an Assault. Maybe it's a Robbery. Who knows? But here's what's fun - as they plan it, PLAY IT. You see in movies where they flash back and forth between plan & execution. Do that. When one player talks about how he could probably sneak somewhere - make him roll and describe the result. Put his mini on the map and cross off the guards he got past. If he fails, tell him what happens. Turn the plan into Play. Let them thoroughly discuss further actions as a group before making them (to account for planning). [Variant: Keep Combat Short (1 hit KOs). We're not focusing on combat, we're doing a heist. If combat breaks out, genre suggests it's brief.]
One Bad Dude & Unseen Obstacles: Who has the action? In Act 2, when you're running and planning and whatever, one player at a time will make a move. When they do, roll a d6. On a 1, One Bad Dude shows up to complicate matters. He doesn't automatically stop the action. But he is suspicious and dangerous. Ask the player what they're gonna do about him. On a 2, use a previously unseen complication or obstacle. On a 3-6, nothing. Note that if One Bad Dude shows up on one player's turn, he can't show up for the next guy's turn. Treat that 1 as a 2. One Bad Dude still has to walk places and can't be everywhere at once. If your Players never learn of One Bad Dude and don't have contingency in place, well, he's learned of them. He'll either confront them at the enticement or at their home base & he'll come in force (whip out a set piece encounter for this - a hard one).
Act 3 isn't really any more than your typical adventure wrap. Rewards, accolades, and a cream-sicle. However, for extra fun, feel free to include some twists (go look in TV tropes, I'm not gonna get into how to properly twist, for this article).
Congrats! That's how you write & run a Heist. What I've done here is basic. It's not going to be good until you fill it out thematically & put encounters & DCs and all that. You've got the recipe here, but it's on you to bake this cake. If you run it, let me know how it goes!
-Brad
There's lots of different adventures you might want to run and might have difficulty fitting into your game. Here, we're gonna discuss Heists, their structure & components.
In case you don't know, a Heist is a scenario wherein a group of people try to steal something. This examination will assume your players are the filthy thieves.
Heists in film usually unfold in 3 acts. -Mostly the first act is used to introduce the major players, pull the team together and frame the challenges (also set up whatever twist happens in the third act).
-The second act is the heist itself. Sometimes this jumps back and forth between the planning (in flashback) and the execution.
-The third act unravels the plan, twists the plot, and resolves the outcome.
We're not writing a film or a story, though, so our needs are going to be different. We already have a team together, so that's done. What we need to do is frame the adventure. Fortunately, this is easy.
- Create an enticement. A hoard of treasure, a magical item, a damsel in distress, a gentleman in peril, the keys to the car, this kinda crap. Some NPC has to alert the PCs to the enticement. The enticement itself has to be enticing. Otherwise why bother?
- An adventure site. A big one. With a lot of rooms and passages and people and ducts. Like a casino, a stadium, a large bank, a castle, a base. What you need here is room to play. For organization's sake, make a tic-tac-toe board that fills a sheet of paper. #. Title the sheet with the type of site this is, say, "Brad's Totally Real and Not BS Mansion." We need at least this much room. We'll come back to this. It's not a map - it's an organizational tool.
- Obstacles, both physical and circumstantial. 80% observable, 20% to spring on people later. Guards, patrols, locked doors, vaults, timed events, obligations, rivals, admission issues, alarms, this kinda stuff.
- One Bad Dude. This is a threat. A Shark in the water that's capable of ruining the whole plan. Maybe he owns the enticement. Maybe he works for the guy who holds the enticement. Doesn't matter. He needs to be sufficient threat and to be observable by PCs. They need to know he's there and mobile. They need to account for him. If they don't account for him, he's automatically the twist at the end & catches them at a disadvantage. Like a hidden condition for failure.
- Areas & situations. We have 9 spots on our #. One of these will have the enticement (the middle one). That leaves 8 spots. In 5 or 6, write the names of areas or rooms. Like Outside, Parlor, Casino Floor, Offices, Kitchen. If you're doing Brad's Mansion That is Not Made Up, just use the rooms in CLUE. In the remaining 2-3 spots, write up situations - events that happen that are noteworthy. Like a Prize Fight, or Dinner is Served, or Rivals Cut the Power. This kinda thing. These don't have to be obstacles, they can just be a normal course of events.
Horse Race 1 & Semi Finals & Cup Race, for instance.
Now fill out your #. Put the enticement in the middle with relevant obstacles (A Magic Item in a Vault that's Guarded). In each Area, write a 1-2 sentence description of what the area has in it and put a few obstacles. Never place the One Bad Dude anywhere, he moves around. If you want your obstacles randomly distributed, do that. But fill in every spot on your #. Pick one spot to connect to the center spot - in other words, the only way to get into the Enticement's square is through this one area. All other areas connect to 2 other areas. Draw lines if this helps. But basically, the Kitchen connects to Outside & The Dining Room. The Vault only connects to The Penthouse (or whatever). - The Map. When (if) your players do their jobs right, they'll have scouted the area, maybe done some research or picked up gossip. They should know/learn the layout of the adventure site, the placement of the enticement & any fixed obstacles, the identity and rough capabilities of One Bad Dude, and of the existence of any non-fixed obstacles (like invitation-only & patrols). They will NOT know of some obstacles (20-25%). So draw the adventure site. Lay it out so it makes sense. Make sure the areas are connected right and don't make a shortcut to your enticement. If you're doing a Mansion, use the CLUE layout. Hell, ALWAYS use the Clue layout. F it, play Clue.
Ok! We have all we need. Now we gotta RUN IT.
In the first act, some NPC has to tell your players about the enticement & about the person who holds it. Frame it how you like, but don't detail the Stuff. Just let them know NPC failed at getting the enticement. That's all, the rest is on them. Most likely, they'll try some kind of Approach. If they're cautious, they'll scout. Good, start dropping info. (It's a Mansion, well guarded, high walls). If they hit the streets for gossip, tell them about an upcoming event (The races, prize fight), the types of security. If they stake out the place, give them the map & let the scout observe (and be nearly caught by) One Bad Dude. Act One Frames The Adventure.
Act 2. They'll start planning how to get the enticement. Maybe your Heist turns into an Assault. Maybe it's a Robbery. Who knows? But here's what's fun - as they plan it, PLAY IT. You see in movies where they flash back and forth between plan & execution. Do that. When one player talks about how he could probably sneak somewhere - make him roll and describe the result. Put his mini on the map and cross off the guards he got past. If he fails, tell him what happens. Turn the plan into Play. Let them thoroughly discuss further actions as a group before making them (to account for planning). [Variant: Keep Combat Short (1 hit KOs). We're not focusing on combat, we're doing a heist. If combat breaks out, genre suggests it's brief.]
One Bad Dude & Unseen Obstacles: Who has the action? In Act 2, when you're running and planning and whatever, one player at a time will make a move. When they do, roll a d6. On a 1, One Bad Dude shows up to complicate matters. He doesn't automatically stop the action. But he is suspicious and dangerous. Ask the player what they're gonna do about him. On a 2, use a previously unseen complication or obstacle. On a 3-6, nothing. Note that if One Bad Dude shows up on one player's turn, he can't show up for the next guy's turn. Treat that 1 as a 2. One Bad Dude still has to walk places and can't be everywhere at once. If your Players never learn of One Bad Dude and don't have contingency in place, well, he's learned of them. He'll either confront them at the enticement or at their home base & he'll come in force (whip out a set piece encounter for this - a hard one).
Act 3 isn't really any more than your typical adventure wrap. Rewards, accolades, and a cream-sicle. However, for extra fun, feel free to include some twists (go look in TV tropes, I'm not gonna get into how to properly twist, for this article).
Congrats! That's how you write & run a Heist. What I've done here is basic. It's not going to be good until you fill it out thematically & put encounters & DCs and all that. You've got the recipe here, but it's on you to bake this cake. If you run it, let me know how it goes!
-Brad
