Have you ever done a heist before? Like a well planned "hit" or "job" that involved all of the members having a specialty or ability that would aid them in their task
Like Ocean's 11 or the Italian Job. Something like that though not necessarily involving stealing money
I always like hearing these types of stories
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Perfect heists only happen in stories and movies.
In tabletop rpgs it's always something along the lines of.
>Three hours of real world time of meticulous planning.
>Smooth entry.
>"Oh, we forgot to consider that they might have locks on their doors".
>Bazookas come out.
The Mistborn Adventure Game is actually perfect for this sort of game. Each player brings an integral ability to the squad. Whether that's muscles, thievery expertise, magical abilities, or simply having good connections, everyone working together makes the job function.
Nope, some pilfering here and there but never one big job
The hard part about running heist type missions is planning the DM/GM side of things. It's hard to plan facilities to be difficult enough to infiltrate to give the team a challenge but not make it impossible to avoid detection. Plus you have to fight the urge to go "Oh, I forgot about that" and make changes as the team plans their infiltration.
I gm'd 2 heists so far and they mostly turned into
>get in
>remove cameras
>remove guards
>loot EVERYTHING
help?
>remove cameras
Depending on how high tech your setting is, someone or something is going to be keeping an eye on those camera feeds. A low security facility might have your classic "guard reading a magazine when he should be watching the cameras", but better than that should have someone keeping an eye on the screens at least 80% of the time barring distractions. Higher sec facilities would have multiple people watching the feeds.
Higher tech settings would have more ways of compensating for the above (hacked camera feeds displaying looped video) but they'd also have more ways of catching it (AI assistant to monitor for unusual data coming from cameras, intruder detection algorithms to draw guards attention to movement on cameras, etc).
>remove guards
A even a low security facility would have guards checking in on a set schedule to identify when guards go missing. Higher sec facilities would check in even more often. Depending on how alert the facility is (and how strict their security is), a guard going missing can give the party anywhere from a 5 to 30 minute window for the party to cause havoc before the guard is noticed as not having checked in (and then a period of time before they decide it's suspicious and investigate or go on lockdown). Additionally, if things get too rough the facility will probably have outside assistance they can call in on. Low sec facilities might call the police, higher sec facilities would probably phone in a private strike team or the military.
Depending on the tech and security level, guards may have GPS trackers to monitor their movements. Guard stop moving for a long period of time when they should be patrolling? Better go check on them. A really fancy one might have life monitors to alert when something goes wrong (no heartbeat would be a major one, but also things like greatly accelerated heartbeats as well).
>loot EVERYTHING
Pretty much everything important should be tagged for easy tracing later.
Son do I have some tales for you.
My Skype group are currently running a Base Raiders campaign and when we don't have enough people for the full group, our GM used the Masks Of Chaos (basically Payday with superpowers) module to give us a string of heists to pull off.
The Bank Job:
>So some capes have been putting the hut on local crews in Detroit and MISCHIEF needs to make a point. Show these idiots that you don't fuck with us. Hit the bank and make it clear the we're a cut above the rest.
>Decent amount of initial planning, we lay our hands on the blueprints, work out lines of sight, even get some guns walked in a stashed in the bathrooms. Fairly standard thus far.
>Now, the idea with MISCHIEF is their masks have interesting powers. Phantom can phase through walls and mimic people. Stone can turn into a living statue. Hawk has incredible sensory perception. Gadget is a tech savant. You get the idea.
>We figure that quiet is our best initial tact, so we plan to jump the Bank Manager, get Phantom to mimic him and walk the rest of us into the vault disguised as a maintenance crew.
>Plan goes off fine - it's not the kind of bank with proper superhuman security measures. Bank Manager gives up the codes and the relevant security details so we can spoof some actual records to fool on-site security.
>Stone, my guy, only really shines when we go loud, but we still fudge some fun improv while he pretends to take out a small business loan while running eyes on the floor.
>Open the vault, crack the cage to get to the main vault, stuff our bags with cash and walk right back out again.
>Stone, who had run to the van to get changed, comes back with a sharpie and quickly writes 'MISCHIEF WOZ ERE' on the inside of the vault wall.
>Job done - we throw the manager out the van in front of a school in his underwear for the fuck of it.
It was a simple job - the next one...was a bit harder.
The one after that was pretty much insane.
This is how heists usually turn out user, youtu.be
The SCAB Job:
>So SCAB are a nasty little private company who specialize in blackmailing super powered individuals into raiding bases for them. Very illegal. They have a shitload of very cool gear they resell onto the black market or to private collectors.
>They recently came into possession of a Mask Of Chaos and made the huge fucking mistake of refusing to give it to MISCHIEF.
>Don't you mean 'sell'?
>Do we look like people who buy shit?
>So this is the heist equivalent of 'give me your shiny Charizard'
>Would someone shut Stone up, please?
>So we need to find whichever blacksite SCAB's holding the mask at, grab it and while we're there, rob them fucking blind. Only snag - security is going to be ludicrous.
>First port of call: Where the fuck is this Vault.
>Tracing back up the food chain of black market dealers in superhuman tech, we get a name. A handler for a SCAB team. Seems she'd been selling shit on the side.
>We split up - Phantom and Gadget (Hawk was out for this one) go recon a known SCAB office to find more intel and if possible plant a backdoor into their systems for later use.
>This may or may not have resulted in someone spiking the water coolers with ketamine.
>Looking at you, Phantom.
>Stone gets to break into the handler's apartment. Since he isn't exactly a skilled conman, he socks the doorman in the jaw and gets the spare room key from their office.
>Not too hard to find her incriminating stuff - it's a closet-sized safe, but it's wired with a shitload of explosives.
>Oh, and we find out why the system is so hard to hack - it's running on magic. Rather than transmitting data between the servers, they just duplicated the server, two identical copies that mirror each-other, so whatever goes into one instantly come onto the other.
>Our GM is a crafty cunt.
Couple ones in different games yeah.
Probably the best one was infiltrating a fancy dress ball in order to steal an important music box from what turned out to be a vampiress. We weren't the only ones trying to get the item though.
>So we have a safe full of explosives and plot magic and the only guy who can do anything with it is the guy whose main ability is turning into a statue. Awesome.
>Thankfully, Gadget is able to walk Stone through defusing the explosives via video call.
>This does leave us with a problem - if the server's missing, SCAB will know they've been compromised. We need to make it look like it got destroyed.
>So naturally Stone sets fire to the apartment.
>Walks outside.
>Wan't there explo-
>BOOM
>-shit.
>There are people in there.
>I'm a cunt, but I'm not that much of a cunt. Plus, fireproof.
>Stone gets to be a big naked ceramic hero. Yay for him.
>We regroup at the hideout and Gadget figures out how to pull some data outta the server without triggering any alarms on SCAB's end. We have the location, and we happen to have an entry point through the wall of an adjoining car park. Problem being, it'll mean gong loud from the get-go. Bigger problem - the alternative is bluffing our way through all of SCAB's checkpoints, cracking a vault we have no idea about with triggering any alarms, then walk our loot right back out the same way we came in.
>So we decide to go loud. Very loud. Death Wish-level loud. Phantom doesn't want to kill anyone and Gadget's kind of a wimp until you break his phone, but Stone's a one-man barricade with an automatic shotgun. He's got this.
>What could possibly go wrong?
It happened once, when none of our characters had any inclination towards what to do next, since none of the current plot points were very relevant. The silence was broken by one player saying "wanna pull a heist?" and we ended up doing it Ocean's 11 style on a corrupt noble that had fucked us over in the past. It was a blast and nobody saw it coming.
Ever since then it's been an in-joke to suggest pulling a heist, whenever we're not sure what to do next.
I've actually pulled a sort of heist IRL.
I can't say where and when, but here's the setup;
2 guys trying to disrupt a large-scale event at a city owned convention center. Complication: all security and management of the event knew both our faces.
One guy was the wheels, and I was the infiltrator. We made me 2 layers of clothes, one in house AV company shirt for approach and entry and one local college tee for exfil. We drove into the loading dock in a truck with in house AV decals around 10pm and I jumped out with a backpack, radio, and clipboard looking pissed off and unshaven like I was coming in for an overnight shift. Entered directly past the owners of the event and security staff out for a smoke and bluffed my way past the rent-a-cop and fire marshal into the exhibit hall they were using for their main events room.
I made my way to the stairwell in the hall that led to the catwalks and closed the door behind me, locking out the ground level access until the building engineer came to let them back upstairs. I ran up the stairs to the catwalks and left the stairwell door open for exfil, not encountering anyone due to the room being between events and overnight security not onsite yet. I made my way to the air handlers and deployed my payload: a half dozen extremely foul frozen smelling Doe Estrus and Fox Urine cocktail popsicles per handler, kept on dry ice until I tossed them in. They were designed to melt slightly that night, causing a bad smell at their late night events, and completely melt overnight when the building's AC system shut down for the night, causing smelly hell in the morning for their first session on the heaviest traffic day.
I seeded the three targets and started toward the stairwell I had entered from, closing and locking the door behind me. In my backpack I had a bag of airsoft BBs to seed the stairwell with in case I was being chased as I headed out to street level, as well as pepper spray in case there was significant frontal resistance. Thankfully, I needed neither of these contingencies as I made it down to street level without incident. Peeled off my outer layer, stuffed it in the backpack, and walked out to street level from the fire exit door, out of sight of any camera. I was now dressed in the local college shirt, different hat, and shoes.
I was picked up a few blocks away and drove off into the night. OpSec was tight; all items used were purchased from thrift stores, manufactured, or purchased in a different city with cash. We had checked in on Facebook from another city and left our cell phones in a locker there, and shuffled cars for the drive there and back. The truck we used to infiltrate the dock was a rental that looked like any other A/V delivery truck, and we had covered the plate.
Ultimately, we were unsuccessful in the objective. We were defeated by open space; there wasn't enough stink to fill the room. However, planning and execution was flawless and my infiltration remains unknown to this day.
What exactly was the nature of the exhibit you were trying to disrupt? Sounds like "stop liking what I don't like!" type shit to ruin someone else's event
The fact his hat isn't centered is triggering me more than it should
Shadowrun.jpg
I can't go into specifics, but the nature of the operation was revenge at the new ownership that fired all the senior staff, contractors and directors that had created the event and been there since day one; in an extremely unprofessional and public manner.
The event has gone far down hill since, and because of their actions they've spent a massive amount of what would have been their profits in maintaining the status quo, so that's something.
Ah I see, that's more redeemable than just shutting down something because of the content of the event
Shit man, I'm a freelance contractor with a mercenary heart. I'll do just about anything and work for just about anyone in my field as long as your money is green; just don't be a tremendous fuck if you're going to fire me.
"Never fuck your Mercenaries unless it's the sexy kind" is lesson surprisingly few governments learn to their detriment, time and time again
We were in a campaign in 3.5 trying to save the nation from from the BBEG. To do this we needed to get a sword. We searched the dungeon but turns out the emperor had it all along. We petitioned him for the sword but he refused. He didnt care about the BBEG as he had already bribed him not to attack the kingdom and the sword was the most valuable item in the kingdom.
Cue the heist.
The sword was kept at the top of a tower on an island surrounded by an antimagic field. Armed guards, dogs, gates, locks, the whole hog.
The party consisted of a rogue, a sorceror, a fighter and a cleric.
We decided to forge a letter to access the sword for archaeological purposes. The plan was that the sorceror would go in to "inspect" the sword with an escourt from our fighter who had infiltrated the guards. The cleric was our "getaway" driver and the rogue was our set up guy, he had to get all the equipment we needed.
So it started off with the fighter infiltrating the organisation. The cleric brewed up a poison and we got one of the guards sick. They sent for a replacement and we put the fighter in his place. So while he was in. Training and getting the routine of everyone down pat the others were getting ready.
So the rogue forged the letter to inspect the sword and impersonated an official kings messenger to deliver it. It was required to be a month ahead of schedule.
The fighter got a view of the sword and wrote down every detail. We had a pic from an old book but we tried to match it the best we could. The rogue infiltrated the outer wall and the fighter got the drawings to him.
The cleric and sorceror got a replica sword forged and the rogue delivered it back to him. The fighter wore it instead of his guard issued sword.
So it came to the day. We took out the guards on the ferry and the cleric and some hired mercenaries sailed the ship. The rogue was inside a box of supposed treasures to be added to a secondary room. The sorceror was dressed up.
As a Shadowrun GM, setting up a cool heist for my players where everyone plans out an elaborate plan is pretty much my goal. It never turns out that way, probably because players aren't real criminal masterminds. So they spend two weeks bickering about a plan, then when they're knee deep in alarms and guards, it always turns out everybody had their own idea of what the big plan was.
Which is fun, if you accept that movie-style heists are a thing in movies were people are following a script, not in roleplaying games.
So the sorceror was dressed up as this archaeologist. He entered the rogue was delivered and the fighter was tasked to escourt the "guest" along with 3 other guards.
So the sorceror gets past all the gates and begins inspecting the sword. In the meantime the rogue has escaped and is setting up a diversion. The diversion goes off and the fighter gets 2 of the guards to go off after it. Then knocks out the other guard. The sorceror and him then swap the sword and the fighter wears it. The rogue is in all sorts of chaos and leading the guards on a wild goose chase. The pair with the sword make their way back towards the ferry. The sorceror gets back onto the ferry. The fighter returns and the rogue escapes the tower. He gets back to the ferry and they make a daring getaway.
The rogue stole a heap of minor artifacts. The tower is locked down and cannot be entered. The party then sends letters of transfers for the guards for their dismal performance. The fighter still with the sword literally just walks it out of the castle takes the ferry and we get the sword.