D&D 5E D&D Beyond Reveals New Golden Vault Details

Over on D&D Beyond you can read more about Keys from the Golden Vault, including information on 3 of the 13 adventures, the Golden Vault organization itself, and an overview of how the heist adentures within work.

What Is Keys From the Golden Vault? 13 Heist-Centric Adventures

Gather your crew and get to planning—you're going on a heist! The latest book from D&D takes characters of all levels on epic heists. Learn more about t...

www.dndbeyond.com

Four of the adventures include:

• The Stygian Gambit (for 2nd-level adventurers): Case a Nine Hells-themed casino and steal the prize for the Three-Dragon Ante tournament that's currently taking place.
• Prisoner 13 (for 4th-level adventurers): Infiltrate a remote prison in the tundra of Icewind Dale and extract information from an inmate.
• Vidorant’s Vault (for 7th-level adventurers): Break into the safe of a renowned thief, bypassing its many security features en route.
• Fire and Darkness (for 11th-level adventurers): Navigate the grim fortress of an efreeti and retrieve an artifact of unimaginable evil, the Book of Vile Darkness.

 

[Tutara]

Blades in the Dark is a very different heist game. In Blades you're replicating the experience of a heist movie with things like flashback scenes and a loadout you don't need to nail down until you use. In this it's more like being the participants in a real life heist where you actually have the maps and do the planning in advance.

Absolutely. I enjoy heists in Blades because it is like a heist movie. It's fast and fun, without the choice paralysis and endless strategising that seems to plague planning in D&D. Blades is the sort of heist I want to play, and honestly if a real life heist is anything like planning one in D&D I am glad that I have forsworn a life of crime.

Naturally, only my opinion and if you've found a way to make planning fun in D&D, more power to you. Maybe this book will help me to do so.

 

[CubicsRube]

Mark me as someone not enthused.

Yes you can run a heist in D&D, you could run a dinner party in D&D.

However other systems can give you so many more interesting options for heists IMO, frex: Mission clocks in The Sprawl, flashbacks in BitD, astral security in Shadowrun, investigative skills in gumshoe, etc.

I love D&D for dungeon crawling, especially with random encounters, reaction rolls and morale, but it'd be one of my least favourite systems for a heist campaign.

 

[plisnithus8]

Absolutely. I enjoy heists in Blades because it is like a heist movie. It's fast and fun, without the choice paralysis and endless strategising that seems to plague planning in D&D. Blades is the sort of heist I want to play, and honestly if a real life heist is anything like planning one in D&D I am glad that I have forsworn a life of crime.

Naturally, only my opinion and if you've found a way to make planning fun in D&D, more power to you. Maybe this book will help me to do so.

I must say I enjoy planning the heist strategy and DMng others doing so.
As to the heist movie feel of BiD, too much of it makes me feel the same way I do when I’m trying to figure out a puzzle in game and another play makes a decent skill check to beat me to the solution.

 

[kapars]

Mark me as someone not enthused.

Yes you can run a heist in D&D, you could run a dinner party in D&D.

However other systems can give you so many more interesting options for heists IMO, frex: Mission clocks in The Sprawl, flashbacks in BitD, astral security in Shadowrun, investigative skills in gumshoe, etc.

I love D&D for dungeon crawling, especially with random encounters, reaction rolls and morale, but it'd be one of my least favourite systems for a heist campaign.

Have you looked at something like Skerples’ Kidnap the Archpriest? I’ve been looking into it and it seems like it could help a lot.

 

[Clint_L]

It's on for $25 Canadian at DDB - I just snagged it. 2 bucks per adventure is great value!

 

[TravDoc42]

I wonder if there'll be any new monsters in this? The stat block for Prisoner 13 has some cool features!

 

[MNblockhead]

That’s so not true. Either you are a poor DM or you have a poor DM but my group has run a heist (home brew) in 5E and it was amazing.

Why do some people find it necessary to trash someone as "poor DM" whenever they raise questions about whether D&D handles certain themes well? I can see how fans of D&D may be irked by people criticizing or questioning the game, but responses like this just come across as petty.

Poster 1: "D&D is not a good system for X type of games."
Poster 2: "Not true. You just suck."

D&D 5e is designed to accommodate a wide variety of playstyles and themes. Unlike games that are specifically tailored for a specific style of play or theme, it does make 5e a bit more reliant on examples and, often, variant mechanics to aid DMs into running a theme or play style that hasn't received as much official support. A DM can been an amazing DM running amazing games in one style or theme but struggle running others (horror and heists come up a lot). Even the designers of the game realize that the standard core mechanics don't give a lot of support, which is why Curse of Strahd devoted a good amount of space to advice on running horror-themed games and this book apparently devoting space with advice and mechanics for running heists games.

 

[MNblockhead]

I’ve been reading a lot of OSR adventures and I’m not sure I’m able to enjoy these ( 5e) anymore. Upon reading all that occurs to me is:
Why is the layout of this Prison so simple? Why do they give you a prescribed infiltration plan? Isn’t the fun in these making your own plan and having it go wrong? Why so much boxed text? Why is the layout so verbose?

Because it has to be targeted to new DMs as much as experienced DMs. I'm hoping some of the adventures allow for more party planning, but it makes sense that they would have at least one adventure that holds the DM's and player's hands and that this would be the one that they would release for free.

That said, I get where you are coming from. One reason I never really enjoyed Adventurer's League games is that they seem to lead the party like a bull by a nose ring through the adventure and I've found most of the regular players get annoyed when you "go off script" and suggest any course of action than the "obvious one" you are expected to take.

But I'm witholding judgement on this book until I can see the other adventures.

 

[MNblockhead]

Sure. You can run a heist (or any other action adventure subtype) with D&D but it definitely doesn't do anything to help you.

Which is why these theme-specific adventure books tend to expand on the core rules--or at least remind you that the DMG exist and give examples of how to use variant rules from the DMG. Curse of Strahd comes to mind. I don't recall the DMG giving suspicion mechanics--but I keep forgetting that the DMG exists.

 

[MNblockhead]

It seems like The Golden Vault are a Mission: Impossible style organization. And D&D has been moving toward aetherpunk aesthetics for a couple decades now, starting with Eberron.

[Googles aetherpunk. Gets lost in a rabbit hole of aetherpunk/arcane punk and solar punk wiki articles, Reddit posts, and discussion threads. After searching for aether/arcane/solor punk music, and listening so some League of Legend sound tracks, am reminded that this EN World thread is still open in a browser tab...]

Even after 8 years of being back in the hobby, I realize how out of touch I remain.