kigmatzomat
Legend
ThoughtBubble said:Plans have a tendancy to fail. It's a wierd thing I've observed. If I tell my GM what I'm going to be doing over more that the short term that plan will fail. Usually, it'll just flat out not work from the beginning, the entire castle is teleport proof/the guard rotation changes/they just don't fall for the opening bluff. It's more frusterating when it seems to work and then turns out not to, the castle shunts us to a trap when we teleport in/the throne room is guarded by an overwhelming force/the opening bluff works but only because they've anticipated our plan. Maybe it's just the DMs down here, but things will never simply work.
That is the DM, mostly. I am prety insightful and can put up decent cost-effective defenses but I make a point to never tweak the defenses to address the players' plans. I prefer to know the players plans in advance mainly so I can more easily run the encounter; if I *know* that the guards are going to be confused by the plan that's great but if *I* am confused by the party's plan I have to decide how the various NPCs will react and many of them will be more competent than I am.
I've had the "prescient" DM where whatever you do is countered. We finally called him on it by going into one game with no plan. Lots of gear, lots of options, no plan. We decided our plan of action 10-30 seconds in advance, no more. It was our most successful adventure with that GM. (He had a helicopter gunship start attacking our homes in retaliation, even though IIRC we didn't kill anyone and only stole a videotape that was being used for blackmail.)
You need a party that's wililng to go along with the plan. One of the groups I was in recently had a dumb fighter. Like, as in, puposefully would not do what you asked them to. She'd often choose moves that made sure the plan wouldn't work at all. Or the archer, that as long as he was directly under your stare would do what you asked, but the instant he was free or there was an enemy nearby would completely drop everything and start shooting at the nearest target.
I dealt with this by setting up plans where if they deviate they die. The archer starts shooting early? He's the most exposed individual. The fighter breaks plan? Guess she's on her own against that troll. I call it "planned darwinism." It requires repeated willful incompetence to reach this point. it doesn't hurt that I tend to play LN or NE characters who see it as a necessary learning/expunging event.
Simple brain-fart moments happen and sometimes the plan is too subtle for everyone to grasp ("When I say now you beat on your shield and attract the wyvern." "Okay." "Now we need to-" BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM! "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?" "You said now so I'm beating my shield." BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM).
Besides, the simplest plans are best. If it requires more than two sentences to tell each person their part the plan is destined to fail.