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View Full Version : Need a spark of inspiration to craft my Heist/Caper/Con one shot



Armored Walrus
2018-02-27, 05:48 PM
Hey Playground.

I have a one-shot session coming up on Monday, and my Well of Inspiration is out of charges. Maybe some of you have some ideas kicking around in your skulls.

TL:DR: Give me some ideas for a heist/caper one shot.

Here's the deal. My campaign is on a brief hold, and during our downtime, the characters are going to have a month of downtime. One player already decided that during that month he unwittingly became involved in the drug trade in our city, and spent some time in jail. On Monday, I'm going to be doing a one-shot with the group that takes place during the downtime, and would like to play out that story. He will be playing his normal character - a 4th level Lizardfolk Battlemaster, who's never been out of the swamp before. He's a willing dupe in this session.

I'll hand the other players pre-gens that will represent local gang members, maybe an undercover inspector, I don't know what. They are goign to be involved in a story line revolving around the lizardfolk getting conned into making some kind of drug transaction, or accomplishing something for a drug cartel/gang, and ultimately getting pinched. But I'm at a total loss as to what this scenario looks like in its details, and how it all plays out. Spit some ideas at me regarding:

Who are the other characters, and what are their secret agendas?
What weird or spooky or dangerous locale or locales does this play out in?
What kind of enemies are we going to come up against? (there needs to be some combat or my players will be sad)
What a cool piece of info or hook they can discover during this session that I can reference back to later after the downtime is over?

Help me prime the pump, Playground, you're my only hope!

TheYell
2018-02-27, 06:15 PM
So your battlemaster wins a game of pool in a bar, and the opponent (call him Poole) doesn't have enough cash to cover his losses. So Poole says, I know I got a job to do tomorrow, instead you do it for me and get paid.

Poole is supposed to go to the fair and buy a cow at a rigged auction. It's all arranged, because the cow is carrying half a million in drugs in its tummy in a bag of holding. Poole bids on the cow, wins, takes the cow to the mob, and gets a fee for his trouble. But instead he says, You go.

But Poole is a general screwup (you knew that already) and he sends your battlemaster to a llama auction. Meanwhile the golden calf is bought by a bunch of schoolchildren.

OK so you just grab the cow right? But the schoolkids are led by the brother of a ruthless street gang leader and they want to protect the cow for the kids.

Meanwhile the mob is beating the truth out of Poole and is coming after your battlemaster for the value of the drugs. A narc in their ranks has ID'd you as the courier to the fair authorities, who represent a temple-- in this town drugs are small potatoes but cows are sacred.

So your battlemaster has a choice to fight the cops, the mob, the gang,the temple, or all of the above. It could go down at the fairgrounds with kids screaming and chickens running loose and cotton candy being set on fire and used as a flaming mace.

A hook? From then on your players can threaten to buy your battlemaster a nice cow.

Jama7301
2018-02-27, 06:38 PM
Turn the sap into a mule, and have him get caught in a sting, or worse yet, giving the goods to a rival group, thinking they're the buyer. You could have this other faction try to use the Lizardman as an unwitting mole back at the people who he worked for to begin with, before finally joining up with Law Enforcement against the two organized crime factions.

Armored Walrus
2018-02-28, 12:05 AM
TheYell, I like the bait and switch in there. Good ideas.

A mule, hmm. This could work, too. He'll know what he's carrying, he just won't realize it's illegal, or that there's a lot of money to be made off of it.

Where is this happening? Any little-used urban monsters they can encounter?