As a Game Master, there's a fine line to walk when your players are planning some kind of heist. Do you pre-plan everything, and let them plan against it? Do you listen to their plans and make counter-plans to allow for intelligent opponents and competent guards? Do you let the plan go off without a hitch if it's well-enough done, or make it more dramatic so that it's an enjoyable caper? All of these questions are well worth considering if you have some kind of heist about to happen (and with most adventuring parties, some sort of plot is eventually likely to happen).
Blades in the Dark is a heist game, and has mechanics for this around choosing the kind of plan you'll use from six options (Assault, Deception, Stealth, Occult, Social, or Transport), and applying Details submitted by the players to expose vulnerabilities, cause interference, and so on. D&D handles this pretty poorly using rules as written, because it usually assumes a pre-written adventure and then the player characters happening "to it" rather than interacting with it. Remembering to be a fan of your characters, and to allow them to do cool things without just letting them run roughshod over your campaign setting, can help to strike a balance and let them have fun, while still allowing for random elements (additional guard patrols that weren't planned for, a mage friend of the target who has dropped by, and so on) to make things not run exactly as planned. It's quite important not to just hear your players' plans and immediately counter all of them, as much as just letting everything go off flawlessly and reduce everything to a series of "I cast this spell, then we do the thing, then I walk out again" - neither will be fun for you, or for your players. In addition, immediately countering what they have planned will reduce their trust in you as players, unless this is the moment that a traitor NPC in their midst reveals themselves, or some similar narrative reason for this exists. Even if they plan well, some poor die rolls can quickly derail a plan and cause some threat and narrative tension. The main lesson is: don't make this not fun. If your players are committed to carrying out a heist, let them- but remember that there will be be some threat, there will be some tension, and there will likely be consequences for what they do. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 7 October 2021. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
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