Marcelinari
2015-04-08, 09:39 PM
I'm preparing a D&D 5e game to run in a few months, and part of my (admittedly sketchy) plot involves the players hunting down a rival group of adventurers who stole a priceless artifact/powerful magic item from a well-secured vault in a populated city. However, by the time the players discover the need to hunt down these felons (they may or may not be coerced into doing so by the city officials), the rival party will have fled town, having passed off the item to their employer.
Now, I'm fairly well-versed with Shadowrun, so naturally that's what I've mentally categorized this background-event heist as. However, I need to reveal some useful clues to my players in order to allow them to actually track down the culprits. So, as with all good shadowruns, something had to have gone horribly wrong. I just need to figure out what.
So I'm asking for help figuring out how this group of D&D-runners managed to pull off their heist, and how their plans failed in a way that my players can have clues. If it were just a perfect run, this would be fairly easy to plan out... but something has to have gone wrong, and that's where I'm drawing blanks.
I don't have any clue as to the defenses the D&D-runners had to have breached. That's all fairly malleable, and can be changed as suits the narrative. I have the NPCs capabilities, though, which will be useful in determining what happened in the event.
The Hitter: A half-elf barbarian with a great-axe and connections to the criminal underworld. He's rough, he's tough, and he has a surprisingly good singing voice.
The Hacker Overwatch: An adorably dangerous forest gnome ranger. An accomplished sniper with spells to help her slow pursuit, kill efficiently, and harass crowds.
The Grifter: The Hitter's sister, a half-elf bard with an established false identity. Has magic suitable for putting people to sleep, suggesting them into other courses of action, and rendering people invisible.
The Thief: A grizzled ex-military assassin, and a half-orc no less. Specializes in finding and disarming traps. Not a big talker.
So, how would this play out? The mechanics don't really matter, except as a measure of their capabilities. The goal is for the D&D-runners to succeed, but with a twist that allows my actual players to discover their location and/or identities when they are brought in to recover the stolen item.
Setting details - the item is the Orb of Tsunami, their employer is a high ranking member of the Cult of Calamity, and they're stealing it from a government controlled building in the Fuller Empire - an Empire founded and run by halflings. They don't know the first two, though.
EDIT: For those of you waiting for the Leverage reference to get completed, I'm the Mastermind. Or you are. One of those.
Now, I'm fairly well-versed with Shadowrun, so naturally that's what I've mentally categorized this background-event heist as. However, I need to reveal some useful clues to my players in order to allow them to actually track down the culprits. So, as with all good shadowruns, something had to have gone horribly wrong. I just need to figure out what.
So I'm asking for help figuring out how this group of D&D-runners managed to pull off their heist, and how their plans failed in a way that my players can have clues. If it were just a perfect run, this would be fairly easy to plan out... but something has to have gone wrong, and that's where I'm drawing blanks.
I don't have any clue as to the defenses the D&D-runners had to have breached. That's all fairly malleable, and can be changed as suits the narrative. I have the NPCs capabilities, though, which will be useful in determining what happened in the event.
The Hitter: A half-elf barbarian with a great-axe and connections to the criminal underworld. He's rough, he's tough, and he has a surprisingly good singing voice.
The Hacker Overwatch: An adorably dangerous forest gnome ranger. An accomplished sniper with spells to help her slow pursuit, kill efficiently, and harass crowds.
The Grifter: The Hitter's sister, a half-elf bard with an established false identity. Has magic suitable for putting people to sleep, suggesting them into other courses of action, and rendering people invisible.
The Thief: A grizzled ex-military assassin, and a half-orc no less. Specializes in finding and disarming traps. Not a big talker.
So, how would this play out? The mechanics don't really matter, except as a measure of their capabilities. The goal is for the D&D-runners to succeed, but with a twist that allows my actual players to discover their location and/or identities when they are brought in to recover the stolen item.
Setting details - the item is the Orb of Tsunami, their employer is a high ranking member of the Cult of Calamity, and they're stealing it from a government controlled building in the Fuller Empire - an Empire founded and run by halflings. They don't know the first two, though.
EDIT: For those of you waiting for the Leverage reference to get completed, I'm the Mastermind. Or you are. One of those.