Hello Internet. Seth Skorkowsky, and today
we're gonna discuss running a Heist Adventure for your tabletop role-playing game. These are
adventures where the heroes are tasked with recovering some item from a secure location
without getting caught, or at least the hope of not getting caught. I am a huge fan of
heist stories. I love running heist games, and also as a quick shameless plug here, I
also write Sword & Sorcery thief's adventures. My Tales of the Black Raven series
is 21 stories, several of them heist, which you can read or listen to, with my
wonderful audiobook narrator R.C. Bray. Among the goals of a good heist is to do the job
with as little to no combat as possible. Which is one of the key differences between a Heist and
a Raid, or I guess we should go ahead and call this a Stealth Heist versus an Assault Heist.
Now it doesn't matter which game system you're running for this, so if you're wanting to do
this with Dungeons & Dragons, or Star Wars, or whatever else, the same general pieces and
steps apply. So GMs you still are gonna have to tailor the heist for whatever system, and what
particular group it is, you're planning on running it with. And, of course, there are always going
to be exceptions. So if you come up with some idea that doesn't quite follow this, that's perfectly
fine. There are a million ways to do a heist, and if you find one that you like and it
works, and doesn't quite follow what we're gonna be talking about today, cool.
But this is what has worked for me, so hopefully there's something here that can be
useful for you. There are three ingredients that make a heist story, and what I'm going to do,
is I'm going to go ahead and list them here, then we're gonna break them down further.
First is the Artifact. This is the item that the characters are trying to get.
Second is the Fortress. This is the place the item is stored and protected.
Third is the Dragon. This is the major threat that the heroes cannot easily fight or escape
from if it's aroused. i.e. don't wake the dragon. Let's look at the Artifact, the prize of the
heist. The Artifact can be just about anything: treasure, a book, computer file, Death Star
plans. It can be a person, such as this mission is an abduction or this could be a rescue
operation. While heists are usually reserved for thief type adventures, Rescues can definitely
fall into the realm of a good heist adventure. Why the Player Characters want the Artifact is
completely up to you. Maybe it's for profit, like they're planning on selling it or something,
or maybe this is just a necessary piece to a larger campaign. Maybe the heroes are being
blackmailed and being forced into this heist against their will. But the focus of the heist
is still centered around getting the Artifact. Oddly enough, that even though it is the focus,
the Artifact is going to be the easiest part for Game Masters to do. This is just the motivating
MacGuffin. But most likely the thing that the Game Master spends the least time preparing for.
Unlike the Fortress, which is the area the Game Master is probably going to be spending the
most time preparing. The Fortress holds the Artifact. Now this can be an actual fortress,
or it could be a museum, a skyscraper, a train, a mansion, a government building, a warehouse,
whatever you want. The more secure the better. The heroes must either get inside the Fortress
to get the Artifact, or create a reason for the Artifact to leave, that way the heroes can get it
once it leaves the Fortress. GMs must prepare the Fortress and have some details about it ready
before the game begins. It should feel like a real place to the players and it might be
designed to solely protect the Artifact, or it might just be a secure location that the
Artifact just happens to be inside of as well. But make the security around the fortress
fit and feel appropriate for whatever it is. Now one thing with the Fortress is that it must
be populated. This could be office staff, tourist, guards, automaton sentries, or whatever else it
is that you like. These people are the obstacles and the witnesses that the players must overcome
or avoid. This population could also just be a security system that's tied to an alarm. While the
fortress population might pose their own threat, i.e. security guards might have guns and swords,
or whatnot, the big threat that they pose is that they can wake the Dragon. That lone guard,
or nosey neighbor, or security camera might not be that threatening in and of itself, but
the unstoppable monster that they can summon if the heroes don't avoid or neutralize them
quietly, and quickly, that is the real threat. Game Masters are going to need to consider
this specific game that they're playing, and what their group's abilities and powers are,
when designing this Fortress. Like I mentioned in my 'How to Run a Mystery' video, Game Masters
don't want their game destroyed in seconds because they forgot to take into account some spell
or technology that the Player Characters have at their disposal. If the Player Characters can
Teleport, it might quickly solve the heist problem if one of them just teleports in there, grabs the
item, and teleports back, and is all like, "Hey, what now?" or if they need that computer file,
why can't they just hack and get that from the outside? You need to answer all these questions
before the heist begins. For teleportation, depending on the specifics of whatever game it
is that you're playing, maybe the Artifact is somehow shielded from it. Like the room is plated
in lead or gold, and as 'everybody knows' you can't use teleportation or telekinetics through
those barriers. Or maybe there's just some sort of magic dampener around wherever the Artifact
is. Or because they cannot see the room that the Artifact is in, they can't just teleport in
there, because you can't teleport somewhere that you can't see. Whatever else it is that fits
your game, just find a reason why their powers and abilities are not going to be able to help
them just solve this heist in mere minutes. If it's a computer file, you of course can do the
old Lone Terminal Cut Off From the Network gag. Maybe they have to get the physical drive
that it's on, and you can't hack getting the physical drive. Whatever the problem, just
be sure that you have a plausible reason why the Player Characters can't just bypass this
heist with the ability. Don't just tell them, "It's not gonna work." You need to have a reason
for them, that way it sounds believable. It doesn't just make it sound like you're being a
jerk that's trying to prevent them from doing all the powers that they got that character to do.
Build the Fortress from the point of view of the person protecting the Artifact. How would they
do this considering whatever means they have available to them? While you might come up with
some great ideas about how the Player Characters might go about, you know, doing this heist as
you're designing the Fortress, but do not plan the heist for them. Don't make it to where there's
only one way to do this, or it looks like there's a very overly obvious way of doing it. Your job
is to build the Fortress. Their job is to get in, and get out with the Artifact. Nine times out
of Ten their plan is gonna involve some sort of crazy idea that you never imagined. So don't try
to design the heist's plan as you're doing it, as to how they're gonna get the Artifact, Just
build the place, and leave the planning up to the players. It's one thing to notice or design
a few flaws in the Fortress's security as you're building it all together, but just be fair and be
honest. If there is a weakness in the Fortress, why has the Protector not sealed it? Maybe they
haven't noticed that weakness yet. Maybe this weakness is new due to some sort of outside
variable, and that's why the heist has to happen now is because now there's a new weakness
that wasn't there before. But Game Masters, and I cannot stress this one enough, do not design the
Fortress where there's only one way of solving it. The best Fortresses have many layers of
protection. Such as, the outer layer is guards, and the next layer is that it's gonna be housed
12 stories up, and then you've got vault doors, then you've got some sort of amazing security
system, and then you've got an impressive safe itself. So that way the players have to bypass
or defeat multiple types of obstacles, hopefully using a variety of players to do this. You have to
do it with teamwork and a wide variety of skills. Now for the Dragon. The Dragon is the promised
threat if they fail. It is something so scary that the Player Characters know that they can't easily
defeat or escape from this if it's awakened. The Dragon should be intimidating. This could be the
police, the military, an actual dragon, an angry god, just something formidable. Maybe the Dragon
is just the knowledge about the heist itself. Such as, the Protector cannot know that the item was
taken or had a switcheroo done on it, and if they find out too early, then the whole reason for
the heist has been spoiled. Or maybe the Dragon is the client or the buyer of the Artifact. The
client demands that nobody know about this heist, and if the PC's gets spotted, the boss that gave
them the job ends up becoming the true threat. Or if news about the heist gets out, then all of
the ships or the portals that are leaving this, you know, city or island or nation or world that
they're on, get sealed off, and it's gonna trap the Player Characters here. So the reason they
can't wake the Dragon is they don't want to ever get trapped wherever it is that they are.
The key to a Dragon is that it is scary and best avoided. If the Player Characters do not fear
the Dragon, then they might turn your Stealth Heist adventure into an Assault Heist, and just
go in there with guns blazing. And no knocking Assault Heists, those are a blast in their own
way. I love running him and I love playing them. But if you're wanting your game to be stealth and
cleverness and try to avoid it being a kill house bloodbath, the threat of the Dragon is the key.
Okay so those are the three parts that you have to design before the game starts, now to go into the
three phases that happen during the game itself. First is the Setup. This is where the characters
get the job. Maybe they're hired by a shady employer. Maybe they figured out that the Artifact
is here, and they need it for a larger campaign, and this just happens to be housed in the
Fortress. That part is completely up to you. The important part is this is where the players
are going to get the initial information as far as the Artifact's location, the Fortress, and the
Dragon. Also, if there's some sort of in-character time limit going on, such as, "We have five
days to get this Artifact before it ships out, then we're never finding it again," or, "In one
week, the Artifact is going to be used to summon the Dark God unless we stop it," you should
go ahead and mention that time limit here. The Setup might include different steps such as
Gathering the Party, like where they're meeting each other for the first time, or maybe bringing
the party back together from a previous job. Next comes Information Gathering. This is where
the Player Characters stake out the place. Maybe they befriend or blackmail a guard for
information, or to steal his passkey. You know, maybe they're gonna go and research the building's
plans in order to find a weakness in it. This part can take quite a while. It could be an
entire session if you want it to be. Or if you're just wanting the game, you know, to
get quickly straight to the heist job itself, maybe you could have the employer provide them
with all this stakeout information and say, like, "Here's all the information about it. You
build your plan off of this." Or you could kind of do a little bit of information, that way
the PCs can look at it and I can go, "OK, out of all these different things, we want to
research these two areas more directly because we know a little bit of information about it, and
we think that's how we're going to approach it." Then you might have the Equipment Shopping Spree.
This is where the characters pick up or create all those neat gadgets, disguises, weapons, potions,
tools, spell scrolls, or whatever else it is that they think they're gonna need to do this job.
A lot of players really do get into this part, and it is a lot of fun. But be warned. I have
watched players get so into the part where they're poring through equipment and gear guides that
it starts distracting them from the game itself. This is where time limits can help you out. If
the Player Characters have some sort of ticking clock going on, they might not have time to go
out and buy all the cool things that they want, either because there's no time to shop for
it, or because the time it would take for, you know, them to order it or to have it
created, the job has be done before that day. So that way it's a good way of limiting it
without just telling them, "No, you can't do it." Somewhere in all this, they're also gonna begin
The Plan. This part is key. The players are gonna sit around, probably around some map that you
gave them, maybe with some different handouts of security pictures, and they're gonna begin making
the strategy as far as how they're gonna get this Artifact. I personally love this part. But it
does have a few hurdles that you need to look out for. Your players are gonna be sitting there,
bouncing ideas, creating strategy, and it's a lot of fun. The first problem, though, is that some
players are gonna spend too much time planning, to the point that the game begins losing steam.
This is where some players might become a little too indecisive. Basically discussing the plan
to death because they're afraid to act. Spending the entire session talking about the game, rather
than playing the game. So Game Masters you might want to consider putting a time limit here, not
for the characters but for the players. However, this part can be tricky and does require some
judgment on your part in order to call how long that time limits should be. You don't want to give
them too little time, and make the players feel like you're crippling them. And if the players are
gonna be spending their Planning Phase, you know, gathering intel, you know, maybe roleplaying it
out as they meet people or they break into places to steal, you know, key cards and that sort of
thing, and they're actively playing the game, then just let them play. Don't make that subject to the
time limit as well. Just let them play the game if they're actually actively playing it. But the
sitting around discussing it, that's where you're probably gonna want to put some sort of time limit
on it. There does come a point where the players need to stop talking about playing and go ahead
and play. But how long that is completely depends on your players and the nature of the heist
itself. So maybe start with an hour and just kind of see how that works from there. At the end of
that hour, if they're all like, "No we need more time," and you can look at and go, "Yeah, you guys
probably need a little bit more time," you can, you know, bump ten or fifteen more minutes to let
them finish planning it out. But if you just kind of let it as a general blank check, they can take
as much time as they want, if you have that player that's just a little too indecisive, and they're
just trying to stall, you know, putting themselves in fear of waking the Dragon, they're going to
take all the time in the world, to the point that the game is just no longer fun for anybody.
Next during the planning phase, it's possible that your players might find a hole your Fortress.
A legitimate hole that you missed and didn't intend to be there. So what do you do? Again, that
depends. Some Game Masters see it as like, "Well, it was my mistake. So the players can fully
exploit that to the best of their abilities." But the way I see it, is just because you as the
Game Master made a glaring error in your Fortress, that shouldn't make it something that makes
the game just too easy for the players to solve. Because once the game is done, if the
game was too easy for them, they are going to be disappointed. So it's one of those things you
have to figure out. What is the right level of, you know, challenging in order to keep the
game fun? And if it's not challenging enough, then they're gonna be disappointed in it. So
sometimes if you find a hole that might take away all the challenge. So this is where you just need
to be honest with yourself and ask the question, "Would the Protector have left that glaring
hole there?" Maybe they would have. Maybe they wouldn't have. If they wouldn't have, then you
should plug the hole. Maybe not as tightly as you would have done it if you had thought about
this hole before the game began. But don't leave it completely open and available to exploit
and end up sabotaging your own game. But you do have to be honest with yourself. Remember
the Protector might have had months, or years, or even centuries of building this Fortress's
defenses. They're the expert. You're not. You're a Game Master. But maybe, just maybe, they did
miss something the Player Characters can exploit. I'm inclined to give them some sort of bonus if
they find the hole. You know, I'm not gonna hand them a full success to the adventure because of
my mistake, but I might make it where that hole is actually something that they can't exploit,
just not fully exploit. Also, don't just sit there while the Player Characters and players
are sitting there, they're making their plans, and you just start blocking every single idea
as they have it. Because that's where it starts becoming a Player vs Game Master mindset where
you're basically, you know, cutting off any single idea they have, because you're trying to railroad
them into doing a certain way of doing it. That's not cool. So go ahead just build the place, let
them build it from there. In case of emergency, you might have to adapt the place a little bit,
but don't just start blocking every single cool idea that isn't the way you want them to do it.
One of my buddies does this thing whenever he's running a heist game where he just leaves
the room. He announces, "Hey everybody, I'll be back in an hour. You know, get your
planning and then we're going start once I get back," and that way he cannot as the Game
Master anticipate what the players' moves are gonna be. He can be honest and not accidentally
metagame, and also he can experience that full surprise that the bad guys will feel once
the PCs, you know, do whatever crazy idea it is that they have. The other reason that he
does it, is that way the players can't read his face while they're doing the planning, because...
Matt, brother, you got a really bad poker face. Now that works for him. Personally I like
being in the room during the planning phase. If nothing else, just because I get asked
a lot of questions as far as, you know, different rule mechanics or rulings like that.
So I want to be available for them that way I can answer any questions and they can get back
to planning instead of waiting for me to get back to give them some sort of rules clearance.
Eventually the planning is gonna end, and we get to move on to the next phase, The Job itself. Okay
so after all the planning, surveillance, gearing up, and it's finally Showtime. Your players are
going to enact their most likely crazy plan, coming at the Fortress sideways in some manner
that you as the GM could have never predicted them to do. Maybe it's a great plan. Maybe it's not.
You're probably gonna have to be improvising the hell out of this either way, because, no matter
how much pre-work you did, you're still gonna have to improvise it once the game begins. That's
just a rule of being a Game Master. And hopefully everyone in the room is having an absolute blast
doing this Heist. Now it's time for the Kink. The Kink is some variable that happens that the
players are not expecting. Some sort of new obstacle that runs the risk of shattering their
brilliant plan and waking the Dragon. Maybe that guard that they watched and they timed all his
patrol patterns, maybe he called in sick that day, and now it's a new guard that's got a different
patrol pattern, and they have to adapt to that. Or maybe the fact they're planning and breaking into
this office building at night when no one's there, that one guy shows up and he starts working late.
Now the Player Characters have to avoid this guy because he might wake the Dragon if he spots them.
Maybe the neighbor's dog starts barking. Maybe a dump truck pulled into the alley where their
getaway car is stashed, and now the PCs have to either get a new getaway car or they're gonna
have to drive out of this alleyway backwards at high speed as they're getting chased by security
guards. Any good heist movie has a Kink. They should give us some sort of spike of fear and
require improvisation from the players and hopefully a few dice rolls in order for them to
overcome this. But the Kink should never be, "Your whole plan just fails." So Game Masters, make
the Kink an obstacle that the Player Characters can overcome. But never ever make it some sort of
automatic failure. Because that's just gonna piss your players off, and it should just piss your
players off. Let me give you a quick story of a great Kink that I encountered, this time as a
player, and we were playing some Cyberpunk 2020. The short version is that we were trying to get
to the middle floor of this giant high-rise and extract a scientist and all of his research
information. We managed to get to the building under this elaborate disguise of being optic
fiber installers, you know, running cable up and down the building. It was a brilliant plan
and it was working beautifully. One of the other players and I were up on the roof, you know, we
were doing this job or actually installing cable, because that was our ruse. We were also hacking
into the elevators controls so we could access the scientist's floor and we were doing this
while there was a guard standing up on the roof, he was actually kind of casually looking
over our shoulders. We're trying to do this while under observation, and we're making the rolls and
it was going great. But right as we finished... Right as you guys finished hot-wiring that
elevator, that guard on roof walks up to you and he's all like, 'Hey my boss has
some questions and he needs to ask you. So I'm supposed to take you down to his
office right now. So you need to follow me. The other player and I just looked at each other,
positive that we'd been made. There's a word and an old Solo of Fortune book where when a job
goes pear-shaped, the word is 'Bombshell'. So I asked my buddy...
Bombsell? Bombsell. I'm gonna go ahead and tap on my
com to the rest of the group, "Bombshell." Well, it was great while it lasted. But now
let's kill every mother [_] in this place. And we did. It was a legendary firefight as we
shot our way through the building, getting the scientists, and getting down to the rescue car
before the police could arrive. I'm also pretty sure that the only reason we even lived through
that entire encounter because the Game Master is being kind to us. Anyway, after the game,
I asked the GM how it was that we got caught, where it was we went wrong, and he said,
"You didn't." He then explained that the security chief just
had some questions about why we needed to access some of the floors that we were accessing,
which we already had pre-planned lies for. Had the security guard just asked us those questions
while we're all on the roof, it would have been fine because we had some pre-planned answers. But
because it came with this kind of added caveat of, 'You need to come to the security guards office
right now to answer these questions,' we panicked and we completely outed ourselves. That, to me, is
a perfect Kink. We were prepared for the question, but because the circumstances weren't what we
were ready for, we ended up screwing ourselves, and it was not the Game Master screwing us over.
Next comes The Escape. Depending on how the job goes, The Escape can either be a thrilling,
nail-biting chase, or a smooth and casual like a badass professional, just pull off the perfect
job casually steps into their car and drives away. Some Game Masters might make the Escape part
be the big focus of the adventure. Such as, actually stealing the Artifact is pretty easy
to do. It's getting away with stealing it where they want to have the whole game be, some sort
of kind of elaborate cat-and-mouse chase scene all over the city, or all over this planet, or
wherever the game is set. Once they're away, you may or may not have a third phase,
The Tradeoff. This is where the Player Characters are gonna be handing over
the goods to their employer or a fence, and getting paid. This also might include the
employer double-crossing them. It's also possible that the employer has made some sort of secret
deal with one of the Player Characters or one of the Non-Player Characters to kind of help
them in this double-cross. Or it could just be perfect and the employer is like, 'Hey good job.
I'm gonna hire you guys again in the future.' Well that's it for Heist Games. Hopefully some
of you out there found this helpful and got some ideas stirring about how it is you might
be able to do a heist adventure on your own. You ain't gonna tell them about the van?
Nah, it really doesn't fit here, and also it's more of a personal anecdote than anything else.
So? It's your channel. It's supposed to be personal. Besides, when else are you
gonna be able to tell this little bit? Okay fine. As I mentioned before in other videos,
for vehicle miniatures we just use toy cars for that. And while I have amassed a nice little
collection of modern and sci-fi and 1920s cars, the white cargo van has a very special place
for us. Because a work van is so common, I had a character who always used them for jobs.
And they were all souped-up inside. They had armor plating, and beefed up engines, and they
even had some quick-change logos on the side, that way they can kind of quickly mask which van
it was if they were in traffic. But this joke, about an elite team of badass cyberpunk thieves
and mercenaries, has become so synonymous with the white cargo van, that even today, whenever
we're driving down the highway and we see a van driving along kind of recklessly, it
might have a little bit of bumper damage, even today my wife and I will joke that, 'That's
not contractors trying to get to a job. That's a bunch of cyberpunkers fleeing from a heist.'
We're talking about you, little guy. Vroom. Vroom. While I mentioned my Black Raven stuff
earlier in this is video, there's also my story The Mists of Lichthafen, which I read
many years ago. Which is another fantasy / horror heist adventure and that is on YouTube. So if
you're in the mood for a fantasy heist story, despite the fact that it's read by somebody
who's clearly not a trained audio narrator, go ahead check it out. I stuck a link at the end.
Hi. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed the video, please give it a Thumbs Up. If you want to see
some more of our stuff such as Game Reviews and How-To's, just hit that Subscribe Button.
Till next time gamers, you have a great day.
