Ocean's 7: Or, Terry Benedict and His Boy-Toy

Ever since I heard the Film Reroll episodes where they played through Ocean's 11, I'd been obsessing over the idea of running my players through that same movie heist. Legitimately one of my favorite things about any TTRPG campaign  getting really deep in the paint and making elaborate plans (I still have pictures from a storm-the-palace session from my high school D&D campaign where the players actually commandeered my whiteboard to write out their whole attack strategy), which is something that our usual system, Blades in the Dark, completely glosses over (intentionally and defensibly, to be sure, but this isn't a Blades post so I'm not going to get into it). 

When I found out that Paulo had published all the NPC descriptions he made on the Film Reroll Patreon, I became hellbent on the idea of running the heist for real, and my players (very graciously) indulged me and agreed to play. 

And you know what? It was a goofy good time. Here were some of the things that stood out to me: 

• My players really took to the planning, way more than I'd even hoped. They both decided (unprompted) to make Powerpoints before the first time we played (we ended up doing the whole thing over three sessions) so they could pitch their plans to me and each other. One of them (the one playing Danny) went so far as to not only download the actual map of the Bellagio casino, but also to spend enough time digging around and researching that she was able to find articles and interviews that laid out in detail how maintenance is done on the famous Bellagio fountains so that they could use the maintenance bay and scuba diving equipment as a getaway. I was fucking impressed.
• This is the second time I've ever run GURPS, but honestly the first time was 3 years ago and not very good, so for all intents and purposes this was my first GURPS session and I've got to say, it's a good system. My players had absolutely zero exposure to it beforehand and I made the (bold, in hindsight) choice to just... not really teach them the system. The character sheets I made were pretty simple (basically just stats, a dozen or so skills, and 2 or 3 advantages/disadvantages each for Rusty and Danny, less for other characters), so I basically just said "when I tell you to roll a score, roll 3d6 and try to get less than the number on your sheet." And you know what, that worked pretty well! I will say that we didn't do a hell of a lot of rolling because 80% of the time we spent playing was just them trying to figure out their plan (and I hadn't done the intricate background prep necessary to assign numbers to everything they were up against), but I think this is a scenario where GURPS can shine: if you want a really crunchy game, dig up your All-Out Determined and your Influence Rolls and your cascading Fright Checks. But for a straightforward game about dudes doing a crime, just slap together a bare-bones sheet and you're good to go. Once I'd done a couple, I was able to crank out a character sheet in less than 10 minutes. Can't do that in D&D! 
• Addendum: if we'd been playing a movie with more combat, I'm not sure how much of the combat mechanics I would've introduced. All-outs and half-move-and-dodge and shit like that would be a lot to dump on new players, but it's also where GURPS really shines (in my opinion).
• You should not play Ocean's 11 with just Danny and Rusty as the PCs. You should do it the way the Film Reroll does it: Danny and Rusty as static PCs, and a couple of other players to divvy up the rest of the heisters. Unfortunately, I don't have that many friends, and we still had a good time, but having actors fill out the rest of the crew, improvise, and contribute ideas is way more dynamic and fun than me playing like eight people who all end up sounding the same and don't have much to do. Having more people at the table would've definitely meant the whole thing took longer, but I think it would've been more fun.
• This is really just a trope of art in general, but it bears repeating: restrictions make for resourcefulness. One of the few things I put on everybody's sheet as a disadvantage was "Code of Honor: Thief," which might have been inspired by the Film Reroll or cribbed entirely (I can't remember). Basically: these guys are gentleman thieves, meaning they don't want to hurt anybody and they always stick together. This is basically the antidote to the murder-hobo instinct that lies dormant in anybody who plays an RPG: if "I shoot the guards" is off the table, you have to get creative. Even better if the reason you can't shoot them is because of inner character motivation rather than the DM saying "uhhhh they're BULLETPROOF" or something.
• When you tell people to rob a casino, they come up with some really funny ideas. Potential plans at different points included:
• Having multiple people made up to look like Terry Benedict wandering around the casino floor just to cause confusion
• Meeting one of the security guards at a bar after work and trying to convince him to get his wife pregnant so he'll have to go on paternity leave (the definition of a long-con)
• Having one person made up to look like Terry Benedict, then have that person and somebody pretending to be Terry's mistress tell the security guards they needed to be let into the vault so they could have sex on the piles of money 
• Do the same as above, except Terry's bringing a hot young twink down there instead of a lady in the hopes that people will be too surprised to call him on it (it is the early 2000s, after all)
• Get one of the security guards fired for cheating on his taxes (this actually worked!) 
• Have a woman come to the casino pretending to be an insurance saleswoman, demand to speak to Terry Benedict so she can pitch him, seduce him, lure him upstairs, and have sex with him in a room full of cameras so that they could show the tape to Tess and have her dump Terry.
• The players actually went through with this (and it did work!), but it was funny to me for two reasons: 1. It had absolutely nothing to do with the heist. 2. In no way did it encourage Tess to get back together with Danny, which was the character's primary goal.
• "Just do the plan from the movie." I decided to make a rule that you can't do that: they drew inspiration from the movie, obviously, but my line was "no fake vaults." 
• I want to do more Rerolls. I need to find a better movie that's suited to my group (I've considered Jaws, but it feels wrong having only 2 of Brody, Hooper, and Quint be PCs, and Jurassic Park is just too many characters). I'm certainly taking suggestions!