This review has been sponsored by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.
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Designed by: Daniel Kahn, Dana Floberg, Alex Niederberger, Isla Lader, Lynne M. Meyer, Matthew Campbell, Saga Mackenzie
Sneaking over just in time for Valentine’s Day and the release of Keys from the Golden Vault, Stolen Hearts: Love Story Heists is an adventure anthology that includes six heist and love-themed mini adventures, ranging from level 1 to level 15.
Everyone is at least somewhat familiar with the heist as a cinematic genre, yet translating the meticulous planning, zany hijinks, and surprise twists to a tabletop RPG can be tricky.
Stolen Hearts includes a helpful two-page introduction with tips on how to run heists, including “Casing the Joint” as a skill challenge. Failing forward is also an important nut to crack, allowing multiple failure states and consequences, so that one bad roll doesn’t turn the heist into a chaotic aggro-everything dungeon crawl.
Heists also require complete buy-in from your players. Although the example in the book for Casing the Joint uses Cragmaw Castle from Last Mine of Phandelver, that’s more of a traditional dungeon crawl. The locations and challenges presented in these six adventures are very much not places where the PCs should be room-to-room fighting. They’re museums, warehouses, and mansions. The party needs to be invested in the people they’re working for, and care about wanting to do things quietly, neatly, and with minimal disruptions and casualties.
Each of the six adventures average around ten pages, and feature a single medium-size location. The first two adventures, “Sending Love” and “The Queen of Tarts,” take place at someone’s well-guarded home, while higher-level adventures feature a sky temple and an extra-planar casino.
Every adventure uses the advice in the introduction, allowing the party to prepare for each heist by Casing the Joint and learning more information with each success, such as guard patrols, secret passages, or possible traps. They also include multiple adventure hooks, a troubleshooting section for how to quickly fix a derailing adventure, and any relevant creature statblocks.
Though the adventures obviously differ in story and task, they’re all tied together by love. The quest-giving NPC is a lover, or ex-lover, of the person you’re trying to steal from (with one exception, who’s an ancestor), and only by completing the task can you help solve their dispute.
Or not. Or maybe it ultimately doesn’t matter! Some of the stories are a bit cheeky and light-hearted, like quarreling cooking couple, or the two will-they won’t-they vampires, while others are a sobering look at duty over love (between a paladin and a lich!) or the pulls of a ghostly ancestor wanting to right a past wrong. Either way, the personal quests help the party become emotionally invested in the story and the NPCs, and most of the adventures offer rewarding role-playing opportunities in the middle of the heist.
The stunning original portrait art goes a long way in helping me care for these characters and their quarrels. And I can’t say enough great things about the full color, VTT-ready maps (gridded and non-gridded). Heists, like dungeon crawls, operate entirely out of a detailed location, and having a well-constructed map is a huge benefit (and damn near a requirement).
Though I generally like them all, my favorite adventure is easily the last one, “Misfortune Favors the Bold.” Designed for level 15, the party is hired by the goddess Sune to retrieve her lost love from an extra-planar casino run by the goddess of Misfortune! Things immediately get complicated, as the deva lover has been reduced to a mere husk, and the party must steal back her diadem, her memories, and her soul from the evil casino, which includes fully built mini-games and a Misfortune tracker that powers up the final encounter with the demonic management.
That’s not to say that each heist lacks some great ideas and memorable moments.
I love the chaos created toward the end of “Yours Eternal,” when the party will most likely unleash an evil spirit that possesses a hydra skeleton in the museum and begins rampaging on the guests! Escape room and puzzle lovers (and ghost hunters!) will love the exploratory challenges in “The Dybbuk’s Reprise,” and, although it’s the least heist-y of the bunch, the flashback-induced trials in “With All My Heart,” greatly elevate the story, and builds towards a socially complicated finale between star-crossed lovers.
Pros:
- Six drop-in mini heist-ventures ranging from tier 1 to tier 3.
- Helpful tips on running heist adventures, such as casing the joint, and failing forward.
- Most adventure make use of interesting trackers (ghost rage, misfortune points) or time constraints that affect the heist’s successes and failures.
- Full color, VTT-ready battle maps.
- Beautiful original portrait art for NPCs in each adventure.
Cons:
- None!
The Verdict: The theme of love creates rich story-telling opportunities as the heists of Stolen Hearts show off a variety of intriguing locations, fun NPCs, and memorable moments.
A review copy of “Stolen Hearts” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.
Support my work by using my affiliate links and pledging via Patreon.
RogueWatson 