Master of Thievery is my entry to BGG’s 2025 Roll & Write Game Design Contest.
The game is ready in the context of the contests and no changes are made until the contest ends. However after the contest I’ll be making more changes based on the playtests and feedback.
There are print-and-play version available as well as Tabletop Simulator module.
The game is for 2-6 players aged 10 years and older.
Master of Thievery?
You and your classmates are about to graduate from the University of Thieves (yes, there is actually a school as such).
There is still one more thing to do: pass the final exam and get your Masters diploma.To do that you must show your skills with various techniques of lockpiking, pickpocketing, knockouts and heists.
While some skills you demonstrate all by yourself, others require co-operation with your classmates. But remember, your classmates are earning their degree by knocking you out and pickpocketing you for your hard earned final exam points.
PnP Files
To play you need thief sheets for all the players, opportunity cards and tokens that you can download in ready to print files from the download pages:
In addition to printable components you need dice. 1 d10, 2 d8, 2 d6 and 2 d4. If you don’t have the dices you can use your phone and some digital dice app.
Tabletop Simulator module
Master of Thievery is available for playtests as (unlisted) Tabletop Simulator module. The module is based on PROTO 4a.3 version and has components for 6 players. The thief sheets have been made editable using Make Anything Editable mod.
Checkout Master of Thievery Tabletop Simulator mod on Steam.
Change history
Version 4a.3
- Clarity fixes on all components
- Added missing favour texts to opportunity cards
- Rearranged opportunity card PnP files to make it easier to print only minimal amount of cards for test play with 2 players
- New Thief Sheet
- Lot of clarifications in the rulebook
- Rule changes
- Unified pickpocketing/knockout rules
- Grouped dice options the groups of 2 instead of groups of 3
- Leveling is now faster
- Minor change to end game condition
- End game is triggered earlier
- Some other minor changes
Version 4.0
- Redesigned opportunity cards to tarot card size.
- Added flavor text to opportunity cards
- Changed token layout and removed now unnecessary starting player token.
- Future design: tokens need more contrast, now the readability is not good enough
- Minor rule tweaks, PROTO 4.0 component images
Versio 2a.1 (2025-11-30)
- Opportunity card base color changed to lighter so that it is easier to see cut marks when printing the game.
- Fixed the roll chart of opportunities specifying success condition of “Roll opportunity more than 12%”
- Spelling error fix on Thief sheet skill “pickpocketing”
- Changed dice icons on Thief sheet to text for easier readability.
- Added version number to Thief sheet.
