When planning your next heist in Dungeons & Dragons, there are a lot of movies that could provide you with inspiration as the Dungeon Master. But the heist genre is broad, ranging from cheeky capers (Ocean’s Eleven, The Italian Job) to gritty dramas (The Asphalt Jungle, Star Wars: Rogue One). If you’re in search of inspiration, it’s helpful to dive into stories that feel like the heist you’re planning.

To help you fellow DMs narrow your search for fonts of inspiration, here are 12 very different heist movies you can watch today and how they can inspire your next heist adventure.

Warning! If you haven’t seen any of these movies yet, you may run into spoilers!

1. Ant-Man (2015)
2. Army of the Dead (2021)
3. The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
4. Coin Heist (2017)
5. Entrapment (1999)
6. The First Great Train Robbery (1978)
7. Hudson Hawk (1991)
8. Inception (2010)
9. The Italian Job (1969)
10. Mission: Impossible (1996)
11. Ocean’s Series (2001-2018)
12. Star Wars: Rogue One (2016)

Need More Heist Ideas?

Keys from the Golden Vault contains 13 heist-centric missions that range from levels 1-11. Not only do each of these missions include a player map, a DM map, and a MacGuffin the party needs to steal, they can all be run as a standalone adventure, slotted into your current campaign, or strung together for an episodic campaign of non-stop heist action!

1. Ant-Man (2015)

Master thief Scott Lang (played by the immortal Paul Rudd) unknowingly steals Hank Pym’s Ant-Man suit, which allows him to shrink and grow. Pym ends up hiring Lang and his crew to steal the designs for Darren Cross’s Yellowjacket suit, which was made using Pym’s stolen research. It’s a Marvel superhero popcorn flick filtered through the lens of the heist genre.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

Perhaps the only way your players can discreetly access a gnome’s tiny underground workshop is by shrinking down to half their size (and avoiding the carrionettes that guard it from within…). With the Infiltrator Armorer artificer and enlarge/reduce, your players could become Scott Lang’s Ant-Man. While enlarge/reduce merely halves or doubles the size of its target, it still has a myriad of uses that could lead to some interesting challenges and encounters.

If you’re running a game with one or more artificers, you can lean into the corporate espionage vibe that Ant-Man explores. Maybe the artificer in your party has a disgruntled and disgraced mentor who hires his protégé and their team to steal back schematics that were stolen from them by a ruthless plutocrat.

2. Army of the Dead (2021)

It’s a classic Las Vegas casino heist movie… but with zombies and Zack Snyder nonsense. This movie takes place a few years after Sin City is hit with a zombie plague. The strip has since been quarantined by the military, and within 48 hours, it will be nuked. A businessman hires a team led by a former mercenary (Dave Bautista) to enter the city and recover $200 million dollars from his casino vault before the nuke hits.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

This movie has everything a DM needs to run a compelling, high stakes heist: a team of experts, a glorious payload, a ticking clock, and a horde of zombies in between them and their prize. But what really ratchets up the stakes is that the team quickly realizes that some of the zombies within Vegas are as intelligent as they are vicious, capable of using weapons, tools, and armor. If you want to put a hoard of semi-sentient undead (like the Karrnathi undead soldier from Eberron) in between your players and their payload, this movie is for you.

3. The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

This film noir classic is the first heist movie that made the thieves the true protagonists of the story. It centers around a band of down-on-their-luck criminals who decide to rob a jewelry store. In this movie, you get to see classic heist character archetypes fleshed out for the first time: the brains, the brawn, the driver, and the safecracker.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

Maybe your party met in the trenches of a devastating war that their country lost. As they rebuild their lives, they’re drawn to a life of thievery, hoping this one last score could be their ticket to leave these lives behind.

If you want elements of film noir for your heist, like morally gray motivations or themes of regret, The Asphalt Jungle is a must-watch. Not only is it thought of as the root of the heist genre, it perfectly encapsulates the film noir genre—dark and highly flawed characters, living in a bleak and hopeless world, who try their best to change it (or get away from it). Noir is a rich genre flavor that lends itself to heists and can jumpstart dynamic, character-based roleplaying at your table with ease. In Eberron: Rising from The Last War there’s a whole section detailing how to play with noir elements in D&D.

4. Coin Heist (2017)

After their school loses millions in an embezzlement scheme, a Breakfast Club-like mix of students, each with their own unique talents, band together to steal from the U.S. mint and use the profits to save their school.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

Do you want to run a heist within Strixhaven? Because this is how you could run a heist within Strixhaven. Like all good heist stories, every student has their own specialty, so your band of thieves could each be from a different college, using each college’s unique magical specialties to aid in the heist.

Your Silverquill student could be the charismatic face of the operation. A Lorehold student could be a getaway driver, using their knowledge of long-forgotten maps of the school's hidden passageways. A Prismari student could be an infiltrator, using their elemental grace to evade detection. A Quandrix student would make an excellent safecracker. And a Witherbloom student could function as the muscle, using their knowledge of life and death to bolster their strength and drain the will of anyone who stands in their way.

5. Entrapment (1999)

This movie holds a very special place in my heart for some strange reason, so yeah, I am mentioning it. Entrapment is about a master thief (Sean Connery) taking a fledgling art thief (Catherine Zeta-Jones) under his wing, followed by lots and lots of doublecrossing.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

The scene where Catherine Zeta-Jones dances her way through an invisible laser grid is forever burned into my memory and could serve as inspiration for a fun challenge to throw at your players. In the scene, the laser grid is completely invisible to Gin (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and only Mac (Sean Connery) can see it with the help of his infrared sensors. And while they have practiced navigating through this laser grid dozens of times, she still needs to be guided through it and reminded of where the guard is located.

When translating this scene into D&D mechanics, it could be an extended skill check; one player (the burglar) uses Dexterity to maneuver around an arcane laser grid, while another player (the brains) uses Charisma or Intelligence to help them navigate it.

6. The First Great Train Robbery (1978)

A team of con artists attempts to steal two cases full of gold, stored in the baggage car of a train before it gets to its destination.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

The First Great Train Robbery is already laid out like a lean, mean, D&D one-shot. The MacGuffins are clear, the objective is simple, and the ticking clock can be measured in the distance between the train and its destination. Train heists present a different set of challenges than other heists; the environment is narrow and long, making it hard to traverse without being seen, and the characters have limited places to hide. It's also loaded with innocent bystanders. And if, for some tragic reason, one or more of the characters are thrown from it, they not only are left in the dust, they could possibly die depending on where they’re thrown out. The stakes are high, and your players need to be crafty if they’re going to make it out in one piece with the loot.

There’s a great scene in The First Great Train Robbery where Agar (Donald Sutherland) is smuggled into the baggage car in a coffin, disguised as a dead body. If your players are struggling to finagle a way into the well-guarded baggage car, this could be a way in for them, especially if they use feign death on their safecracker. If you’re running the Affair on the Concordant Express from Keys from the Golden Vault, and you’ve included a baggage car in the Concordant Express, this coffin ruse from The First Great Train Robbery could be a clever way to sneak an infiltrator-type player into the train to do recon.

7. Hudson Hawk (1991)

In this early 90s heist comedy, ex-con Hudson Hawk (Bruce Willis) is blackmailed by the deliciously evil siblings Darwin and Minerva Mayflower (Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard) into stealing the DaVinci Codex from the Vatican. The codex hides a crystal that powers a strange machine built by DaVinci that turns lead into gold. Yeah, it’s bonkers.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

Never be afraid to bend genre, or D&D lore, beyond its common conventions. The way Darwin and Minerva Mayflower relish their dastardly agenda feels almost out of place in a heist movie, but it somehow works. You could reimagine this dynamic in D&D by revealing a devilishly evil brother and sister duo of rakshasas, who have been pulling the strings the entire time. Just as Darwin and Minerva bend the genre of Hudson Hawk, you can bend your party’s expectations of not only genre, but D&D lore. In a way, the rakshasa fits perfectly within the campy villain archetype and I wish they were presented in that way more often.

8. Inception (2010)

Inception was undeniably a groundbreaking idea. It was a heist movie that takes place within a dream. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) leads a group of thieves who specialize in infiltrating people’s dreams and stealing (or incepting) ideas from them.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

You can absolutely run a dream heist in D&D via the dream spell. The wording of dream is just vague enough to allow for your characters to infiltrate the dreams of a sleeping individual, wherever they are, as long as they know the target and are on the same plane of existence. If your party has access to enough 5th-level spell slots—or if you feel like handwaving the rules a bit—they could all drift into the same individual’s dream. Each party member would be able to shape the environment of the dream, just like how Cobb and his team can manifest guns, disguises, and even mazes.

You could run an entire dream heist without rolling a single die, all with storytelling and narrative passes, but advise your players to tread lightly. If the dream thieves aren’t careful and don’t blend into the environment, the target’s subconscious will respond like an immune system. Figments of the target’s dream will become hostile, attacking the party relentlessly until all foreign agents are expelled.

9. The Italian Job (1969)

While in Italy, Charlie Crocker (Michael Caine) and his team of thieves create a citywide traffic jam and steal a large sum of gold from an armored car. In the movie’s most iconic sequence, the thieves divide the gold between three Mini Coopers and drive it out of the city. They cruise down crowded, public sidewalks, stairwells, buildings, basically all the places where you never want to see a speeding car.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

This scene could be the basis for an extremely thrilling getaway scene. Maybe the characters must abscond with their precious (and cumbersome) payload using unconventional mounts, or an unconventional route on said mounts.

It could be an extended skill check where the characters must not only navigate the route but also weave around pedestrians, avoid swerving into a canal, and most importantly, keep their loot intact! It could be accomplished with horse-drawn carriages, or a chariot. However, my personal favorite option would be an infernal war machine, such as a Devil’s Ride or a Tormentor.

10. Mission: Impossible (1996)

“Bum bum bumbum. Bum bum bumbum.” Tom Cruise is IMF superspy Ethan Hunt and he’s been framed for the deaths of his entire team. Now he’s gotta clear his name while also dangling from precariously high places and avoiding self-destructing messages!

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

The iconic scene where Ethan Hunt must access a computer terminal without touching the floor is exactly the kind of tense skill check puzzle your heist adventures should feature. If even one drop of Ethan’s sweat touches the floor, the alarm will be triggered. His teammate slowly lowers him down from the ceiling vent on a rope, sometimes barely hanging out of sight of the unknowing worker drone below them, who is walking in and out of the room. Translating this into D&D would be fairly easy, using a combination of extended skill checks for both characters.

11. Ocean’s Series (2001-2018)

It all started with ex-con Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his dashing team of crooks robbing a Vegas casino vault using only their wits and careful, montage-based planning. The sequels follow the repercussions of their first heist. Oceans 8 is a soft reboot featuring a cast of all-female thieves, lead by Danny Ocean’s sister, Debbie (Sandra Bullock), where the ladies steal millions of dollars worth of jewels from the Met Gala.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

The thieves in the Ocean’s franchise follow three basic rules, stated explicitly by Danny Ocean: “Don't hurt anybody, don't steal from anyone who doesn't deserve it, and play the game like you've got nothing to lose.” The Ocean’s movies are great for DMs that want to run a combatless, or combat light, heist adventure. The threat of violence should always be there and prepared for, but your players should be getting by using subterfuge and guile. Cavalierly knocking out guards and blasting through doors shouldn’t be part of the planning phase.

Speaking of planning, the Ocean’s movies make the planning phase of a heist seem like a smooth and flawless process. But in practice, asking your players to plan anything (let alone a heist) can easily devolve into a cacophony of ideas and interpersonal politics. Players talk over one another, disagreements run amuck, or the group loses a narrative focus and starts metagaming. You can mitigate this by drawing inspiration from the planning scenes in Ocean’s movies, where one character narrates their plan to their team and the audience, from start to finish.

Have your players roll for initiative, but using their characters' Intelligence modifiers instead of Dexterity. In order of initiative, your players can propose their plans, in character, without interruption. After everyone has taken a turn and voiced their ideas, your team can come to an agreement on how to proceed. This way, everyone’s voice gets heard, and everyone gets their chance to be center stage during their planning monologue.

12. Star Wars: Rogue One (2016)

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the daughter of a renowned Imperial scientist, is plucked from prison and tasked with helping the Rebel Alliance steal secret plans for the Empire’s new superweapon, the Death Star. Like Ant-Man, it's a refreshing and entertaining caper that filters a familiar story, like Star Wars, through the lens of the heist genre.

How It Can Inspire Your Next Heist

Star Wars: Rogue One is a different kind of heist than the rest mentioned above, because the characters know there is a significant chance that this heist is a one-way trip. The droid K-2SO predicts a 97% chance of failure, and even Jyn Erso says, “If we can make it to the ground, we'll take the next chance. And the next. On and on until we win... or the chances are spent.”

And (spoiler alert) everyone dies. The moments where each member of Rogue One realizes they aren’t making it off Scariff hit hard because we, the audience, know how their sacrifices paid off. Now when we watch Star Wars: A New Hope, Leia isn’t just sticking a meaningless MacGuffin into R2-D2, she’s protecting the thing that Jyn, and the rest of Rogue One, died for.

Rogue One could serve as inspiration for a one-shot, where all the player characters sacrifice themselves to finish the heist. Then, it could be followed by an ongoing campaign where the new player characters protect the MacGuffin stolen in the one-shot.

The End…?

Yeah, that’s the end of the listicle. I started talking about how much fun you could have with enlarge/reduce on an Ant-Man-inspired heist, and now I’m ugly crying because I’m reliving the gritty and perilous Rogue One heist. See? The heist genre is massive. It truly runs the gamut in terms of tone. If you're looking for a similar experience with your D&D heist adventures, Keys from the Golden Vault contains 13 heist adventures that range in environment and tone. From classic casino heists to delving into a grim efreet's castle, one thing's for sure: There will never be a dull moment.

Kyle Shire (@kyleshire) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond and a producer for Critical Role. In the past, he worked as a producer, writer, and host for Machinima Studios and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment. He's appeared on HyperRPG as the Mayor of Kollok and the Saving Throw Show. He currently lives in Los Angeles.