As I'm sure you gathered from the title, I want to build a session which rips off Reservoir Dogs.

I'm thinking I'll have them working with another acolyte cell to investigate a planet spanning cult. At some point in the investigation they will be prompted to join the other cell in a covert op.

The hitch being that someone betrayed them, it takes little time before the cult (Which is primarily made up of disgruntled imperial guard veterans) cracks down in force. Before the op it will be made clear that if the job goes sour they are to evade their pursuers and flee to the safe house.

Once they are there, everything will fall into place pretty naturally, obvs I'm going to hit all the notes, one guy is wounded, another one brought back a prisoner, both cells will almost certainly be at each others throats.

But I'm looking for ideas on how to run the ambush in the first place, if at all possible I'd like to force them to split up into small groups to evade their pursuers and have each group stumble back separately.

Now, lots of this can of course be handled by the NPC cell insisting that the PLAN is to react this way. Either way, I'm curious to hear what you fine fellows can come up with!

Part one of this is going on tonight.

I've built a massive manor house where the cultist leader/planetary governor lives. The goal is to break into his study and retrieve his plans, this will allow the Acolytes to discover the cult's objective and let them stop it.

The acolytes are working with a resistance movement on the planet, the resistance is letting the acolytes plan the heist (Which I'm certain my players will be super excited for, I mean, who doesn't love a good heist?) I've essentially built up a super detailed and fleshed out estate and letting the players perform recon and find the best way to break into the study.

They will get the plans, but they will be betrayed, numerous fire teams belonging to the cults military forces will storm the building, ideally forcing the acolytes to retreat and regroup.

I'll let you know how it goes.

OK, so here's my concern; Betrayal plays rarely go down well. Now, your group might be all over this and love it, but unless you know your group is up for some in-depth roleplaying and aren't afraid of the consequences, then shoving a betrayal at them may not pan out as well as you expect. Players get attached to their characters and betrayal almost inevitably results in characters, Player or Non-Player, getting shivved royally. Most Players don't react well to their character getting boned, especially if it's because of something they couldn't possibly have seen/predicted coming, as betrayals tend to be.

Tread carefully. Involve your players as much as possible in the plot. If possible, engineer it so that they are the betrayers and not the other way around. If they're not the betrayers, at least give them the opportunity to realise they're going to be betrayed, somehow, beforehand. Otherwise, you might have a whole lot of unhappy players on your hands. That's my advice. It may not be relevant advice, depending on your players, that's my advice nonetheless.

Also beware of the PCs staying to fight when you want them to run. Be especially wary of the players pulling something creative and winning.

Alrighty - I've got my update.

First, with concern to the difficulties surrounding betrayal I planned this out very carefully.

Since session one the party has been travelling with this random NPC named Clancy - Clancy was a random crew member on the ship the party crashed on (Their first session was the pre built Yanth story.) Throughout the session this random guy seemed to be getting astoundingly good rolls and despite being a mook, ended up performing on an equal level to the Acolytes. Example (and this legit happened) Clancy tries to throw a rock at a Render - rolls a 02 to hit then triggers righteous fury.

They ended up bringing Clancy with them. I rebuilt him to be a latent Psyker who's only psychic power is the "Luck" minor power from enemies within.

Clancy is structured to be a Seeker who's obsessed with finding objects - the harder it is to find, the more determined he is to find it. Most sessions he doesn't participate much in combat but kind of serves as the parties runner - being asked to perform all the small jobs and errands that the Acolytes can't be bothered with. On his errands he frequently picks up loads of random pieces of stuff that he finds and requisitions.

No one looks all that closely at what Clancy picks up, but during today's session he picked up a new sword. No one took the time to look at his new weapon and thus no one found the demonic sigils on the hilt of the blade.

Clancy has stumbled upon a Daemon weapon.

It is in fact the weapon which is influencing Clancy to rat the parties plans out to the cult. During the aftermath, if they are quick, the party might be able to separate Clancy from the weapon before the Daemon can possess Clancy's body.

Now for today's Campaign log I guess

The Acolytes arrive in orbit of a minor Imperial world called Outremer, they have come here as a follow up to their previous investigation which involved a group of missing Psykers. Their lead sent them looking for a group known as the League of Red Memories which are based on Outremer.

The party brought their shuttle to a small landing pad at one of the major docking areas. Before they could land, someone hailed them over their Vox and warned them that they had rigged a large chunk of the space port to explode. The group was panicking, thinking that the Acolytes were civilians who were about to be caught in the blast.

The Acolytes Voxed the port authority and tried to warn them, but the message was misinterpreted, with the receiver being under the impression that it was the Acolytes who had set the bombs. Soon after, the port exploded and the Acolytes were contacted a second time by the unknown group, who revealed themselves to be "the resistance" against the League of Red Memories. Intrigued, the Acolytes agreed to meet.

The Acolytes met up with a small team of resistance fighters, led by a woman who would only Identify herself as "Echo".

Being intrigued by this, my player immediately gave themselves code names. As you do, I guess.

Echo brought them back to their safe house and filled them in with some of the details. The League of Red Memories was a veteran organization made up entirely of members of the 26th "Red Mercy" Infantry regiment. Fifteen years previously the 26th retook Outremer from traitors who were in open rebellion, wiping out most of the population. Those that survived became the resistance. The 26th ended up assigned to Outremer for several years before the Regiment was eventually retired, settling the planet.

Echo and "Tranq", another resistance member, began arguing as to whether they could pull off an extremely difficult job with the Acolytes help.

Curious, Vance, the party face, asked them more about it.

Echo informed them that the resistance had been trying to find plans belonging to the League for years, but they never left a paper trail, and interrogations never seemed to get anything useful. The resistance was reasonably sure that Romulus Cornellia, the planetary governor and the leader of the league, would have the leagues plans in his study. The resistance had been planning an infiltration for a while, but until now, they never had a large skilled team available to try it. Ideally the goal would be to enter the governors estate, break into the study and access the plans, hopefully without anyone noticing. If all goes as planned, no one will know that the resistance has all the info.

The players thought this was vaguely interesting. Until I mentioned the word "Heist" at which point the enthusiasm went through the roof.

I can go into a bit of detail if people actually want to hear on the players prep for the Heist.