Oct 19 2008
Why the Group Might Need a Plan
You might need a plan if you’re about to go into an occupied area and the foe’s numbers are overwhelming. You might need a plan if you’re supposed to conduct a three-pronged infiltration and require complete subtlety. You might need a plan if you need to matchmake one PC with an NPC while keeping both parties’ parents from interfering. You might need a plan if you’re in a sandbox situation with eight possible directions and the GM hasn’t finished detailing all of them out yet.
In my opinion, plans are useful. In some cases, they might allow you to react properly to a semi-foreseen circumstance. Sometimes it’s needed to make sure you know who’s where when location matters. Other times, it’s just something that would really, really help the GM figure out what to prioritize detailing out. As an added bonus, they can allow a group to ensure that even the quieter players, or the characters whose skills aren’t immediately obvious, can get a chance to play an important roll.
Other people find them a bit more of an impediment; they take up session-time, cause arguments before it’s necessary, and never seem to last more than half a minute when push comes to shove anyway. And invariably, some sort of surprise will occur that will prevent even the most detailed set of contingencies from going off quickly. Or they might see them as a crutch or a limiting factor, with people too busy trying to fulfill the plan to realize that it’s no longer applicable.
You don’t need a really complicated plan to see a positive difference, though. It might be as simple as a division of labor when going into a fight: “You hit the archer, you keep the spellcaster at bay, and I’ll go take out the guy with the four-loaf cleaver.” Or a something a bit more flow-chart-like: “If X, then Y. If Z, then Q. If not fitting an existing category, get the heck out of there, tell everyone else to scram, and prioritize living to report what the thing that threw a wrench in the gears was!”
Moreover, it keeps the group from tripping over each other or getting in each other’s way. Haven’t you ever had those situations where lack of coordination nearly destroyed the group? “I climb on the chandelier in order to attack the people below from surprise.” “I cut down the chandelier to drop it on the people below.” “Eeeeeep!” What about situations where everyone’s doing something, but the important thing doesn’t get done? “I thought you were going to scuttle the boats so they couldn’t chase us!”
And, believe it or not, little things like having some vague idea what you’re doing next session and what those around you might actually be prepared for is going to be useful to your GM. Not just for the sake of messing with your head—okay, maybe a little—but so they can at least know which way you’re going to take when the road forks so there’s a better chance to have a focused plan of their own and not do everything off the cuff.
In all, I would definitely say that plans are Definitely a Good Thing, and encourage attempts to create and utilize them.
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
In combat, I’ve never seen a plan be an actual hindrance. The problem with plan-making is that players often lack the information needed to have a plan be helpful. The plans made by characters of fiction are made by those who have a lot more information than those not in the universe have.
Example: In the episode of Firefly, “Trash”, the crew wants to steal a relic from a floating high-security mansion. They start the infiltration by disguising as staff preparing for a party (they’d need to know a party was happening). After the relic is procured from its high-security cage (a simple roll of larcenous skills), it is thrown in the garbage. Why? Because the garbage bins are boxes with electronic ‘tags’ on them that inform a pickup drone where to take them (usually a nearby incinerator). It’s a simple matter of reprogramming the bin, but this requires that the player know about this odd disposal system in the first place.
And all other plans are like that. Of course, very ambitious players may do something like this: http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/ffn/index.php?date=2005-01-12
But with few exceptions, most players will only incorporate elements they know exist (or are worried about existing) into any plans. And players don’t know nothin’.
This problem erases itself when players are often allowed to declare parts of the environment exist, but I’ve personally observed that, when that happens, there is the extreme temptation to fly by the seat of your pants (in fact, a very similar situation to the chandelier one you described actually happened in one such session. It was more fun for it).
Then, of course, there’s the fact that plans get shut down if one part doesn’t work. You make a plan built on finding that the governer has some criminal record, and all that planning is wasted when it turns out that he doesn’t.
Then would it be safe to assume that part of the problem would be due to insufficient recon and/or people not asking enough questions?
Players “not knowing nothin’” is pretty easy to cure, from the player’s perspective. For world-detaily bits that the characters should know by being in it, there’s always asking: “Would I happen to know if this is a normal part of the greeting procedure?”, for instance. For stuff like a place’s layout, there’s always a good scoping-out; I can think of several systems that have rules for that.
Often, the problem is not knowing WHAT questions to ask. It might be extremely advantageous that some evil seer’s best crystal ball is actually made of a type of crystal that shatters with a precise B major (thus can be defeated stealthily and at a distance by anyone who can find a good tuning fork, or even whistle or sing really well), but are the players going to even ask “what is his crystal ball made of”? Maybe if they know for certain that destroying it would be an incredibly painful blow, but them even guessing THAT part is chancy, even if you drop the hint that seers need divining tools to work their magic.
Though certainly all games would be improved if people took Knowledge-type skills and used them this way. It’d certainly make brainy characters live up to their roles in non-RP fiction.
Pointy: Yes! Exactly! I figured I’d go into proper detail tomorr–err, today; feel free to check that out.
Brick: Yes, this is what Knowledge skills are for. And there’s also laying trails. If they ask for “The evil seer’s weakness”, for instance, there should be some way to hint them in the right general direction…