The perfect heist.
Getting in, getting out. The disguises. The smooth-talking and careful bluffs. The stealth, the hacking, andwhen the moment requires itthe quick action. And above all, the beautiful plan, so carefully researched and crafted.
Oh, youre good at it. You and your friends, you do the impossible. Its never as easy as it seems (not like it everseemseasy), but you pull it offevery time. And you look good doing it. Bond? Ocean? Neo? Yeah, theyre OK. Youre the real deal.
Because youre not just master thieves. Youre master thievesfrom the future. And better yet: youreLiarsa special kind of liar, a kind whose lies come true. When you lie to reality, you change it. A lock someone forgot to check. A guard who looks away at just the right moment, or a getaway car that somehow goes just a little bit faster than it can. If the mission isnt going right, you change the rules. You take control of reality itself.
And thats good. Because you arent the only liars out there.
Someone else is telling lies, and theyre big ones. Like, end-of-the-world lies. Punching-holes-in-the-universe lies. Its not clear who they are, what they want, or how theyre doing it. Whats clear is that if you dont do something, its all over. As in,allover.
Whod have guessed youd be the ones saving the universe?But hey, you always find a way to come out ahead, and this is no different. Because it turns out that each time you fix a little bit of reality, you get to take a touch of its essence for your own usesand its powerful stuff. Grabbing that essence and making it your own? We call that
Lying: Its the Best!
Deceptions. Fabrications. Misrepresentations, shall we say? Yeah, you probably tell plenty of those, but thats not the cool stuff. No, were talking aboutyourkind of lyingwhen you lie to reality. Because heres the thing:It always works. The guard gets too caught up in her Sudoku game? You say it, it happens. Theres road work blocking the bad guys getaway route? Yep. A massive blackout plunges all of Paris into darkness? Sure. Reality is your plaything. If you can think it, it happens.
Thats not to say that lies have no consequences. Lying is stressful, and the bigger the lie, the more stressful it gets. Small lies? You can usually pull them off without much cost. Bigger lies can actually hurt you. Lie big enough, and you could pay the ultimate price. So blacking out all of Paris is a pretty dangerous ployunless you happen to know some specific weakness of the grid. Some tiny little lie that sparks big consequences.
But, hey, youre great at that sort of thing. Thats why youre the one saving reality!
Did We Mention Youre from the Future?
Yep. A future that might not even exist, if you cant fix the now.
The 31st-century interdimensional exploration shipCelestehas returned to Earthbut something is definitely wrong. Youd had inexplicable problems aboard the ship, and seen increasing reality decay in the dimensions youd visited. When theCelestereturned to Earths orbit, things were downright catastrophic: You found yourself in ancient historythe 21st century to be exact. Even worse, this ancient Earth is increasingly riddled with anomalies. Improbable things are happening, and the Zones of Improbability are growing in both size and number. The stress is literally tearing reality itself apart.
These Improbability Zones are places where reality has taken a sharp right turn. Perhaps inanimate objects in downtown Cincinnati are randomly transforming into different objects. Or people in Manchester keep running into doppelgngers of themselves. Theres always some objective that should return reality to normalmost often a seemingly innocuous object that must be removed from the Improbability Zone. Whatevers causing the reality disruption is somehow keyed to that object.
Fortunately, getting your hands on other peoples objects is your fort!
Building the Perfect Heist
Heists are hard. The most beautiful jobs rely on meticulous planning and perfect execution. And even then, some wrench always seems to get thrown into the works. An unexpected twist (or three!) that throws the whole plan into disarray. But youre pretty awesome at pulling it all back together and coming out on topwith panache!
How do you do it?
A heist in Stealing Stories unfolds in three Acts. InAct One, the GM and the players work together to create the heistthe scenarioandthe plan, together at the same time. The GM starts the mission briefing with the objective and location, like: The key is a thumb drive kept in an office building in the middle of Dallas.
Then the group starts building the plan, suggesting elements that fit their strengths. If a PC is good at climbing, crawling, and getting through tight spots, the player might say theres access to the office suite via the air ducts. But then the GM steps in with a complication: Yes, but theres no vent access from the ground level. They connect to the roof. The players suggest a stairwell, fire escape, or access from a nearby building, and the GM adds in the security cameras, patrols, or other complications. In this way, the players and GM work together until theyve created a detailed scenario, and an equally detailed plan, all at the same time.
Once you move intoAct Two, the action starts. Youre good at what you do, but the universe doesnt always play ball. Youll call on your excellent skills, your wits, and your lies as you overcome the challenges you foresaw in your plan. But theres always more to it than that, right?
The GM will throw a few Twists in here and therethings that no plan, no matter how careful, can fully anticipate. And then theres the Turn: The moment where the mission goes in a surprise direction. Maybe theres another team after the same thing. Or an unrelated emergency nearby puts the authorities on high alert. A storm rolls in, or a fire breaks out, or the target isnt where or what you thought it was. Suddenly, everything is different.
Its time to think on your feet!
InAct Threeyou close in on success (or at least a conclusion!). The stakes are higher. The results more definitive. Your actions are bigger, bolder, grander. Its now or never.
But youve got even more at your disposal than wits, skill, and lies. Mission Cards give players an additional resource for playing heist-savvy characters. One might reveal that you brought a special tool perfect for the situation. Another might let a story from your pastpertain to this one, making the current challenge easier. A third might provide a way in which your character is prepared or knowledgeable for the situation at hand (even when you, the player, are not). Its all part of a game that makes the perfect heist come together.
A Zero-Prep Roleplaying Game. Really!
Prepping to run Stealing Stories for the Devil is easybecause theres literally zero prep work. You start the session with a few key pieces of information, then build the scenario with the players in Act One. If you and the players are already conversant in the rules, you can all be playing within five minutes.
Stealing Stories for the Devilcontains all the rules you need to playand more importantly, thestructureandresourcesthat make a collaboratively created game session amazingly easy, fun, and successful with zero prep. Everything you need is included in the game.
That includes powerful GM tools. Loads of resources, ideas, and inspiration let you take the scenario youve created with the players and, in minutes, layer in the details that bring it to life. The game includes dozens of maps, images, NPC generation tools, Twist ideas, and more. Easy-to-use reference materials let you quickly answer the questions that come up for the scenario, like How long will it take for the fire department to show up, or, What happens when the shaft is jammed with debris? Itll seem like you prepped for hours!
A Campaign Full of Astonishing Twists and Turns
A one-shot can be a fun way to play Stealing Stories for the Deviland its zero-prep nature makes it ideally suited for a spur-of-the-moment game. A one-shot game is going to feel like a typical heist tale (think of films likeOceans 11,Heist,The Italian Job, etc., or television shows likeLupinorLeverage) with just a little bit of sci-fi.
But as you might have already surmised, theres more going on here than meets the eye.
Stealing Stories gives you a fascinating meta-plot, filled with as many surprising twists and astonishing turns as any individual heist. It takes the PCs through a season of gameplay as they come to grasp the big picture and discover whatsreallygoing on. You can also run an open-ended campaign, taking the story in any direction your gaming group desires.
The core twelve-heist season begins like a standalone adventure, but quickly introduces mysterious forces at play, delivers surprising twists, gets stranger (with more science fiction/science fantasy elements), and ultimately reveals the cause of all the reality disruptions. And the characters grow and develop, as each time they successfully return reality to its natural state, they gain a little of its power for themselves.
But you arent limited to the core season. As with most RPGs, an open-ended campaign can take on whatever style the group desires, focused more or less on the weird sci-fi elements as they wish. (You could, in fact, remove all the reality-changing aspects of the game and just run a standard, modern-day heist story.)
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