I'm going to run a one shot for my friends this weekend because we'll have the chance to see each other in person for a small bit (socially distanced for those who are wondering) and I've decided on just a quick Museum Heist. They are being initiated into a group of bounty hunters/criminals by stealing a set of Archmagi Robes from a museum (the twist is that all the actual magical items are within the curator's office, who turns out to be an ancient copper dragon).
I've set up the layout (structurally) of the museum, but was wondering if y'all had any tips or advice to make my museum more realistic (and explain why there are a set of make archmagi robes on display). I don't know what type of museum yet so any input is welcome!
One thing to consider is museums as the big tourist destinations they are today are a relatively recent phenomenon. Like libraries historically, access or admission to museums were limited sometimes by class sometimes by credentials. So having a museum of magical powerhouse items probably is something like the a gallery of achievements of some arcane order or what have you who may or may not know their curator is a dragon. The access issue will make casing difficult unless you have folks who can actually pose as arcane practitioners and get by whatever vetting to being admitted. Maybe it involves obtaining or forging letters of introduction or other credentials.
Also museums were more "academic" in orientation historically in comparison to how they're thought now (as vessels of public education of a sort). So if you make the place a sort of academic establishment full of inquisitive people, you got another challenge when doing whatever casing or research for your heist, a bunch of nosey people curious what you're up to (their real concern is your some sort of threat to their position in the scholarly pecking order but if you're particularly fishy, they may turn you in, or if they figure out the scheme and your actions may discredit a rival, they may actually help you).
Your defenders are going to be worried about protecting the entirety of the collection, so any conflict on the museum property might be easily intimidated away. However, once outside the museum, I'm sure the museum has an adventuring accomplished Indiana Jones type who insists "that robe belongs in a museum!" and will relentlessly work to recover it, even it means a fistfight on a tramp steamer in the middle of a typhoon decades later.
Modern museums, and the older ones I discussed earlier, love to toot their own horns especially about new acquisitions. On top of maybe increasing admission of regular visitors, they'll hold galas, academic symposia, maybe even concerts and fireworks. Lots of opportunities to explore the institution, and the personalities that support it.
As far as casing the place goes, I've always been a big fan of the "Posing As a Wealthy Potential Donor" routine. The face of the group and maybe a "bodyguard" and a "consultant" buy fancy clothes and throw around money to get a VIP tour of the museum after hours.
Now, in your scenario, one potential wrinkle would be that the curator is the one who gives them the tour. An ancient dragon has a passive perception of 27 and it wouldn't take an unusually high Insight check for the dragon to guess why some rich person the dragon's never heard of has come in wearing rented clothes a size too large and talking like a Cockney ragamuffin.
The reason the dragon has placed fake robes on display should be all too obvious considering that persons unknown are planning to steal them even we speak. But a truly scrupulous historian would note on the display that the robes were a facsimile (otherwise they'd be failing their duty to the public). The players can see that the robes aren't the real deal when they reconnoiter.
Art heists tend, in real life, to be depressingly drab affairs. Edvard Munch's The Scream has probably been stolen three or four times in my lifetime; once by some guys who just waited in the closet until everyone had left for the night. That won't do at all for you. You'll definitely need one of those webs of magical lasers to backflip or sexy-shimmy through; some magical sensor that will need to be shot out from across the chamber with a one-in-a-million crossbow shot; and at least one skylight to rappel through.
If the whole museum is full of magic junk, you might have them steal one thing from one end of the museum that they'll need to do the actual robbery at the other end of the museum.
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
For the reason for the display, you could have it that an old, broken down building was demolished for "progress" and they found a secret room in it with ancient artefacts from an archwizard. The items could have been claimed by the museum as an exhibit showing how this area has played host to powerful magic users in the past.
"Magic Users of the Past" would be a good title for the exhibit. Depending on how weird and wacky you want to make the game, you could add a load of artefacts which would be failed efforts to create magic items which people take for granted - like an Immovable Rod which is movable but becomes weightless - they stopped gravity from affecting it, but nothing else - or a wand of fireball which takes time to charge up, so they might try to use it to find it takes d4 turns to charge, but becomes more powerful the longer it charges. Go through the magic items section and put twists onto as many as you can with "semi-successful" results - a broom of flying with 10ft. speed, a hat of disguise that always puts you in a flowery dress, etc.
You could break down the exhibits to: "The path to Success - early attempts at magic items", "Local power - look inside an Archmages Workshop", "Early Warforged - the Constructs that Time Forgot", etc.
Obviously, if the heist goes well, none of it could end up being used, but if the heist fails, and they get in a fight - imagine fighting an ancient dragon, who really doesn't want to damage anything, and using loads of magical items which don't work properly! It'd be brilliant!
You'll want guards, cleaners, researchers, tour guides and potentially some constructs to act as a security system. If you have a place you want to be more heavily guarded, you can have some tougher guards and maybe some kind of 'vault guardian'.
Guardian (If you want some sort of boss for your party to fight, assuming they're not fighting the dragon): Mimic, Helmed Horror, Canoloth, Stone Golem
It could be a private collection whose owner recently died. That way you can have one of his heirs hiring the party to steal the robes because they want to cheat the other inheritors of it and don't want to split the profits; that would give the party a reason to be more careful, since if they break any other exibition piece then they would be costing their employer money. Or it is an academy museum and the one who hired them is a teacher who wants them. Both of those options give you the chance for a more eclectic mix of items rather than a theme.
I'm going to run a one shot for my friends this weekend because we'll have the chance to see each other in person for a small bit (socially distanced for those who are wondering) and I've decided on just a quick Museum Heist. They are being initiated into a group of bounty hunters/criminals by stealing a set of Archmagi Robes from a museum (the twist is that all the actual magical items are within the curator's office, who turns out to be an ancient copper dragon).
I've set up the layout (structurally) of the museum, but was wondering if y'all had any tips or advice to make my museum more realistic (and explain why there are a set of make archmagi robes on display). I don't know what type of museum yet so any input is welcome!
Some thoughts:
One thing to consider is museums as the big tourist destinations they are today are a relatively recent phenomenon. Like libraries historically, access or admission to museums were limited sometimes by class sometimes by credentials. So having a museum of magical powerhouse items probably is something like the a gallery of achievements of some arcane order or what have you who may or may not know their curator is a dragon. The access issue will make casing difficult unless you have folks who can actually pose as arcane practitioners and get by whatever vetting to being admitted. Maybe it involves obtaining or forging letters of introduction or other credentials.
Also museums were more "academic" in orientation historically in comparison to how they're thought now (as vessels of public education of a sort). So if you make the place a sort of academic establishment full of inquisitive people, you got another challenge when doing whatever casing or research for your heist, a bunch of nosey people curious what you're up to (their real concern is your some sort of threat to their position in the scholarly pecking order but if you're particularly fishy, they may turn you in, or if they figure out the scheme and your actions may discredit a rival, they may actually help you).
Your defenders are going to be worried about protecting the entirety of the collection, so any conflict on the museum property might be easily intimidated away. However, once outside the museum, I'm sure the museum has an adventuring accomplished Indiana Jones type who insists "that robe belongs in a museum!" and will relentlessly work to recover it, even it means a fistfight on a tramp steamer in the middle of a typhoon decades later.
Modern museums, and the older ones I discussed earlier, love to toot their own horns especially about new acquisitions. On top of maybe increasing admission of regular visitors, they'll hold galas, academic symposia, maybe even concerts and fireworks. Lots of opportunities to explore the institution, and the personalities that support it.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
As far as casing the place goes, I've always been a big fan of the "Posing As a Wealthy Potential Donor" routine. The face of the group and maybe a "bodyguard" and a "consultant" buy fancy clothes and throw around money to get a VIP tour of the museum after hours.
Now, in your scenario, one potential wrinkle would be that the curator is the one who gives them the tour. An ancient dragon has a passive perception of 27 and it wouldn't take an unusually high Insight check for the dragon to guess why some rich person the dragon's never heard of has come in wearing rented clothes a size too large and talking like a Cockney ragamuffin.
The reason the dragon has placed fake robes on display should be all too obvious considering that persons unknown are planning to steal them even we speak. But a truly scrupulous historian would note on the display that the robes were a facsimile (otherwise they'd be failing their duty to the public). The players can see that the robes aren't the real deal when they reconnoiter.
Art heists tend, in real life, to be depressingly drab affairs. Edvard Munch's The Scream has probably been stolen three or four times in my lifetime; once by some guys who just waited in the closet until everyone had left for the night. That won't do at all for you. You'll definitely need one of those webs of magical lasers to backflip or sexy-shimmy through; some magical sensor that will need to be shot out from across the chamber with a one-in-a-million crossbow shot; and at least one skylight to rappel through.
If the whole museum is full of magic junk, you might have them steal one thing from one end of the museum that they'll need to do the actual robbery at the other end of the museum.
Mmm... you could try casing one of these joints to make your museum more realistic
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
For the reason for the display, you could have it that an old, broken down building was demolished for "progress" and they found a secret room in it with ancient artefacts from an archwizard. The items could have been claimed by the museum as an exhibit showing how this area has played host to powerful magic users in the past.
"Magic Users of the Past" would be a good title for the exhibit. Depending on how weird and wacky you want to make the game, you could add a load of artefacts which would be failed efforts to create magic items which people take for granted - like an Immovable Rod which is movable but becomes weightless - they stopped gravity from affecting it, but nothing else - or a wand of fireball which takes time to charge up, so they might try to use it to find it takes d4 turns to charge, but becomes more powerful the longer it charges. Go through the magic items section and put twists onto as many as you can with "semi-successful" results - a broom of flying with 10ft. speed, a hat of disguise that always puts you in a flowery dress, etc.
You could break down the exhibits to: "The path to Success - early attempts at magic items", "Local power - look inside an Archmages Workshop", "Early Warforged - the Constructs that Time Forgot", etc.
Obviously, if the heist goes well, none of it could end up being used, but if the heist fails, and they get in a fight - imagine fighting an ancient dragon, who really doesn't want to damage anything, and using loads of magical items which don't work properly! It'd be brilliant!
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You'll want guards, cleaners, researchers, tour guides and potentially some constructs to act as a security system. If you have a place you want to be more heavily guarded, you can have some tougher guards and maybe some kind of 'vault guardian'.
A museum in a fantasy realm probably has a number of magical defences: Alarm, Arcane Eye, Arcane Lock, Glyph of Warding and Private Sanctum are all magical spells that a museum could employ to act as a magic security system.
Statblock wise you could use the following, I've used a range of different strength monsters:
Public (If conducting heist during the day): Commoner, Noble
Guards: Guard, Thug, Veteran
Guard Dog (If you want good boi's): Mastiff, Wolf
Tour Guide: Commoner (Can't imagine they'd be capable in combat)
Researcher: Cultist, Apprentice Wizard, Mage
Constructs: Flying Sword, Animated Armor, Rug of Smothering, Iron Cobra, Oaken Bolter
Guardian (If you want some sort of boss for your party to fight, assuming they're not fighting the dragon): Mimic, Helmed Horror, Canoloth, Stone Golem
It could be a private collection whose owner recently died. That way you can have one of his heirs hiring the party to steal the robes because they want to cheat the other inheritors of it and don't want to split the profits; that would give the party a reason to be more careful, since if they break any other exibition piece then they would be costing their employer money. Or it is an academy museum and the one who hired them is a teacher who wants them. Both of those options give you the chance for a more eclectic mix of items rather than a theme.
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