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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6840814" data-attributes="member: 22779">Hrm, giving this a bit of thought. [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] mentioned earlier that it would be more realistic to have one or two stealth oriented characters do any sort of infiltration scenario.  And that's absolutely true.  From a strict realism point of view, that's true.  But, it runs into the Decker Effect (from the Shadowrun RPG where only Deckers could do anything on the Net) where you have one or two players playing and the rest of the group sitting on their thumbs.  D&D is not a spectator sport and that gets old really quickly.  Heck, I've seen players that cannot even wait five minutes to let the thief scout out an area before starting to move forward.  Expecting the players to wait an hour or two while one or two players play is perhaps a bit unrealistic.  So, I think that if I'm going to design infiltration scenarios going forward, I will try to follow the following advice:1.  Infodump.  This is perhaps the biggest thing.  Don't be parsimonious with information.  If you look at any "heist" style story, James Bond, Oceans 11, whatever, one thing is always common - the protagonists have mountains of information.  Not that there can't be surprises down the line (see below), but, before the infiltration even starts, the protagonists have a ton of information.  On a side note, I'd point out that if your players are actually taking the time to delve down and come up with plausible plans, that means they are interested enough in your scenario and setting to do so - nurture that.  Feed the monster.  Give them so much information that it hurts.  Always err on the side of too much rather than too little.2.  Realism needs to take something of a back seat to playability.  We talked about this earlier.  The DM has lots of time designing the scenario.  He knows all the information.  Everything is perfectly clear.  The players have minutes to come up with a plausible plan of attack to deal with the scenario.  No one should expect the players to spend hours and hours on a plan, which, in real life, it would likely take.  The players are always going to be far more Austin Powers and far less James Bond.  It's inevitable.  And it behooves the DM to step back, perhaps just a bit, and recognise that.3.  Die rolling isn't necessarily a good thing.  Look, we're all D&D players.  We LOVE rolling dice.  Everything the players try, we roll the dice to see if they succeed.  Thing is, in this kind of scenario, that's really not going to work.  If every action requires a check, it's inevitable that some of those checks are going to fail and if failure means mass combat, then mass combat is inevitable.  Yes, it means that maybe realism is nipping around the corner for a cigarette from time to time, but, in the name of game play, it's necessary to allow things to just succeed.  Sometimes.  And this is far more art than science.  When do we roll?  Well, 10 feet into the infiltration is perhaps a bad idea IMO.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  4.  Complications are a good thing, but, complications need clear and plausible avenues of resolution that don't necessarily result in complete failure.  The players get the patrol schedules and time their infiltration to avoid the guards.  BUT!  There's a random guard taking a leak against a tree.  What do you do?  Good complication.  OTOH, the players get the patrol schedules and time their infiltration to avoid the guards.  BUT!  There's a random guard taking a leak agains a tree and his ten buddies are fifteen feet away with clear lines of sight.  Bad complication. There's no plausible way to deal with this really.  It's far too easy for this to go pear shaped.  As DM's we have to recognise that complications are interesting, but, what seems blindingly obvious to us is anything but to the players.  5.  Recognise that mass combat is a failure.  The whole point of this exercise is to avoid that outcome.  Now, that being said, if the party Leroy Jenkins the scenario, have at them and no problem. Obviously they weren't interested in any sort of subtlety and it's not like you can force them to be subtle.  But, if the party comes up with a plan that is plausible (note, plausible here is vague and very, very fuzzy) or at least plausible to them, then let it work.  I remember a module I ran years ago, and I cannot for the life of me remember which one it was, but, the DMing advice in the module always stuck with me - it went something like, "so long as the player's plan can work, it works.  Don't get stuck on the details."Not for everyone I think, but, not bad advice IMO.</blockquote>

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