Preface: This post was originally much shorter. After posting it on reddit, I got fair comments that it was too shallow of a review which made me decide to go back and revise it. Hell, I even found a few places where the sentence just abruptly stopped - not sure how that happened (copy and paste error maybe?)  Apologies for the piss poor first attempt - hopefully this attempt is much better.

Heists and comedies just seem to be a natural fit for each other. Probably because no heist ever goes by the plan, and this opens you up to a bunch of hilarious circumstances. If I told you to think of a heist movie, there's a good chance you would think of Ocean's Eleven - a comedy. Heck, not only do we have heists that are comedies…, but there are even comedies about how wonky heists can get! It's only natural in a heist story to think "where will this go off the rails?", a question that every tabletop RPG player knows oh so well.

Enter Keys from the Golden Vault, a Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition anthology book published earlier this year from Wizards of the Coast. It consists of 13 adventures across just as many character levels that allow Dungeon Masters (DMs) to cut and paste into their campaigns. Getting too many bored glances and comments about railroaded adventures? Throwing in one of these heists is a pretty good way to re-engage your players and get some chaos back into your RPG night.

Not The Energy Drink Kind of Vault

The central premise behind this book is "The Golden Vault" - a Robin Hood-esque group of people that do illegal activities that serve the greater good. Players get the "Keys" referenced in the title as sort of a Mission Impossible-style, "should you choose to accept this mission" type of recording. The Key disappears instead of exploding, but you could easily correct that as a DM. Of course, if the idea of the Golden Vault doesn't mesh well with your current campaign, each adventure also contains other characters and hooks to get the players tangled up in these heists.

Having this kind of central organization that all of the adventurers are based around is something that I really like about this book. There is even a suggestion that you should work with your players to figure out how and why the characters drew the attention of the Golden Vault. You could either work this as the baseline for an adventure leading up to the heist you want to do, or do a "Session Zero" type discussion - even if you are in the middle of your campaign - where you explain what the Golden Vault is and talk with the group about what things in their character's backstories could have drawn the Golden Vault to the party. Then, just roleplay the first encounter with the vault.

While the book is designed to be run as a single one off adventure, the nature of the Golden Vault does make it easier to set up the players as a "crew" getting hired to do a bunch of heists for the Golden Vault. In fact, if it were me running this book, I'd play up the "Mission Impossible"-esque nature of the different keys combined with some Inspector Gadget-style comedy of making these keys detonate in hilarious ways with recurring characters.

How are the actual adventures, though?

While it may seem natural for RPGs and heists to go together, it can be difficult to pull them off. This is largely for two reasons: the first one being the planning aspect. If you aren't careful, players can spend too much time going around in circles trying to figure out the "perfect" plan and it can bog down a session. That's one of the reasons the Blades in the Dark RPG has "flashbacks" so you can keep the action rolling and figure out the plan as you get to it. Keys doesn't fix this problem 100%, but it does give tips and advice for DMs to poke and prod characters along. For instance, there's not one single way to solve each heist. Each of the adventures has several angles available for characters to approach them.

In "Shard of the Accursed," the players have to infiltrate a tomb. The notes that they have gotten from their contact provide them with several different entry points that they can use to get in. Yet the book also has some words on what happens if the players decide to disguise themselves as staff hired to work in said tomb. Newer DMs will need to keep their players in check to avoid spending a whole gaming session just figuring out how to approach the problem. For example this can look like encouraging the players to discuss the plan in real time by providing consequences if they take too long. Say the team spent all of their time talking and their ride to the heist arrives before the gang fully fleshes out that plan. What do the players do when their caravan is searched by the guards?

The second problem is that, with a heist, typically that means that the characters have to succeed in some way in order to move the plot forward. Keys gets around this by providing DMs with plot points for if the characters fail. In fact, the first adventure, "The Murkmire Malevolence," is the best example of this. One page at the end of the adventure is split in half into "Mission is Successful" and "Mission is Unsuccessful" columns. Each side has several different story hooks that you could use to affect future adventures in varying ways. This leans into another piece I like about Keys: the back of each adventure has a description of what is really going on for the DM. That mysterious stone that the players have been hired to steal? Yeah, turns out it's actually the egg of an eldritch creature that's getting ready to hatch. In this example, it even has notes to add during the session that allude to the true nature of the artifact, such as the egg becoming more transparent as it gets closer to hatching.

I like this dispersion between "what do the players know" vs "what is actually happening" in each adventure. It helps with that unpredictable nature that I mentioned earlier that makes heists so interesting - the twist. In fact, each adventure has two sets of maps: the map that the players are given, which is based on info from their "inside contact" and how much that contact actually knows. Then there is the map for the DM to use during the game session.

The players may think that they have everything planned out to the letter, but what happens when the item they are stealing isn't in the place they expected it to be? What if your players have gotten used to this type of misdirection and are "expecting the unexpected"? The first chapter has solutions for that, too. For example, you can throw a rival crew into the mix. What if the players aren't the only ones hired to steal the object? If you are doing the heist campaign suggestion, I'd even recommend making the rival crew recurring characters that keep crossing paths with the players. If you have trouble fleshing out this rival crew, there are suggested members and a chart listing motivations for each one. These extra pieces can add a new dynamic to your D&D games, making them feel like they are part of a more fleshed-out world and less "railroad-y" than other pre-written adventures.

Speaking of Connections

One thing I like with D&D official adventures is when they connect with other pre-written adventures that Wizards of the Coast has published. This ties into my previous point about making a fully fleshed-out world. When adventures reference events and places that characters might have experienced in other books, those connections help reinforce those moments in games and make them more memorable. Keys continues this pattern with a few connections into other D&D products. First of all, the 4th adventure, "Prisoner 13", takes place in Revel's End - the same prison that is seen in the beginning of the D&D live action movie that came out earlier this year. Since this book was released around the same time as the movie, I have to believe that connection was intentional. Now DMs have a visual piece to link with the adventure and help the heist become more vivid in description.

In "Affair on the Concordant Express," the players have to get info from a prisoner being carried onboard a train that travels through different planes. However, the prisoner in question was apprehended while they were hiding out in the city-state of Akharin Sangar. Keys then reminds DMs that Akharin Sangar is covered in more detail in the Journeys through the Radiant Citadel book. If you've run that specific adventure for your players before, you now have an instant connection to this new adventure and you have a great way to get the players in position for this heist. If you haven't run it before, then you can connect your players to it at the end of the adventure. Maybe the players stay on board for the return trip to Akharin Sangar where they transition to that adventure or some version of it. Or, you could use the Radiant Citadel for a side adventure describing how the players end up getting back to their home plane (or maybe they don't?).

More References Than a College Thesis

I mentioned the in-universe connections, but do you like references to other media? I know I've already made a few of those in this article, but reading through this book, I could not stop finding clear nods to other pieces of fiction. The Introduction to the book talks about the narrative structure behind each of the 13 adventures: Mission Briefing, Plan the Heist, Execute the Heist, Conclude the Heist. As soon as I saw it I thought of Captain Cold from the Flash and his heist planning guidance: "Make the plan, execute the plan, expect the plan to go off the rails.....throw away the plan." There's also a character with a connection to a portrait that has a stark resemblance to the Picture of Dorian Gray. A character only known as "Prisoner 13" gave me flashbacks to "Prisoner 0 has escaped" from Doctor Who. Even the title of the train adventure I mentioned: "Affair on the Concordant Express" is reminiscent of Murder on the Orient Express. If you don't pick up the references, your players definitely will.

Content for your other adventures

I’ve said it in other blog posts, but when I’m reading these books, I rarely ever run them as written. I would venture I’m not the only one who works this way. When I read through these books, I find bits and pieces out of the adventures that I like and end up using them in my own adventures. Keys doesn’t disappoint in this area. The inter-planar train in “Affair on the Concordant Express” is such a cool idea to limit to just that adventure. It’s a setting that could springboard several different plot points in a campaign.

The second adventure, “The Stygian Gambit,” is very much an “Ocean’s Eleven” style of an escapade. The heist is fairly straightforward, as it is a lower level adventure. However, “The Afterlife Casino,” or the setting for this adventure is another setting that I want to pluck out and use in a custom campaign. The book describes the casino as an attempt to replicate the underworld and people traveling on the river Styx to get to it. But what good is taking players to a casino without some gambling? Well, there are 3 different games described, along with mechanics that you can use to separate your players from their coin. These types of things can take an average adventure and turn it into an experience your players will bring up time and time again.

Conclusions

1. I like this book! It doesn't hurt that as I’m reading it, I’m constantly thinking about all the ways my players would take the adventures off the rails in weird directions.

2. While the book doesn't handhold newer GMs on how to conduct these heist adventures, it provides them with enough tools to help them work their way through it.

3. OMG Gruk-Gruk (see above pic). It's so cute in a creepy/morbid sort of way.

Notes/Disclaimers: This review is based on the product itself, I have not had the chance to play each of these adventures. Also, I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. Or let me know on Facebook. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon. Lastly, thanks to Wizards of the Coast for providing a review copy of the book.