Making Obviously Flawed Villain Plans Not Terrible

[Genth]

Howdy all.

Planning a wee campaign and a key part of it is that the villain of the arc is not... the most up to date person. While powerful and driven, they do not know much about the 'modern day' - specifically computers. Their plan is to cause the complete collapse of a governmental institution by... burning all of it's paperwork. Now clearly in the modern day, this will have limited actual effect, but the villain believes this will surely cause the system to collapse!

My question is, how can I present this kind of obviously-flawed plan to the players without them focusing out-of-character on why the plan is obviously flawed. That the villain's plan won't work as they intend (although will cause significant harm for other reasons and needs to be stopped), and I kinda want the players to realize this and not think it's because the GM can't put together a plan, basically :p. Not so much an ego thing, as a 'if the [I]story seems ill-conceived, it'll be less fun'. In other words:

How can I make the villain's plan be obviously ill conceived, but not make the story seem ill-conceived?

[Frozen_Feet]

Lots and lots of important information still only exists on paper. Nevermind that the places where sensitive papers are stored tend to double as places where other information storage devices are stored, and those might be destroyed as collateral.

Basically, it's just fine as a villain plan, even if it can't quite have the desired effect. If the players get nitpicky, point out how everything from tax announcements to passport applications still require actual physical papers, and how many people would have their lives inconvenienced if such forms were systematically destroyed.

[Sneak Dog]

So, is his plan going to make Great Britain invade the United States? (Declaration of Indepence)

There's a lot of historical documents that have value to archaeology. While it won't actually cause the desired effect, there will be a lot of history lost if this magnificent villain succeeds.

You could also keep the true intentions of the villain unclear until the evil monologue part. I mean, the plan is bizarre enough that the players might not realise what's going on, because they'll likely assume the villain is actually competent.

[goto124]

How does one burn down all the paperwork without burning down the computers as well? Or much of the building itself, complete with flammable people.

[dramatic flare]

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/120814-files-hmed-940a.660;660;7;70;0.jpg
http://www.tahoeparadiserealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/paperwork.jpg

This is, in order an image of the Veteran's Affair's storage facilities. the amount of paperwork filed in Idaho after one week of government shutdown.

If ALL of the paper of any major beauracracy went out the window today, chaos would be caused. The government probably wouldn't collapse (so, not the intended result), but, for example, the VA service still requires all information on every veteran to be filed by paper. So, suddenly, hundreds of thousands of United States veterans will be without insurance, health care histories, records of service, etc.
And that's just one branch of the United States beauracracy. Road maintanence records? Gone. Criminal Records? Gone. Legal Proceedings? Gone.

So here's how you make this work, characterwise. Sell the villain being antiquated. Any time they speak to them or recover correspondence from them, abuse what oldentongue you can (thee, thy, thou shalt not!, any shakespeare you can quote, etc), and always have it written with old ink and parchment, not computers. Don't give the players the reason for the plan until the last moment, but definitely as the plot unfolds give them pieces. Watch the players run themselves silly trying to figure out what paperwork is being attacked where and when, and why. Perhaps the villain learns the location of all Postal Service records first and systematically destroys those while working in his masterstroke, giving the players a red herring in target.
Then, when the villain gets the ham up the spotlight in front of the players, explain the masterstroke of ruining the government by eliminating all its paperwork. It might be a little funny at first, but if none of your players know just how very, very much paperwork is required for most modern governments, give them a simple check in a related ability and list off what I have been here. Suddenly that kooky plan that won't work.... still really messes up the whole world when you have the right perspective.

That's my idea, at any rate.

[Hopeless]

Introduce the first of a trinary chemical compound that is otherwise harmless unless its absorbed by paper and cardboard of at least a few years in age.

In that case it will combust setting off any internal fire extinguishers and will eventually put out the blaze but not before rendering the effected documents into as close as possible to ashes...

The mistake is that they learnt about the documents they wanted destroyed but after arranging the dispersal of the three chemicals and before all three can combine the documents in question were removed for perusal but they have been exposed to two of the chemical combination and its only a matter of time before they're accidentally exposed to the third and combustion insues!

(Please note it wasn't just one government building storage facility effected the chemical combination is being spread out throughout the nation and given the only thing it effects is three year old or older paper and cardboard that's going to be quite a concern once its discovered its about to go globally dispersed!)

[Segev]

If he's literally burning it, start by making it seem the arson is, itself, the goal. After all, major government buildings will be primary targets.

Then, let the players learn of the lost records, and have that inconvenience them or let them see the inconveniences. Certainly, comments about electronic backups kept off-site should be mentioned...but it should clearly be causing problems anyway (as it would; go ahead and TRY to recover from a burned server, I dare you. It's possible, but it'll take time and slow things down).

Next, have ... personal items that were irreplaceable turn up as amongst those things which were destroyed. There are tons of records not yet backed up, and the loss of personal journals from even 50 years ago can be a permanent reduction in the sum of human knowledge of that time.

Now, if you haven't already, you should begin making it clear the villain is OLD and RETURNED. Amongst his first targets should have been places which stored information on him; make that a thread they can pull. Let the PCs figure out that he's destroying records that could unravel mysteries surrounding the villain himself if they could be found. This will drive them, potentially, to seek such information before he can destroy it, giving you a line to feed them. This is also a good place to show the villain's history with government and bureaucracy. Illustrate the damage done to pre-modern nations by this kind of loss. Perhaps they even find writings by the villain about the devastation that the burning of the Library at Alexandria represented, and how much chaos that would cause if it had been government records.

The twist can be hinted at when they rush to defend a site they think is his next target, because it has some of the last remaining records on Ancientman Villainson...only for the attack to go off on a more bureaucracy-critical location. Because Villainson's goal is to maximize bureaucratic chaos more than to protect his own history.

By now, the genuine damage should be becoming clear. Not as bad as it would be if all computer archives were also being taken down, but it's still severe, and costs hundreds of millions in recovery efforts. It WILL collapse a few municipal governments without backup from State or Federal levels to step in and apply emergency governance.

When they finally confront him and hear his full master plan, they should see that it has been quite effective...but imperfect. And now, his monologue and motive rant should make it clear WHY the inconsistencies that made them potentially dismiss "trying to bring down the government by destroying its records" are there.

If you do it right, they should already have thought of that as a possible explanation, and maybe rejected it because "if it was his goal, he'd be destroying electronic backups, too." The fact that damage is not as extensive as the villain believes will show to your players that you understand this, and that it's not a plot hole: it really is that the villain doesn't quite "get" it.

[TheYell]

Have him destroy all offices and burn the computers. He just doesnt get backups or the cloud and so is unprepared for a government that not only fails to collapse, but makes an organized effort to nail the jerk who set it back a week. Many of his underlings are busted and his triumphant march on the Capitol has to be put off. He can either experience this setback or have it expplained to him in time to postpone D Day for weeks while he tries to correct his plan.

[Shiva asori]

Show a small sample of the chaos that would happen by having the villain burn something else, maybe the records of a collage or university nearing the finals and then have the place shut down as the people try to assess the damages.
The villain tests his tactics, still hampers the main target (government is gonna pay to fix it) and the PCs get to see the aftermath as teachers and professors now don't have a final exam to give and will set back students by a semester at least if not more.

[mig el pig]

Does he actually have to burn everything?

Another option, if the story permits it, is that the antagonist during the last 3 or 4 decades has been creating a monopoly on the ink market and created a 'add science or magic' ink which dissapears at a set time. Nearly everything printed during those last 3 or 4 decades would suddenly disapear.

A signed contract , all books in the library or at home (only 1st edition DnD books remain), student text books, vouchers, goverment archives, drivers licences, passports, permits, wills etc would all be blank.

[Mr Blobby]

From my own admittedly small experience [working for local govt] we had the following systems:

1/ Paper records in the basement. When I left [2012], the bosses were discussing whether to ditch them forever.
2/ Microfiche backup in another basement. This dated back to the Cold War era, never learned if we continued to update it.
3/ Local server which we used.
4/ Main backup in a secret location.

These days, most records are in more than one place. If the council lost all their records, they'd be able to reconstruct I'd guess 75%+ of the stuff lost by contacting others and asking them for the info [Inland Revenue / Central Govt / Electoral Rolls / etc.]

To be honest, it would have to be someone really out of date to realise that paper is not that important any more. As early as the 1950's you had govt departments etc making microfiche backups in secure locations due to worries about nuclear war.

So, how about...

a/ Big Bad hits the electronic media first. The servers go down [records not destroyed, simply can't be accessed]. The target scrambles to get at their paper records - then they attack with fire.

b/ They attack an organisation which has become notorious for being out of date - every major IT system they try to install fails etc - meaning they're still stuck with dead trees. Said organisation loses their records, but civilisation doesn't collapse because they simply ask local offices / other organisations etc to simply forward all the info they have and rebuild from there.