Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.
Pros
Lots more full colour art. It continues to be a highlight of the edition.
Different adventures have different flavour, and different settings. This contributes to a different feel.
Effort is made to give each heist its own feel, and different characters are involved in each adventure. The setups are different, and cover a wide variety. From stealing money from a casino, an item from a museum, to artifacts of evil. There’s a reverse heist, where an item needs to be returned.
Could Go Either Way
Not much in the way of new creatures.
The adventure is very episodic. Each adventure covers a level, and is completely on its own. This gives it a feel more like an episodic TV show rather than a giant long running narrative. It also makes it easy to repurposed particular levels for your own games. From maps, to largely using the heist as presented when your players want to break in somewhere.
Cons
A page or two for a unified narrative to tie together the adventures would’ve been nice. I tend to prefer adventures when they have a bigger narrative, but which I can ignore. That way I can use individual adventures as is in one of my existing campaigns, run a whole campaign using the book, or chop up the adventure for parts (usually maps and cool puzzles).
Despite efforts of different settings, the adventure structure can get too similar. They involve a single location, sometimes with a twist at the end. I’d have liked to see some connective material leading to new locations, and some more twists. Maybe we need to hunt down a stolen artifact first, and then we have a smaller heist.
There is some 3D art here which is below the standards I’ve come to expect of this edition.
* Denotes nitpicking.
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| The standard cover for the book. Not bad, but not my favourite. |
Introduction
One of the classic D&D archetypes is the thief. A stealthy character who pickpockets, steals, or sneakily back stabs enemies. And now we have a movie playing with that archetype too. But in D&D, this often means a heist. I think it was my third session of D&D where I had my heist. And it’s an incredibly fun scenario to play. However, a good heist is not easy to make. Here we have a book that attempts to give us Dungeon Masters some heists to play through. How does it stack up? Let’s jump right in.
The Adventure
New Player Options
There is not much here. Moving on.
New Monsters
There are a few monsters provided for this adventure, as we've come to expect. They are well fitted to the adventure and there aren't too many. This adventure, even at the level of monsters, tries its best to be creepy just like the module that inspired it. Quite a few of them are specific NPCs and a lot of material is given for playing them.
What You Need to Play
Pretty typical here. You’ll need the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master’s Guide. Everything not added in the adventure, which is a lot, is found in those books. I miss the days when all you needed were the basic rules and adventure. But that time has long passed.
The Adventure Itself
The adventures cover a wide range of levels, many scenarios, and items to steal. There is quite a lot of variety here. From infiltrating a tournament, stealing from a museum, to disrupting a magical ritual. The variety in the premise and setups of these heists is one of the strengths of these adventures. There are 13 adventures here, covering a level range from 1 to 11. Each level gets an adventure, while two special levels get 2 adventures. That also means there’s a variety of possible combatants and targets. It’s not all simple human targets.
There’s some options included to help make the adventures into a campaign with advice for players to make a base and make it into a proper operation. There’s also some advice on how to add complications to a heist by moving the target item. And a favourite of mine, there’s some great options for alternate crews that try to interferes and steal the item before the party does. Often, they have more evil plans for the item. This section was great. I wish it was longer. A nice 10-20 page section on different options would’ve helped take the book from a collection of adventures, to a masterclass in heist adventures. I hope future adventures look more at aiding Dungeon Masters, reuse, and look to address multiple different uses.
I wish there were more cool secondary items to steal too. Often the main target of the theft is the most interesting, but of course the party will be forced to part with it. I’d like some additional curiosities for the party to be able to pocket for themselves. They don’t all need to be powerful items either, as unique and situational items are also fun to receive. Something as simple as a cloak that can change colours can help make a character unique. Though some powerful items would be nice, especially given that we should be able to play these adventures as a campaign. One misstep here though is that it seems like a good party is assumed. Some groups like to play more morally dubious players, especially in a theft based campaign.
One of the big issues here is that there is no connective parts of a campaign. So running a full satisfying campaign is hard. Just doing one heist after another when they share a similar structure and there’s no overarching narrative is not the best player experience. As a result, these adventures are best in moderation for the heist component of a campaign or as one-shots. Or you as the Dungeon Master need to come up with good connective tissue to make an overarching fun narrative. It’s not an easy problem to solve, and I really wish there was something here.
The structure of missions is also fairly similar from adventure to adventure. There is a location described. A heist must be performed to get some important item (or in one case put it back in a reverse heist). There are often some tricks in the mission itself like decoys, a possible double cross at the end, and it’s finished. You don’t need to go to multiple locations. You don’t get role-play sessions of returning the object. You don’t get an extended chase, or find out the person you gave the item to is a doppelganger. They do try to give each adventure its own feeling and difference within that structure. But some wildly different structures would be nice too. Maybe even have a part 1 and 2 heist spread across 2 levels and locations?
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| One of the better examples of art within the book. I quite like this style. |
The Art and Book Build Quality
The drawn art continues to be in the typical D&D style we’ve come to expect. The same slightly cartoony style is there. I wish there more realistic images playing with light, but it’s not bad. The maps are also well drawn with many nice details. Some look hand written. Some have tears in them and represent in-game maps. These look generally good, and what we’ve come to expect.
Wait, but I said drawn. Is there some art that isn’t drawn? Yes, unfortunately. Two adventures have pictures at the start which don’t look good compared to the art surrounding it. It’s done in this 3D style with what looks like posed 3D models. To be clear, I’m not against 3D art in general. I’ve seen some truly beautiful screenshots from video games. Movies and TV series are increasingly using 3D game engines like Unreal. And you can do some truly incredible art with truly beautiful lighting. However, the art here falls well below that. I’d prefer we get more art like I admired back at the start of this edition with beautiful hand drawn lighting, But if you need to do 3D, it should look better. Luckily it’s only 2 images in this book.
The book itself is the same cover and binding as the previous books. The cover follows the same art style. My copy had no physical issues either. All in all, the physical condition and quality of the book remains high.
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| One of the maps from the adventure. I like the art and character, and the way it looks like a real drawn map from the inside. |
Price
So, the price has gone up. I’ve been at this for a long time now. So I expected it to eventually come. But still, given the books would already benefit from a price drop, it’s particularly painful. Sales continue to be plentiful though, so it’s tough to get an exact price.
PDF Version Critique
For a long time I’ve asked for a combined PDF and book version. Now you can pay a bit more to get both. It’s good that this option exists, though the online version is D&D Beyond. Also given the costs involved, it would’ve been nice if they always came together at a lower price.
What I felt was Missing
There really needs to be some connective material to be able to run this book as a single adventure. The Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos book did a pretty good job of this. Each year could be run on their own, or combined to have a single cause of all the events. Here, they are very disconnected. Having 2-3 adventures to bring everything together, some kind of double cross, that sort of thing would go a long way. Games like Hitman have done this for years, while also being somewhat a close comparison. As it is, the adventures feel disconnected.
Free Stuff
Nothing here. I really wish we got some connective material here, and opening adventure, something. This part has gotten worse since the Curse of Strahd time. Or how about a teaser adventure at level 1 to get people excited?
Summary
It’s a good collection of adventures. They cover a variety of heists, with a variety of situations. The main weakness is that each one follows a pattern of arriving at one location, and trying to steal something. Running this as a full campaign can be tough, unless your party really likes heists. There’s no glue to hold a campaign together, except as an episodic TV show with a heist of the week. But combined with the structural similarities, I think they’re best run as one-offs or as the basis of a heist for your campaign, before returning to business as usual.
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