Rel
Liquid Awesome
I may disappoint some of my friends who write RPG products when I say this, but I simply do not enjoy Adventure Paths. I’ve never run one and never played one and I’m not anxious to do either. It’s because they make too many assumptions about where the early adventures will lead.
For the same reasons, I tend not to plan lengthy “plot arcs” for my own campaigns. At least not at first. The very first adventures I run in the campaign will probably make a few assumptions about the motivations of the characters involved so I can get the ball rolling. But after that I tend to let the players take the adventure in whatever directions they choose. I dangle a lot of plot hooks and I’m usually surprised at which ones they bite on.
This practice has also caused me to give up planning too far in advance. Making assumptions about what the game will be like four or five sessions down the road is fairly useless to me. Hell sometimes some of these PC’s won’t even be alive next session!
It helps a lot that I’ve tended towards running games that are more rules light where preparation is quick and easy from a mechanical/paperwork side of things. I’ve gotten to the point with my system of choice (Savage Worlds) that I can run it almost entirely by the seat of my pants with regard to the mechanics. I might look up some rule details before the session but most of my planning is in the category of “Plot Elements Directly In Front Of The Party.”
When I start planning beyond that point, I’m generally wasting my time. I’m trying to predict what will happen based on way too little information. Perhaps the PC’s won’t still be chasing the MacGuffin. Perhaps they will have killed the BBEG when they beat his initiative and rolled a lucky crit. Perhaps new plot hooks will have been bitten and fleshed out and pursued by half a dozen sessions from now.
If I really want to waste some time, I start planning for every contingency. That can take up hours of valuable time! Interestingly, I found I can be the worst at this as a player. I am a strategist at heart, but sometimes planning for various contingencies gets really stupid. At its worst, I’m wasting time planning when I could be taking the next step that would actually give me the information I need to know what I should be planning for! (Yes I know that’s a terrible sentence. Just read it a few times.)
If the party’s next actions depend on where the bad guy is hiding out, don’t sit around planning what you’ll do to approach each possible hideout. Instead, save the planning for when you know where he is. Meanwhile, scry on that dude. Or send a spy. Bribe a henchman. Send a moth to call in giant eagles (this always works in the movies). Move ahead. Even if you screw it up and have to fix a problem it’ll probably still take less time than planning for every contingency.
I’m guessing it is obvious by now that this advice is equally applicable to life in general. And yet you’d be surprised how often I must reiterate it to myself and others. I’ll catch myself thinking about what a client’s response to an email will be when what I should be doing is pressing “Send.” I’ll worry about what time I’ll schedule a meeting if Thursday at 2:00 doesn’t work. Here’s a tip, genius: First find out of Thursday at 2:00 works.
This is not to say that some contingency planning isn’t a good idea. If you aren’t good at thinking on your feet, and are headed into a situation where the stakes are high and a fast turnaround is required, it’s fine to plan for a couple different options. But I’ve spoken to more than one person going into a job interview who wonders how they should reply if the job is offered on the spot with all the myriad permutations of salary, benefits, hours, and responsibilities that might be combined. Here’s the only response you need have prepared: “Thank you very much! I’ll look your offer over and give it my consideration. I promise to give my answer within the week.”
I’ve notice another trend: When most people jump to conclusions, they don’t jump to the happiest of conclusions. I think we’ve all internalized too much that old saying that we should “hope for the best but plan for the worst.” Guess what? The “worst” is rarely what happens. Planning for it is usually a waste of time and should probably only be undertaken where the consequences of a lack of planning are really disastrous (i.e. buy life insurance). What happened to the part where we hope for the best? Imagine your outcomes just like the bell curves that represent possible outcomes on 3d6. Isn’t the “best” result just as likely as the worst?
I was a Boy Scout and our motto was “Be Prepared.” However, being prepared need not mean that you have mapped out a contingency for every outcome. It means that you are confident in your ability to handle most of the outcomes that you deem likely. And you probably have the resources to survive the more extreme possibilities long enough for help to arrive.
If you can recapture the time spent on contingency planning and channel it into actions that forward your agenda, you’ll move much faster. Chances are very good that most of your outcomes will fall on our bell curve in the range between “pretty good” and “not that bad.” You’ll have the chance to react to things as they come and will probably have the resources to capitalize on the good and mitigate the bad fairly effectively.
Don’t mistake the message here for the idea that planning and careful preparation is bad in general. When you find you’re realizing a lot of outcomes for which you are ill-prepared, you’re likely operating in treacherous waters. You need to do some more preparation for known hazards or you need a better team around you to help you navigate, sound the bottom, and sometimes bail water out of the ship. The Strategist in me loves that part of the process.
I go forward feeling prepared. I’ve got good people around me. We know the dangers but we plan to succeed. And we’ve got our trusty flare gun in case we need to signal for help. We’re going to be fine.
Do you find yourself over-planning? Are you looking too far into the future, past too many unknowns as you attempt to figure out what to do next?
For the same reasons, I tend not to plan lengthy “plot arcs” for my own campaigns. At least not at first. The very first adventures I run in the campaign will probably make a few assumptions about the motivations of the characters involved so I can get the ball rolling. But after that I tend to let the players take the adventure in whatever directions they choose. I dangle a lot of plot hooks and I’m usually surprised at which ones they bite on.
This practice has also caused me to give up planning too far in advance. Making assumptions about what the game will be like four or five sessions down the road is fairly useless to me. Hell sometimes some of these PC’s won’t even be alive next session!
It helps a lot that I’ve tended towards running games that are more rules light where preparation is quick and easy from a mechanical/paperwork side of things. I’ve gotten to the point with my system of choice (Savage Worlds) that I can run it almost entirely by the seat of my pants with regard to the mechanics. I might look up some rule details before the session but most of my planning is in the category of “Plot Elements Directly In Front Of The Party.”
When I start planning beyond that point, I’m generally wasting my time. I’m trying to predict what will happen based on way too little information. Perhaps the PC’s won’t still be chasing the MacGuffin. Perhaps they will have killed the BBEG when they beat his initiative and rolled a lucky crit. Perhaps new plot hooks will have been bitten and fleshed out and pursued by half a dozen sessions from now.
If I really want to waste some time, I start planning for every contingency. That can take up hours of valuable time! Interestingly, I found I can be the worst at this as a player. I am a strategist at heart, but sometimes planning for various contingencies gets really stupid. At its worst, I’m wasting time planning when I could be taking the next step that would actually give me the information I need to know what I should be planning for! (Yes I know that’s a terrible sentence. Just read it a few times.)
If the party’s next actions depend on where the bad guy is hiding out, don’t sit around planning what you’ll do to approach each possible hideout. Instead, save the planning for when you know where he is. Meanwhile, scry on that dude. Or send a spy. Bribe a henchman. Send a moth to call in giant eagles (this always works in the movies). Move ahead. Even if you screw it up and have to fix a problem it’ll probably still take less time than planning for every contingency.
I’m guessing it is obvious by now that this advice is equally applicable to life in general. And yet you’d be surprised how often I must reiterate it to myself and others. I’ll catch myself thinking about what a client’s response to an email will be when what I should be doing is pressing “Send.” I’ll worry about what time I’ll schedule a meeting if Thursday at 2:00 doesn’t work. Here’s a tip, genius: First find out of Thursday at 2:00 works.
This is not to say that some contingency planning isn’t a good idea. If you aren’t good at thinking on your feet, and are headed into a situation where the stakes are high and a fast turnaround is required, it’s fine to plan for a couple different options. But I’ve spoken to more than one person going into a job interview who wonders how they should reply if the job is offered on the spot with all the myriad permutations of salary, benefits, hours, and responsibilities that might be combined. Here’s the only response you need have prepared: “Thank you very much! I’ll look your offer over and give it my consideration. I promise to give my answer within the week.”
I’ve notice another trend: When most people jump to conclusions, they don’t jump to the happiest of conclusions. I think we’ve all internalized too much that old saying that we should “hope for the best but plan for the worst.” Guess what? The “worst” is rarely what happens. Planning for it is usually a waste of time and should probably only be undertaken where the consequences of a lack of planning are really disastrous (i.e. buy life insurance). What happened to the part where we hope for the best? Imagine your outcomes just like the bell curves that represent possible outcomes on 3d6. Isn’t the “best” result just as likely as the worst?
I was a Boy Scout and our motto was “Be Prepared.” However, being prepared need not mean that you have mapped out a contingency for every outcome. It means that you are confident in your ability to handle most of the outcomes that you deem likely. And you probably have the resources to survive the more extreme possibilities long enough for help to arrive.
If you can recapture the time spent on contingency planning and channel it into actions that forward your agenda, you’ll move much faster. Chances are very good that most of your outcomes will fall on our bell curve in the range between “pretty good” and “not that bad.” You’ll have the chance to react to things as they come and will probably have the resources to capitalize on the good and mitigate the bad fairly effectively.
Don’t mistake the message here for the idea that planning and careful preparation is bad in general. When you find you’re realizing a lot of outcomes for which you are ill-prepared, you’re likely operating in treacherous waters. You need to do some more preparation for known hazards or you need a better team around you to help you navigate, sound the bottom, and sometimes bail water out of the ship. The Strategist in me loves that part of the process.
I go forward feeling prepared. I’ve got good people around me. We know the dangers but we plan to succeed. And we’ve got our trusty flare gun in case we need to signal for help. We’re going to be fine.
Do you find yourself over-planning? Are you looking too far into the future, past too many unknowns as you attempt to figure out what to do next?
