Setting Idea: Yippee-ki-yay!

On Sunday I saw Olympus Has Fallen, which was good in a pulpy, ridiculous sort of way. Good actors making the most of an overblown plot. It has been described as "Die Hard in the White House" which is a description that totally fits.

Last night I was watching an episode of Lost (don't worry, if you've never seen it I won't spoil anything) and there came a point where a character was crawling through a ventilation shaft. Something connected back with Olympus Has Fallen and the "Die Hard in the..." summary. Which in turn lead me to write "Game/Setting Idea: Die Hard in an abandoned castle/wizard's tower" over on G+.

So...


...some notes/thoughts for something D&Dish.

• The PCs are guests at a party. Baron Von Megabucks has finally inherited his great-grandfather's old tower after many years of legal troubles. Von Megabucks' uncle is not pleased about this.
• Von Megabucks throws a gathering for the great and good; the PCs, due to being awesome adventurers, or perhaps just people who know people, end up there.
• The party starts in the late afternoon on the day of the Spring Equinox. At dusk, a big group of heavily armed and levelled up thieves seize the tower by force. Their leader is Alan Rickman circa 1987/88.*
• The PCs are fortunately able to slip away from the main group. They realise that there is no way out and that help is not coming soon enough. Maybe they're going to have to foil Alan Rickman's plans themselves.
• Despite Von Megabucks' wealth, the thieves only seem casually interested in his money etc.
• If the PCs go to length to overhear, interrogate, search bodies and so on, they will find fragments of clues that will eventually lead them to realise that somewhere in the tower is a secret vault, something that a former owner of the tower left behind.
• Will the PCs play cat and mouse against fighters, thieves and mages who are potentially several levels higher than them? Will they run out or try to free the hostages?
• What's in the secret vault?
• The tower has secret passages, ventilation shafts, possibly traps? Maybe some of the thieves have set things up so that they can get out - in a convoluted way - but so that no-one else (town officials/peacekeepers/militia) can get in.

Other thoughts
Tower as a location is set up. Random encounters could be traps set by thieves, hostages who have slipped away, thieves... What else? The Ticking Clock: there are a finite number of thieves. Many of them are on crowd control and perimeter watching. A few have real important jobs to do. The vault is not easily accessed; maybe the whole tower is like a puzzle box? The antique piano on the fourth floor has to be played in order, while a sequence of candles are lit and a spell recited in front of a glamoured wall? Or something like that. But the clock is ticking. They want to be in and out in twelve hours.

This is all just a brain dump. So not all thought through. What am I missing? What would be fun?

*This element is non-negotiable**.
**Bizarrely he sounds more like Severus Snape though.