Some Thoughts on Hosting a Heist

Here are some things I learned while trying to run a heist in my old school game:

Reconnaissance is Exploration
And much the way you would expect it to take some time for players to get the feel for a dungeon level, it will take some time for them to case the location of the heist. 

One of the reasons it takes so long is that players will adjust and concoct new plans for each bit of intel they get.  Find out about the guard patrols-- plan all the ways they might be distracted; realize there is a sewer underneath-- plan how to use it stealthily.  So, learning about a place will be a continuous, rolling strategy session.

That's all fine, because with the right players it's great fun, but it takes time.  Next time I would plan for the fact that casing the joint will require a whole session and the heist will go down the next session.

You could give them all the intel at the start, but then I would treat that the same way you would treat giving a party a map and rundown of a dungeon level: make the most of the player's anticipation of very difficult parts and make the most of the confusion and drama a few errors thrown in can create.  So the fun shifts from, "What could be behind this door?" to "How are we going to handle the troll behind this door?"  Or, even "Why did the thief lie about the troll behind that door?"

Consequences, Consequences, Consequences
The whole reason you case a place is because it's too dangerous to go right in.  That may be because you will get killed or the person you are trying to save will get killed, or maybe, the object you're trying to get to will just teleport away.

This seems completely obvious, but it's something I messed up.  First, the only legal repercussion my players had faced was not that bad.  Second, I didn't put enough guards at my location.  Third, I didn't limit my players movement/power enough.

So I recommend: Make the heist happen somewhere where weapons are forbidden.  Make the heist happen where trouble is expected and if the guards come the players will likely be killed.  Or make the legal consequences dire.  And make sure the players know all this.  In other words, if they can just enter the place, swords drawn, shields raised and win the day, it's a dungeon, not a heist.

Teams
I put a lot of effort into not trying to expect what the players would do.  I put trees so they might climb the walls.  I put a sewer they might sneak through.  I had pilgrims flowing in and out of the place so they could do some easing reconnaissance and possibly sneak in that way.  I put a place they might dig under the wall.  I included a supply/corpse wagon that they might sneak onto.  I also made sure the party had several magic items that might be of use.

And this worked pretty well.  But, I think to encourage players to break into teams, especially, more than two teams, would require more skillful design.

Why does it matter?  Because much of the drama of the heist is relying on the actions of your compatriots.  If they screw up, your job is that much harder.  Also, it puts players in the position of an observer for a bit, rooting for the other players in the way a regular dungeon adventure doesn't.

So, I would want to design the heist location better to try and make a two or three prong approach a necessity.  Magical locks, magical alarms, nested locations.

The Trouble Meter
I got two results of complications during play.  They both worked well just the way a random encounter mixes things up in an interesting way.  But, the whole Trouble Meter went out the window because my players immediately made themselves obvious to everyone by creating a loud distraction.  I never ended up escalating the trouble meter.

So, you need to take distractions into consideration, because they are part of the genre.  I think this might be related to me not making the location hard/scary enough.  It's one thing to have a patrol distracted for a bit so someone can slip by, and another to say "Hey, here we are.  We are going to cause a hell of a lot of trouble!"  Isn't that why guards are there?  My players should have been much more leery of raising the general alarm.  Or, I should have had a segmented location, where the second team could have still raised an alarm within their area.

The Event Clock
In a pseudo-medieval setting you have dawn, dusk, and noon.  Anything else will have to be rung from a church bell or something.  Times won't be as precise as in a more modern setting.  So the clock wasn't that important during our session. 

I think this is closely related to teams, though.  One of the basic ways one team can let down another in this genre is if they get their timing off.  They might get hung up because of a complication or get sloppy and start a distraction too soon.  So, to make the clock more relevant you need teams and you need time dependent tasks: "Once the magic door is opened you have thirty minutes before it closes again, permanently."

But, it means you need a way to measure time too.  pseudo-medieval characters aren't running around with Timexes.  How do they know when they are supposed to start the distraction?  This means players will need to utilize magic that extends the senses ("When you hear us start yelling, go!") or creates a link between the players.  Or, that the location itself needs to offer some semi-regular events that players can utilize as time markers.

The Heist, The Con, The Special Mission

Take the idea that D&D can be heist-like, add in the idea of a wary location where an alarm can be raised, a clock, and the idea that at every tick of that clock something might go wrong, and you have the recipe for a badass subgenre of D&D.  Think Ocean's 11, The Sting, The Dirty Dozen.

This Friday may be the last I get to play with some of my best and nicest players (one couple is moving to Arizona, one to Indiana).  I thought it might be good to end things with a bang-- A heist to free some prisoners and all the coin that was confiscated from them.

So, I've tried to assemble all the great ideas from the bloggers above into a simple system.  Think of this as a draft.  Here's a pdf.

The Event Clock is used to schedule events like guard changes and executions.  The Trouble Meter goes up when PCs do things that draw attention to themselves.  You can use paperclips to track movement on both of these.

The pips in the Trouble Meter represent the chance that complications occur.  So, for example, if PCs drop a piece of clothing, the chance of something going awry goes from 1 in 6 to 2 in 6.  If the result says there's a complication, you roll on the chart to see what kind.  I left them general and tried to think of the most obvious/important.

If a roll came up "Obstacle Harder" you might decide a wall PCs knew about is actually taller than they thought. Maybe they couldn't see its base from where they were observing.  I realize it doesn't make logical sense that leaving out a piece of clothing would make a wall taller, but I think it models the way bad breaks or sloppiness can snowball.

I also think this is a good place to use the Jenga mechanic.  Any time the Trouble Meter is incremented all of the team involved need to pull a block.  You  could actually disregard this if you wanted to simplify things, but I like the way it will make the likelihood of general alarm more apparent to players.  Plus it's tactile and dramatic.

Should there be ways to lower the Trouble Meter?  I'm not sure.  I like the idea of tension building and building.  If you did allow for it, it would probably be based on context and require a DM ruling.  For example, the guard who spotted you is neutralized before he let's anyone else know.

I tried to leave spaces on the form for you to adjust these things to your taste.  Now, the hard part is setting up the detailed system that the players will attempt to crack.  I want to brainstorm here what kind of things I might want to include in a heist scenario:

Teams: players separated, vulnerable and dependent on each other succeeding at their sub-tasks.  What can I include that would require teams?  Raising portcullises, multiple objectives, distractions of patrols required to stall them.  Chgowiz had a post recently that suggested handling multiple parties by switching focus at cliff hangers.  I think this might work, although it would give players in tight spots more time to cogitate on solutions.  Which could be good if the goal is to help them be awesome.

Specialists: Assemble a team.  Determine what needs to be done and get the best for each job.  This might apply less to us because all the PCs will presumably be involved but they might hire help.  But, then, parties in D&D are already very team-like.  Thieves are the obvious example; forgers; high charisma persuaders; MUs with sleep, charm person, knock; Clerics with command, hold person, sanctuary; shape-shifters; the invisible.  The DM should probably design it so that some obstacles are obviously suited to certain specialists

Interesting Environment: Having to dig a tunnel under something, swimming in the sewer, scaling walls, hiding in wagons of goods, disguised as common passers-by, smoke, darkness, fog.

A Time Crunch: A limited window, a one-time chance to make this happen.  But not too rushed because preparation, scouting and planning are important parts of the genre.  Maybe give the players one in-game week to do all this and then they get one shot.

Predictable Systems: For complications to work, they need to be exceptions to an expected routine.  For planning to matter there need to be things that can be learned with some certainty.  Guard schedules, lights out, meal times, deliveries, vistors, local weather patterns.

I haven't play tested this but, hopefully I'll get the chance tomorrow.

A Surfeit of OSR

Oh my, there are just too many interesting ideas lately.  I'm having trouble absorbing them all.  Heck, a lot of times I'll read something intriguing, post a comment, and then forget where I posted the comment because there are too many freaking good blogs.

I want to just go up to the mountains and digest it all for a bit, but I can't yet.  I thought I was going to do that when I was housesitting last week, but alas I have a smart phone and I was reading your blogs anyway, just on a smaller screen.

Here, I'll volley a few ideas back at you all.  Sometimes I worry people are thinking "what the heck do all these silhouettes have to do with D&D?"

I showed one possible use of them to try and clarify the transmission of information.  Here are two more possibilities:

Towards a Heist Map

The Knights of the Order of the Holy Rood take all heretics that worship St Cecily back to the church that legend says she was burned to death in.  Your players want to save one of these heretics.  She will be held there a week to pray and reflect on her sins, then burned at the stake.  Your players have watched from afar.  They know where the guards tend to be.

Towards a Wilderness Map with Iconic Monsters

This springs off of Roger's cool work here. This is nothing new, war games had those little, iconic chits long ago, just a matter of finding unencumbered and iconic images that everyone in the community can use.  Imagine if Hexographer let you plop these down.  (I cut out too much of Roger's info, but if we made the hexes a little larger I think we could add some back while keeping it clean.)

Okay, everyone stop blogging for a while, you're going to melt down my brain. :)