I was just thinking, it'd be pretty fun to play an RPG where you have to pull off a series of hollywood blockbuster style capers or heists.
There HAS to be a modern Blades in the Dark hack for this sort of thing, right?
The problem we always ran into when we did this in Shadowrun (other than using Shadowrun rules) is that our GM was watching us plan and taking notes to counter anything we came up with.
So much so, that our default plan just became "broad daylight, kick open the door, pocket sand."
This...feels like bad GMing
+18
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I was just thinking, it'd be pretty fun to play an RPG where you have to pull off a series of hollywood blockbuster style capers or heists.
There HAS to be a modern Blades in the Dark hack for this sort of thing, right?
The problem we always ran into when we did this in Shadowrun (other than using Shadowrun rules) is that our GM was watching us plan and taking notes to counter anything we came up with.
So much so, that our default plan just became "broad daylight, kick open the door, pocket sand."
Since you linked their song, interesting note about Titania in FFXIV: I don't think this is taken from real fae mythology since I vaguely remember there being a King Oberon along with Titania, but in FFXIV Titania is specifically a King, and the faeries in general use they/them pronouns. Not important to your setting or anything, I just thought it was an interesting bit of world building.
Oberon and Titania are both in Nocturne, but it's pretty clearly painted that Titania runs the kingdom(s).
I was just thinking, it'd be pretty fun to play an RPG where you have to pull off a series of hollywood blockbuster style capers or heists.
There HAS to be a modern Blades in the Dark hack for this sort of thing, right?
The problem we always ran into when we did this in Shadowrun (other than using Shadowrun rules) is that our GM was watching us plan and taking notes to counter anything we came up with.
So much so, that our default plan just became "broad daylight, kick open the door, pocket sand."
This...feels like bad GMing
I feel like when you're running this kind of heist game you have to have a really good idea of what the challenges are in advance and if the party figures them out in advance, good for them, they get to feel like geniuses. You can't improvise big problems (and especially counter their plans) because that's cheating and they're going to feel cheated.
In the first game I ran (right after a battle scene in the party's hq) the police were arriving and I had two traps, one was the illegal shotgun that had been used and the other was the party's dog that was uncollared, untagged, and generally illegal. They got both of those and I let them know "hey, you got the trap" so they felt smart. The improv came in responding to the police when they arrived and having the NPCs react to the party's actions, but I didn't just say "oh and there was also a knife or a pistol that one of the guy's dropped, you should have searched" because that's just... boring. It makes the game feel like there are no options other than failure, and that the GM is just telling their Genius Story to you and not letting you ruin it.
That's also a reason why Blades in the Dark is a great heist system: Because it doesn't bog the players down in doing hours of planning that gets thrown out the window almost immediately anyway. Instead you just explain the first step of the plan, then you roll to see what the first sort of hitch in your (off-screen) plan is. Combined with how your inventory is always "whatever you need at the moment, up to your selected load" and the ability to do flashback scenes, it allows players to present their characters as professionals who have truly have been prepared for this heist, even as the gang might be getting in over their heads.
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
In Genesys one time my players were planning a heist and i just left the table for about a half hour while they planned and then they called me back and we got going. This was after the previous session where they scouted and gathered info. It was a lot of fun for all of us because i had written out the layout and defenses separately from their planning, so we all surprised ourselves as everything came together.
I was just thinking, it'd be pretty fun to play an RPG where you have to pull off a series of hollywood blockbuster style capers or heists.
There HAS to be a modern Blades in the Dark hack for this sort of thing, right?
The problem we always ran into when we did this in Shadowrun (other than using Shadowrun rules) is that our GM was watching us plan and taking notes to counter anything we came up with.
So much so, that our default plan just became "broad daylight, kick open the door, pocket sand."
This...feels like bad GMing
In defense of this idea (which overall I'm not big on), it can make sense to build an adventure based around what your players plan to do.
It's not so much creating countermeasures for the player's specific stuff, but rather making sure that they won't be going into an area you haven't planned for or mapped out at all and also saving yourself from the work of statting out something that the players won't ever interact with.
Obviously this can go too far, and if your players do come up with something very innovative that the heistees couldn't possibly prepare for then you should still reward that, but I can see using the players' planning sessions as a way to prepare your adventures, for sure.
In Genesys one time my players were planning a heist and i just left the table for about a half hour while they planned and then they called me back and we got going. This was after the previous session where they scouted and gathered info. It was a lot of fun for all of us because i had written out the layout and defenses separately from their planning, so we all surprised ourselves as everything came together.
I like fun things like that to avoid metagaming. When my characters are blinded in combat or something, I face away from the table.
I was just thinking, it'd be pretty fun to play an RPG where you have to pull off a series of hollywood blockbuster style capers or heists.
There HAS to be a modern Blades in the Dark hack for this sort of thing, right?
The problem we always ran into when we did this in Shadowrun (other than using Shadowrun rules) is that our GM was watching us plan and taking notes to counter anything we came up with.
So much so, that our default plan just became "broad daylight, kick open the door, pocket sand."
This...feels like bad GMing
In defense of this idea (which overall I'm not big on), it can make sense to build an adventure based around what your players plan to do.
It's not so much creating countermeasures for the player's specific stuff, but rather making sure that they won't be going into an area you haven't planned for or mapped out at all and also saving yourself from the work of statting out something that the players won't ever interact with.
Obviously this can go too far, and if your players do come up with something very innovative that the heistees couldn't possibly prepare for then you should still reward that, but I can see using the players' planning sessions as a way to prepare your adventures, for sure.
Yeah like, for my homebrew eberron game i held off on tying specific events or npcs to specific locations until everyone's backstory was settled. And then surprise surprise, it just so happens that a lot of stuff the party encounters is around/concerned with the places and people from their backstories!
A GM wins if a naive bunch of fools agree to play in their game.
They win again each time the players show up to a session.
+14
astrobstrdSo full of mercy...Registered Userregular
My Shadowrun GM is a good guy and a lot of his countermeasures were well thought out in advance, but anytime we came up with a plan that he hadn't accounted for, he just seemed to say "Well, I didn't think of paragliding in, but I bet Ares did." and now there were drones in the sky that our 2 scouting trips never saw.
My Shadowrun GM is a good guy and a lot of his countermeasures were well thought out in advance, but anytime we came up with a plan that he hadn't accounted for, he just seemed to say "Well, I didn't think of paragliding in, but I bet Ares did." and now there were drones in the sky that our 2 scouting trips never saw.
he
he is literally playing as Ares in this scenario
that's like
the whole point
what.
+14
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
lately our Group has had a hard time getting together because schedules and shit, which means the sessions we do manage to arrange are late, like, 11:30+
so we tend to be a little sleepy and loopy, and, while inconvenient, honestly it does make it more fun, because we think of stupider ideas and solutions and feel like kings when they work out.
If I was doing a caper/heist game I would definitely be taking notes on the PCs plans, but only so I could game what sort of complications might arise from failed rolls.
For me a heist game, the skill checks aren't pass/fail, they're "do you pull this off without a hitch?" So I'd wanna know what they were planning so I can figure out how it might go sideways.
Keyword 'might'
I feel like implicitly, once you're doing the heist, pretty much whatever you planned to do initially works in that it accomplishes what you want it to, but unintended or unwanted side effects make things interesting
My Shadowrun GM is a good guy and a lot of his countermeasures were well thought out in advance, but anytime we came up with a plan that he hadn't accounted for, he just seemed to say "Well, I didn't think of paragliding in, but I bet Ares did." and now there were drones in the sky that our 2 scouting trips never saw.
he
he is literally playing as Ares in this scenario
that's like
the whole point
what.
I will say, I’m sympathetic to the idea of “well this group is smarter than me so they could have thought of something” as the GM, similar to a player having that issue. However, that shouldn’t trump player agency and ingenuity.
I’m reminded of during one of my Mages sessions where the players were assaulting a Banisher base. It was a cave with a big ole metal door on it. The door was heavily enchanted and was supposed to slow the players down while the Banishers prepped counter measures. The players ran up to the door, and the player for Ember looked at the player for Tul-Val and said:
Ember: “Can’t you shape and move stone?”
Tul-Val: “Yes...yes I can!”
Ember: “Is the cave wall also enchanted?”
Me: “...No. No it is not.”
The players felt like geniuses and got to do something cool too, and highlight a player in combat.
Magic is boring though when everyone and their mother just wants to be a different flavor of caster.
0
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
The magic thing becomes easier with D&D when you start thinking of the whole game as just be a vancian action economy, which is increasingly what 5E feels like.
The Rune Knight thing certainly feels different to me than Eldritch Knight or even Arcane Archer, in terms of flavoring. If it was built around Dwarven runes instead of Giant, we wouldn't bat an eye at it, because of course Dwarves aren't big into Magic. Runes are a harnessing of arcane energies, sure, but it's different than casting spells to me, thematically.
The Rune Knight thing certainly feels different to me than Eldritch Knight or even Arcane Archer, in terms of flavoring. If it was built around Dwarven runes instead of Giant, we wouldn't bat an eye at it, because of course Dwarves aren't big into Magic. Runes are a harnessing of arcane energies, sure, but it's different than casting spells to me, thematically.
Isn't the relationship between Giant and Dwarven usually treated about like Latin and Italian?
The Rune Knight thing certainly feels different to me than Eldritch Knight or even Arcane Archer, in terms of flavoring. If it was built around Dwarven runes instead of Giant, we wouldn't bat an eye at it, because of course Dwarves aren't big into Magic. Runes are a harnessing of arcane energies, sure, but it's different than casting spells to me, thematically.
Isn't the relationship between Giant and Dwarven usually treated about like Latin and Italian?
Yeah but flavoring it as a Dwarf thing rather than a Giant thing would give it more "legitimacy" through the fact of being rooted in a core PHB race.
I see it this way, from a flavor standpoint. In D&D worlds, magic is like everywhere to varying degrees. You cannot escape it, it exists. So yeah a fighter is still getting their basic class abilities as they level, they are the peak of martial prowess, some fighters choose a path that teaches them the maneuvers of ancient battle masters, or the sword play of the samurai, how to excel at mounted combat, or just be a brute. Others take a knightly path like the Purple Dragon knight and learn all of what that entails, where as others learn other means to excel in combat, be that trick arrows, runes, spell craft, or guns.
They all are mainly people who do fight, but its not like in Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms that magic is a scarce resource few have. If you flavor your game that way, make it flavored that way.
I mean it's KIND of supposed to be scarce in the forgotten realms, it's just adventurers and especially player characters just happen to skew way more magical and get exposed to way more magic bullshit than your average citizen of Toril. That's how I always interpreted the setting at least, it's middle earth levels of magic bullshit except in the immediate vicinity of the players at all times.
In Middle Earth a lot of Men don't even really think magic exists, or if it does they've literally never seen or heard of it, even if you live in Minas Tirith or whatever
In Waterdeep you can't swing a cat without hitting someone who can at least chuck out a cantrip
Oh yeah, I also love the Caviler Fighter and just like a Barbarian who wrecks shit hard, but some people want to flavor their kool-aid differently and I respect that.
Posts
This...feels like bad GMing
It's like, the worst way to GM possible.
But at that point why not just play a board game
Oberon and Titania are both in Nocturne, but it's pretty clearly painted that Titania runs the kingdom(s).
Blades pilfered that pretty quickly.
Some variant on Blades is my current top tier heist game. In part because it will happily take other mechanics that work well and incorporate them.
I feel like when you're running this kind of heist game you have to have a really good idea of what the challenges are in advance and if the party figures them out in advance, good for them, they get to feel like geniuses. You can't improvise big problems (and especially counter their plans) because that's cheating and they're going to feel cheated.
In the first game I ran (right after a battle scene in the party's hq) the police were arriving and I had two traps, one was the illegal shotgun that had been used and the other was the party's dog that was uncollared, untagged, and generally illegal. They got both of those and I let them know "hey, you got the trap" so they felt smart. The improv came in responding to the police when they arrived and having the NPCs react to the party's actions, but I didn't just say "oh and there was also a knife or a pistol that one of the guy's dropped, you should have searched" because that's just... boring. It makes the game feel like there are no options other than failure, and that the GM is just telling their Genius Story to you and not letting you ruin it.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
In defense of this idea (which overall I'm not big on), it can make sense to build an adventure based around what your players plan to do.
It's not so much creating countermeasures for the player's specific stuff, but rather making sure that they won't be going into an area you haven't planned for or mapped out at all and also saving yourself from the work of statting out something that the players won't ever interact with.
Obviously this can go too far, and if your players do come up with something very innovative that the heistees couldn't possibly prepare for then you should still reward that, but I can see using the players' planning sessions as a way to prepare your adventures, for sure.
I like fun things like that to avoid metagaming. When my characters are blinded in combat or something, I face away from the table.
Yeah like, for my homebrew eberron game i held off on tying specific events or npcs to specific locations until everyone's backstory was settled. And then surprise surprise, it just so happens that a lot of stuff the party encounters is around/concerned with the places and people from their backstories!
I just think doing that to go "ah-ha, gotcha, I win" sucks
EDIT: that being said, I think there's a good fun place for "ah-ha, gotcha, what do you do"
I feel there's a subtle difference between the two
They win again each time the players show up to a session.
he
he is literally playing as Ares in this scenario
that's like
the whole point
what.
so we tend to be a little sleepy and loopy, and, while inconvenient, honestly it does make it more fun, because we think of stupider ideas and solutions and feel like kings when they work out.
For me a heist game, the skill checks aren't pass/fail, they're "do you pull this off without a hitch?" So I'd wanna know what they were planning so I can figure out how it might go sideways.
Keyword 'might'
I feel like implicitly, once you're doing the heist, pretty much whatever you planned to do initially works in that it accomplishes what you want it to, but unintended or unwanted side effects make things interesting
Totally rolling a Gnomish Rune Knight. Might MC artificer if that's a thing
Where's my Bard (Smarmkeeper)?
I will say, I’m sympathetic to the idea of “well this group is smarter than me so they could have thought of something” as the GM, similar to a player having that issue. However, that shouldn’t trump player agency and ingenuity.
I’m reminded of during one of my Mages sessions where the players were assaulting a Banisher base. It was a cave with a big ole metal door on it. The door was heavily enchanted and was supposed to slow the players down while the Banishers prepped counter measures. The players ran up to the door, and the player for Ember looked at the player for Tul-Val and said:
Ember: “Can’t you shape and move stone?”
Tul-Val: “Yes...yes I can!”
Ember: “Is the cave wall also enchanted?”
Me: “...No. No it is not.”
The players felt like geniuses and got to do something cool too, and highlight a player in combat.
The whole thing that should make them cool is that they get by, or rather excel, with just their wits, their body, and some steel.
Unfortunately, magic is the only thing that is allowed to be fun to the point of being unbalanced in D&D.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Okay but that isn't what Rune Knight is. Arcane Archer isn't a caster, either, despite the name.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Like it isn't just "has a spell list" I'm talking about
I mean the source of a fighters abilities coming from something arcane makes them less interesting to me.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Isn't the relationship between Giant and Dwarven usually treated about like Latin and Italian?
Would you accept this sack of flour instead?
Sorry, that's not Iconic.
Yeah but flavoring it as a Dwarf thing rather than a Giant thing would give it more "legitimacy" through the fact of being rooted in a core PHB race.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
They all are mainly people who do fight, but its not like in Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms that magic is a scarce resource few have. If you flavor your game that way, make it flavored that way.
My non-magical Rogue Swashbuckler is pretty fun
In Middle Earth a lot of Men don't even really think magic exists, or if it does they've literally never seen or heard of it, even if you live in Minas Tirith or whatever
In Waterdeep you can't swing a cat without hitting someone who can at least chuck out a cantrip
Oh yeah, I also love the Caviler Fighter and just like a Barbarian who wrecks shit hard, but some people want to flavor their kool-aid differently and I respect that.