case study: the bank heist

What happened

The DX Legal team stepped into a fantasy role-playing game where their mission was to steal a magical item from a heavily guarded bank. Each participant took on a character role — mage, bard, cleric, or soldier — and together they navigated sewers, negotiated with a goblin, struck a deal with a rat queen and her 600 children, and distracted a young guard with improvisation and quick thinking.

While the story was lighthearted, the real focus was on how the team collaborated, made decisions, and managed stress under pressure.

Why it was designed

The game was designed to surface three leadership themes relevant to workplace dynamics:

  • Decision-making and negotiation – how choices get made when stakes are high, and whose voices shape the outcome.

  • Managing stress and mood – how collective energy shifts when challenges arise, and what helps bring a team back on track.

  • Collaboration under pressure – what happens when individuals with different roles, strengths, and instincts must act together.

The purpose was not to “role-play for fun” but to create a safe, engaging environment where authentic leadership behaviours emerge quickly and can be reflected on afterwards.

Key design features

  • Character archetypes – each player embodied a distinct role with unique abilities, encouraging experimentation outside their usual workplace persona.

  • Layered challenges – from sewer mazes to moral dilemmas at the vault, the story forced trade-offs between risk and safety, self-interest and group good.

  • Fantasy framing – the playful setting gave permission to try new behaviours without fear of being wrong.

  • Time compression – dynamics that normally take months in teams — like how moods spread or how risk is handled — emerged in under two hours.

Participant feedback and insights

In the debrief, participants reflected on how the experience connects to their future ways of working:

  • Awareness of leadership habits – taking on different roles highlighted strengths and blind spots that participants want to consciously apply (or rebalance) in their real work.

  • Confidence under uncertainty – experiencing how stress shifted their decision-making gave the team new strategies for staying calm and confident in client-facing situations.

  • Mood management as a shared responsibility – participants recognised the need to actively lift collective energy in the office, not leave it to chance or to one person. They committed to using small, proactive interventions to reset the atmosphere before it derails progress.

  • Encouraging diverse input – the group saw how easily they followed the first strong suggestion in the game. Moving forward, they agreed to slow down and draw out quieter voices to avoid defaulting to the loudest idea.

  • Experimentation without risk – the game gave them freedom to try behaviours they might not normally attempt (e.g. bluffing, direct negotiation). Participants noted this as a reminder to experiment more in real-world contexts, rather than sticking to default patterns.

Takeaway

The Goblin’s Bank Job showed that immersive role-play can quickly surface how teams negotiate, manage tension, and support one another under pressure. For DX Legal, it provided both a memorable shared experience and practical strategies for building confidence, managing stress, and strengthening collaboration back at work.