Hello all,

I want to do a heist game for my players. I just watched GoodFellas the other day, and I though something like the Lufthansa heist would be a fun romp for my guys. We've been doing a lot of investigations, and trying to find the mystery locked within the mystery.our group also plays Mage, which is also cerebral and involves quite a bit of mystery solving.

The only problem is that I'm not quite sure how to run a heist. Are here any heist scenarios for Dark Heresy. Have any of you run a heist before? I'm not sure if I should leave all the planning up to them, or present them with a ready made plan that they can modify.

Any help in this would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

so, you want your pc to plan & commit a complex robbery? Or do you want your players to hinder such an attempt?

In both cases, I do not think that something like that is yet available. Neither as fanwork nor as purchaseable product.

...unless jolly good fellow is going to wright it up NOW

I "coaxed" Jack of Tears in this generel direction not long ago. He needed inspiration for something criminal to do on a PleasurePlanet and I provided him with some general idea about the robbery of a statue

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=101&efcid=3&efidt=505871

While he inteded to share general notes via the topic above, it is not going to be a real write up, so.



By the way: what was/is the "Lufthansa Heist"? I know the airline, but that´s it.

Gregorius21778 said:

Someone who works for the airport found about a big shipment of cash coming through, so he contacted the mob with the info in exchange for a cut of the take. Another good source of insperation is the "money train" sequence from The Shield (second or third season): a group of corrupt cops find out how the Armenian mafia ships thier profits back home, and decide to intercept it for their own "retirement funds"...

The Shield is an awesome series. Highly recommended.

As far as the heist goes - were you planning on having your players do the crime, or rather investigate it? If the former, why do they even care about money, considering their new occupation? In case of the latter, I would say that this idea has the potential to make for a cool game. How about the "money train" being a planet's tithe to the Administratum?

I like "heist" situations because it feels like a lot less work to me as a GM.

I think the key with a good heist is to flush out your Mcguffin. Consider all the details around it. Where is it being held? Does it get moved around? Why is it valuable? Who is it valuable to? What or who guards it? Etc. Etc.

Once you have all of these details worked out, you're done. At that point it is up to the PCs to determine how to discover and penetrate the defenses of the McGuffin, whether that means bribing their way in, or repelling into the McGuffin's vault from the ceiling. I like these types of games because the players completely dictate the plan of attack.

As a recommendation to fit with the nature of Inquisitoral duty if you want to players to plan and execute a Heist make it something a little more exotic than cash or weapons, something like a Xenos-relic, a cryo-stasis chamber or the like. As for it being less work for the GM it's a lot more. The amount of information your players need to successfully plan and execute a Heist is massive. Everything from Courier routes, security blueprints, guard rotations, to building layouts, patsies, and escape routes, not to mention the abilities to actually pull it off. Watch Ocean's 11, and watch how much prep is done, pulling a Heist is easy, getting away with it is much more difficult.

You players need a reason to go after the 'object' of the Heist without resorting to a firefight to get it or calling in Inquisitoral aid.

A Heist is probably one of the hardest things to run as a GM as the players make plans to counter security and various other information, and it gets really frustating as a player if all your hard work gathering info goes out the window because of a fluffed roll or the GM wanting to add some action but if your don't add some action to the plan, or make something go wrong the players will get bored of what's going on as it'll be too easy.

Hope that helps

Perhaps the security plans at malleus.dk will be of help?

Just had a look at that site linked in previous post. It is very good. I am especially impressed with the ship blueprints.