Making a 1-Hour Heist Adventure

In my last home-game of D&D 5e the party successfully found their way out of a magical mansion and saved a young man from a deadly curse! They also are now the proud owners of a book allowing them access to an extra-planar mansion... never mind that it is technically owned by a pair of extremely powerful wizards, one of whom has for sure gone missing and another who just doesn't seem to be around. Never mind that somehow, someone keeps tossing supplies through the portal so the few creatures living in the mansion can stay living. Never mind that there is definitely at least one other person with access to this extra-planar mansion - all of that is irrelevant because the players have a house now and that house needs furniture!

Now, I'm not the type of DM that is going to say 'no' when players are going to exercise their Squatter's Rights and make that place their own. I gave them all the information I just gave you, dear reader, in the first paragraph. They know everything I said, and they went "yep, that's a fine risk to take, now we need to steal some fancy beds"!

So, two of the crew are going to have a mini-session to do just that, and I'm 100% on-board for it because it lets me put them in a new part of town and potentially thread in a new bit of drama. The hard part here is that the time we have to pull this off is exactly 1 hour. The three of us work together, our mandatory in-office day is coming up, and we get an hour for lunch... what better way to use that time than playing some quick D&D?

So, I need to set up a scenario that is enjoyable, has the potential to result in stolen furniture, and takes up no more than an hour.

That's only three things, easy-peasy right?

The Heist

So, what I need right out of the gate is a location. I bought a bunch of maps from Czepeku, thinking I could use these as printouts. That hasn't turned out to be very useful, but it cost like $10 so, it's not a big loss. They have been useful for inspiration though, and leafing through my folder I found a mansion that pretty much fits my needs!

Bottom Floor:

Top Floor:

It's a decent-sized manor house with its own chapel and detached outhouse. Not bad! There are a bunch of beds, some posh chairs, lavish tables, and in general it all makes for a wonderful score for someone who can break in and take it.

So, with 60 minutes, the first thing different from a normal session is that I need to have these two players able to gain access to the manor quickly. To make that easy, we'll say that the manor's lord is on vacation while the manor itself undergoes some renovations. With the Lord gone, we can assume there are some general house staff, the labourers, and maybe a guard or two.

I'm going to leave it up to the players to see what they do with that information, but if they're not inside within 15 minutes I'll have the foreman walk up on them, chastise them for being lazy, and put them to work.

They'll then need to figure out what stuff they want to steal once they get an idea of the house's layout and then execute their plan. We don't want too many people wandering around, so something like 1 guard on patrol and 1 or 2 servants, plus maybe... 4 labourers and their foreman? That's a decent number of people to worry about, but it's easy to hand-wave that a bunch of them are just doing what they're supposed to. There are only actually 3 that will be moving about causing trouble for the players. First of course is the patrolling guard. They're going to have to be careful to either learn his circuit and avoid him or take him out.

Then there's the head of the household staff - they'll be my dash of chaos that I can toss in if the players are spending too much time in one location.

Third, our foreman - who will go hunting for the players if they're gone for too long. If time is short though, I'll drop this thread and we'll just worry about the Patrol and the Household staff.

If I give them the lion's share of the time (say 30-35 minutes) to do the heist itself, that leaves 10 - 15 minutes for them to get out without getting caught.

It's a very simple setup that can be very fluid to account for time constraints, and should still give enough tension and fun that the hour-long lunch session will still be enjoyable. It's easy for me to prep, and it gives me something to put in my back pocket for later. Since this isn't a deserted mansion they're just looting, it allows me to leave witnesses. Folks who can be interrogated, bribed, or relied upon to give up details about the players when the manor's lord returns to find he's been robbed.

Oh, and did I mention there's a secret basement? A secret basement filled with arcane symbols and coffins? Gosh, I wonder how that might end up biting the players later...

I'll update you on how this session goes once I've run it for them. The session is happening on Friday, which will likely mean Saturday or Sunday when I get a moment to write.

Until next time friends, happy gaming!