Hey guys,

I'm running a heist campaign for my players soon. I read alot of forums detailing whats needed from a narrative standpoint as well as some custom careers and specializations. I feel good thats its possible and now I'm starting to develop it. I'm looking for some creative security measures and more specifically mechanics for them. Sure theres laser trip wires, and pad locks, and pressure plates and such. But mechanically im having trouble thinking of ways players can interact with them. I mean how do you beat a pressure plate? Just curious if anyone has ran a similiar campaign before and want to know how you mechanically handled the security of the target?

58 minutes ago, Marcbn3 said:

Hey guys,

I'm running a heist campaign for my players soon. I read alot of forums detailing whats needed from a narrative standpoint as well as some custom careers and specializations. I feel good thats its possible and now I'm starting to develop it. I'm looking for some creative security measures and more specifically mechanics for them. Sure theres laser trip wires, and pad locks, and pressure plates and such. But mechanically im having trouble thinking of ways players can interact with them. I mean how do you beat a pressure plate? Just curious if anyone has ran a similiar campaign before and want to know how you mechanically handled the security of the target?

I would start by looking at your players' strengths and weaknesses: I would design one trap around each of the PC's unique strengths, and then one trap that is simply in everyone's blind spot, and another that can only be overcome using TEAM WORK!

edit: I say "trap" when I mean to say "security measure", which could include traps but is not limited to traps. Guards that need to be seduced or coerced by the party Face, for example.

Check out the 'Jewel of Yavin' module. It's an interesting if quirky module, but it should give you some ideas as to what kind of security measures are or can be taken to guard an Important Thing.

Also, if you have time, read Scoundrels. My group pretty much ran through it verbatim.

Basically, don't come up with ways to beat the security measures. Just think, which security measures make sense. Let the players do the hard work.

When I recently ran a heist session, that “what would make sense” question is how I did it.

So, for example, the high-security safe deposit boxes - like the one they had to access - were in a reinforced underground level. The heightened security of those boxes required assistance of a member of bank management (I think it was Assistant Manager or higher) to access the level, then access to the specific box itself required both management and customer double-verification. Being affiliated with the Intergalactic Banking Clan, two magna-guard droids flanked the elevator on the box level, with one standard security droid outside each of the five box vaults. Security cameras and alarms were also in place, naturally. Not only was this setup logical, it played to the strengths of the three players involved that day - the con artist/criminal, the mechanic/droid tech/de facto slicer, and the heavy.

And they got caught. They got their objective, but didn’t make it back out past the various droids. And they were picked up by local police/security and had to make their way out of custody, which they did. (And managed to retrieve their target object, to boot, thanks to some awesome rolls as they left the precinct.)

(To be honest, I fully expected them to try getting into some of the other boxes in the room, and came up with a chart for what was in them. When they saw the level of security, they decided the payday from what they were hired to retrieve was enough.)

TL;DR - Include security obstacles that make sense for what’s being protected, and let the players come up with creative ways around them, just like Danny Ocean and company, or the Four Horsemen.

Maybe they’ll even come up with something as cool and fun as this:

If they do, give them bonus XP. ?

23 hours ago, panpolyqueergeek said:

I would start by looking at your players' strengths and weaknesses: I would design one trap around each of the PC's unique strengths, and then one trap that is simply in everyone's blind spot, and another that can only be overcome using TEAM WORK!

edit: I say "trap" when I mean to say "security measure", which could include traps but is not limited to traps. Guards that need to be seduced or coerced by the party Face, for example.

I really like this idea! It gets all the players involved a d the team trap brings them together. The out of the blue trap also makes them think on the fly as I believe a heist should never go 100% percent as planned. Will def implement.

22 hours ago, bsmith23 said:

Also, if you have time, read Scoundrels. My group pretty much ran through it verbatim.

Sorry, not sure what scoundrels is. Is that a story line for the swrpg?

8 minutes ago, Marcbn3 said:

I really like this idea! It gets all the players involved a d the team trap brings them together. The out of the blue trap also makes them think on the fly as I believe a heist should never go 100% percent as planned. Will def implement.

I'd love to hear what you design/how that goes. Also, my wording may have not been clear: I was trying to communicate that I would design one trap per character based on unique strengths, so each player gets a spotlight moment. Then the blind spot and team work traps.

10 minutes ago, Marcbn3 said:

Sorry, not sure what scoundrels is. Is that a story line for the swrpg?

It’s one of the now-Legends novels.