How to Write a TTRPG Heist Adventure!

[@davidbale8495]

"Gaardvaark" So well played. I had a great laugh over that one.

[@Hellvector]

I swear I just decided yesterday that I want to put together a heist adventure for my players in our Shadowdark game. Always fun to hear your take on something like this!

[@KazisCollection]

How’d that go?

[@Hellvector]

Sadly, I regret to say that the wizards tower yet remains un-sacked. We had a player deal with some life stuff and landed on a different system entirely for a while.

[@LettuceScribe268]

BRO! YOURE AMAZING! I’ve just started dming a heist adventure, and I felt so unprepared today. And then you posted this ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[@artistpoet5253]

So much fun. I know heists had become a big thing in 5e for a while. well, kiddos, back in my day we just called them adventures. Sometimes it was retrieving a magical rock from a dragon's hoard, sometimes it was stealing a ring from some dark lord. Once we had to steal The Jewel of Ahhdaang. Turned out it was the prince's toy poodle, for rut's sake! little shit got crushed on the way back when that oaf of a fighter sat on it...

[@michaelputlack4257]

A buddy just ran me through the Prisoner 13 chapter of Keys to the Golden Vault. It was just him and I, so I had one character and a sidekick. It was the first heist adventure I'd played or DMed, and it was totally awesome! Looking forward to reading and hopefully playing though this one!!!

[@eliasscorsone3220]

Good list BUT: Your "Red Herring" is a Plot Twist. A surprise twist at the end is not a red herring. A red herring comes from actual fish used to escape pursuit: take a red herring, which is very smelly, and use it to throw dogs off a scent. Red Herrings are for Mystery stories/novels/films, not Heists; and they are a bad idea for RPGs: You don't want a Red Herring in a mystery rpg, because players are already going to have a hard enough time creating their own mistakes, you don't need to intentionally trip them up.

[@hithere4719]

The vault is a red herring in this case. The players are told they can have other treasure they find in addition to the McGuffin recipe. The savory, smoky flavor of the vault full of magic items throws the players off of the trail of the cookbook and onto that of the vault.

[@eliasscorsone3220]

@@hithere4719 Not quite! Red Herring is more like putting a false clue pointing to option A, when it's really option B. Players already misread clues, they don't need intentional fake clues. But a Heist doesn't use clues, so it can't have red herrings.

[@brennanthomson5361]

About to run my first one shot as a heist !

[@RPG_Bliss]

Thanks for sharing !

[@CountryBwoy]

3:04 You are too timely! I've noticed a few comments that folks were planning similar things and here you post this one. I've been working on an adventure that involves....a magic cookbook? (I know you probably hear it a lot but... your art style is amazing! I'm, personally, glad that you are out there and LOVE your content)

[@MemphiStig]

Anti-climaCtic. Climatic refers to the climate.🙂 (You asked so...) Your method is great, simple and easy to remember and implement. I also really like the Blades in the Dark method, where each pc has an option at any time in the game to retcon how they planned and prepped a way around a given obstacle when it comes up. Each pc only gets one per heist, so it's important to choose well. (That's not a perfect summary but close enough.)

[@colinmorton8074]

Awesome stuff, JP. Thanks!

[@DeathCatInHat]

This sounds fun! I have never done a thing like this but I would like to. It is also awsome that you got to do some stuff for the Land of Eem, the game looks awsome though I have sadly found no one to try the quick start rules with.

[@DaTux91]

This sounds really fun! Though I do feel like, for some groups, I would have to add an extra reward or incentive to be stealthy and/or non-lethal on this heist if I don't want my players to just steamroll their way to the objective 😅

[@JPCoovert]

Ohh that’s a good point!

[@jimdunnca]

Cool

[@CONTINGENCY_sys]

He stole grandmas cookbook for magic apple pie (or turnovers)!!! That crook!

[@CONTINGENCY_sys]

He should have catered it out to the family who know the "secret ingredients" not included on grandmas shopping list and prep for grandma's secret recipe.

[@CONTINGENCY_sys]

Setbacks always progress story. Forward mentality. Quests usually have setbacks for failures, adventures tend to lead to more adventure. You fall down a pit into spikes, oh look someone else had already fell there as well, you land on their pristine shield and you see a switch to deactivate the pit trap, you make your way into the access tunnel and find a trove of collected gear from previous fallen adventurers. The trove keeper, adorned with all manners of hodge podge gear affronts you. hashtag Boss fight. Story forward. Where as with Quests, you drop the magic sword into the lava on an oops across the narrow pathway while the dragon chases you. That's a bit more setback. Sword may be melted, dragon is focused on you not the sword. Things can really take a turn for the worse. In this case the cookbook going overboard and getting chewed up in the river boat wheel would be a bit of a setback to be sure in the struggle to retrieve it but, grandma could always have kept a second copy. The Adventure continues.

[@m_b_alx]

This is amazing 🤍