I love the crime genre, and the whole crew concept. A short time ago, I wrote about Running a Crew and some of the elements that go into it. But that didn’t get into the nuts and bolts around planning a job. That’s what this post is all about! So let’s dive in.

Background

Too often, when it comes to planning a job in a crime genre game, especially in games like Cyberpunk RED, Shadowrun, The Sprawl, or Hard Wired Island, things get really military or a variation on a smash-and-grab operation. And that’s not a bad thing, but it’s a limiting thing. And I think that part of the challenge is that the settings are inherently militarized, and that the other part is that “heists” and kinds of elaborate jobs we see in films and games aren’t associated with the genre.

Heists are good!

The first step in all this is to embrace the idea in a non-antagonist way on both sides of the table. Heists are fun, great places for creative expression, and can be highly rewarding as long as everyone is on the same page. One of the great things that can be achieved with a heist is showcasing the strengths of characters and how they can work together to cover off limitations and weak areas. Another is that it actually puts less pressure on the GM and lets the players take the proverbial reins to make it all happen.

The GM Side

Getting something ready for a heist event in a larger campaign, or as a short campaign in itself is remarkably easy, but also detailed. As a GM, you need to have the following pieces ready to go, after which you become primarily reactive to the actions and activities of the players.

1. The Target and Rationale. What are the players after, and why? If possible or feasible, try to tie the “why” to player character backgrounds and/or goals, or make it something that can facilitate their greater goals. This is the in-game motivator.
2. Location and Protection. Where is the Target, and what protects it? This is where you come up with your guards, security systems, environmental hazards (deserts, jungles,lakes, cliffs, reefs etc…) of where the location is, and how dedicated the operation is to protecting it. Keep things cinematic though, remember that the players don’t have to breeze through things, but you also don’t want them bottlenecking and losing momentum.
3. Prep Time and Connections. How long do the player characters have in game to get ready for the job. The Connections are the NPCs and organization that might facilitate the player plans either through information, equipment, vehicles, or expertise in areas that the crew lacks.
4. Maps and More Maps. I can’t stress this enough, heists need maps. Maps of the layout of the Location, and maps covering the area around the location, and maps for escape routes. They don’t have to be hyper detailed, but they need enough detail for you as the GM to prep for what the players are up to, and for them to scribble their plan out with.

Now, outside of this, as the GM you’ll want to pay attention to the personal motivations and stressors on the player characters. Why? Because while they’re planning the job, you need to prompting them with personal storylines. 

The Player Side

Planning a heist is a bit more detailed than something conventional like a dungeon crawl or an activity where you can more or less run on autopilot because everyone knows their roll. So when you’re working on your plan think about the following:

1. Establish the stakes. 
2. Recce the Target Location. Check the place out, where is it? What are the approaches and potential avenues of escape? What risks and hazards are there? What is the opposition looking like?
3. Plan the job. Who’s doing what, where, and when, and with what.
4. Assemble the gear needed for the job, this can be a series of side quest style adventures in of itself. Also of note is that in this case, “gear” includes securing NPC supports if needed to niche skills or other things the needed for the job.

A big thing here is not to get completely attached to the plan. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Things go wrong, things go too right, and sometimes the dice just don’t like you. So stay flexible within character. And I want to stress that. Know your character, know what they’d do or think, and just flow with it. It doesn’t matter if it’s imperfect, that’s fine.

Speaking of plans… don’t let “This isn’t realistic.” be a limitation. Want to escape on seadoos through the sewer to the open ocean? Viable. Air assault in on helicopters? Do it. The limitations should be “what can we imagine” and “how much in game session time do we want to spend getting all the gear together to pull this off?”

Pattern of Life

This gets its own category because it’s a GM and Player thing. Pattern of life is the normal rhythm of activities in a set location or area, done by the people there and who interact with it regularly. In police procedural shows, the whole “Have you noticed anything unusual or suspicious recently?” comes from this. On the GM side, you need to establish what the Pattern of Life is for the areas the player characters are going to be operating in. Deliveries, shift changes, transit routes and schedules, when are workers arriving and leaving, stores, restaurants, patrol routes, festivals, parties, galas etc… etc… On the player side, the challenge is to not disrupt the Pattern of Life during their recce of the place, and then determine if they need to preserve the Pattern of Life through the mission (the clean job no one detects till after) or completely disrupt it (mass distraction anyone?), or do something in between.

As a side benefit, the Pattern of Life material can be a great world-building component, the sort of thing that keeps your players invested in the setting.

The Actual Job

This is where the rubber hits the road. I cannot stress enough that you do not start the actual heist at the end or partway through a session. Hit it at the start of a fresh session. Players? Players need to follow the plan and improvise as needed, pretty much like any organized dungeoncrawl. GMs? GMs need to remember that they aren’t there to be adversarial. Let things fall as they may, and maybe have a few random encounters prepped. I’m talking about things like unexpected deliveries, surprise visits, people getting sick so the guards are different, all that kind of stuff. Not big plan disruptions, just “spice of life” injections.

The Get Away

Again, I don’t recommend this part starts until a new session does. In a lot of great heist media, the get away sequence is a whole thing. We’re talking about chases, shootouts, cyber manipulation of traffic grids, high speed boat theft, parachuting into the wilderness to meet pre-positioned ATVs… There’s a lot here, so lean into it! A satisfying high octane getaway is almost as much fun as the heist itself.

Final Thoughts

Heists of any sort are a solid basis not just for a quick adventure, but whole campaigns. There’s so much good media to draw inspiration from that it’s not even funny, and they’re one of the few campaign types where everyone can get a moment to shine. They’re also intensely immersive in my experience, with players really, REALLY getting into things. And of course, it’s a cross-genre campaign type. Modern, sci-fi, cyberpunk, fantasy, science fantasy, historically accurate… it’s hard to find genres that don’t support this, only ones that make the stakes higher or the plans more challenging. So read over my last entry on this, Running a Crew, and then take a shot at it!