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How to heist RPG with incompetent characters

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I was hoping to tap into the r/RPG collective and brainstorm on what I imagine is a fairly common problem: How do you run gritty heist games with incompetent characters(not players)?

I love my group. They are a bunch of theater kids who grew up to become amazing, fun players. They always bring their A game with wild characters and perform their hearts out. It's like a crazy ensemble improv show every weekend.

I'm up to DM after the current 5e fantasy romp is concluded, and I have a cool cyberpunk-with-swords gritty heist campaign concept ready to go but I foresee a potential problem. Due the combination of extremely strong willed and flawed characters, the accomplished theater and improv actors playing them, and booze, the party is always a rolling garbage fire of infighting, character drama, and comedic errors. It's a ton of fun, but shit rarely gets done, which everyone is mostly fine with.

Things came to a head during our most recent session: a fantasy heist. Long story short: Rolling Dumpster Fire happened, we got the goods, but half the party is under house arrest and the other half is on the lam in disguises, one person we still don't know where they are, and there's ball bearings and knock out gas all through the church we broke into, and half the town is on fire.

I'm too invested in the setting to do something else and I already have player buy in to try my campaign. Do I just accept that it's going to be closer to Cyberpunk Fargo with Swords than Blade Runner with Swords? Has anyone had experience shifting the party dynamic towards party competence? How would I go about doing that?

Barring actual advice, please share stories from your dumpster fire campaigns, especially stories about incompetent professional criminals.
>>
You have two choices:
> Talk to your players and ask them to change.
> accept that it's going to be closer to Cyberpunk Fargo with Swords

Talking to them is the only way you'll get them to change.
>>
Choose a system that enables roleplaying and allows for failure to promote more than just "you don't get to do what you wanted to."

You could re-flavor Blades in the Dark to cyberpunk pretty easily,
>>
>>55329355
>question for r/RPG
>posts on /tg/
How embarrassing
>>
>>55331839
You bit.
>>
>>55329724
I accept that part, my question is more along the lines of how do I tell them their characters are dumb and bad without them feeling like I'm telling them they are dumb and bad?

I'm actually getting more and more excited for cyberpunk fargo though so I think I'll just do that.
>>
>>55332249
Triple reverse baited, I did actually copypaste this and forget to edit it because it was like 5 in the goddamn morning.
>>
>>55329724
silly fool, i wish it were that easy. but then you get my chucklekfucks that say "yea we really need to change that" but then 1 week later its like the MIB came through and wiped the whole thing.
>>
>>55329355
Fiasco is a game system designed specifically for this sort of thing. Maybe try that.
Thread posts: 9
Thread images: 1


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