What makes for a good plan?

[CheddarChampion]

Background:
I have a player, let's call him B, that likes to plan stuff out.
The problem is that coming up with the plans and going along with them usually make the game less fun for both the players and the DM.
I've talked with B about this and we are going to find a way to let him still enjoy making plans without making the game less fun.
B asked what the differences between his plans and other people's plans were. I didn't have a good answer for him at the time.
I feel I owe him a better response. Maybe a checklist of what to look for would help?

My question to the playground: what are the qualities of a good plan in D&D?

I have a few ideas already:
1. A good plan can be devised and explained in a short amount of time.
2. A good plan involves other PCs.
.....a. Don't let anyone be sidelined for too long.
3. A good plan doesn't stop others from having their fun.
.....a. If people are excited for a certain part of the game, don't make a plan to avoid it.
.....b. Don't intentionally make a plan that screws over another PC unless the player is okay with it.
4. A good plan is easy to understand.
5. A good plan works with the group, not against the group.

What would you add?
DMs should make sessions that can be quickly explained.
DMs should get players involved.
DMs shouldn't stop people from having their fun.
DMs should prep sessions that are easy to understand.
DMs should work with their groups.

[KorvinStarmast]

You missed an early step 1.a. in my opinion...


1. A good plan can be devised and explained in a short amount of time.
...a. A good plan requires input from and agreement of the other PCs.
2. A good plan involves other PCs.
.....a. Don't let anyone be sidelined for too long.
3. A good plan doesn't stop others from having their fun.
.....a. If people are excited for a certain part of the game, don't make a plan to avoid it.
.....b. Don't intentionally make a plan that screws over another PC unless the player is okay with it.
4. A good plan is easy to understand.
5. A good plan works with the group, not against the group.


Why do I say this?
It is a collective activity, and it is team play, and there is no structural role of "party leader" as there may be in some other games.

If a player walks in the door and gets "Here's the plan" sprung on them, the reaction may be from other players
"Look, I get this crap at work, I don't need it in my leisure activity ... this is a game."

FWIW, I don't quite get why 5 is necessary, but I realize that you are brainstorming here.

[Unoriginal]

Background:
I have a player, let's call him B, that likes to plan stuff out.
The problem is that coming up with the plans and going along with them usually make the game less fun for both the players and the DM.
I've talked with B about this and we are going to find a way to let him still enjoy making plans without making the game less fun.
B asked what the differences between his plans and other people's plans were. I didn't have a good answer for him at the time.
I feel I owe him a better response. Maybe a checklist of what to look for would help?

My question to the playground: what are the qualities of a good plan in D&D?

I have a few ideas already:
1. A good plan can be devised and explained in a short amount of time.
2. A good plan involves other PCs.
.....a. Don't let anyone be sidelined for too long.
3. A good plan doesn't stop others from having their fun.
.....a. If people are excited for a certain part of the game, don't make a plan to avoid it.
.....b. Don't intentionally make a plan that screws over another PC unless the player is okay with it.
4. A good plan is easy to understand.
5. A good plan works with the group, not against the group.


Could you please tell us what B's plans are like?

Like, from the list you made seems to indicate that aside from not caring about other players' fun, B keeps insisting that the other PCs should actively work against their own interest in-character?

[Keravath]

If a plan has more than three steps it is probably too long :)

A plan should involve input from all the characters and ideally make some use of all their abilities.

You shouldn't have one person always making the plans and everyone else just following along UNLESS that is actually what the other players really want to do.

You don't need a plan for everything. Some of it you should just improvise.

---

Often, situations don't have enough information to create a complete plan ... folks start looking at contingencies ... what do we do if a,b,c happens after we do action 1 ... what if we do action 2 ... what about d,e,f? It is impossible to create a detailed plan for many contingencies and have fun doing it unless you have a specific type of personality. It also isn't generally worthwhile in D&D since you are often not sure of fundamental assumptions and the DM is liable to throw Z into the mix as you execute your plan rendering a lot of the plan moot.

---

Some examples ...
- I've sat there listening while the party creates a complex plan just to open a door. Characters A and B will stand to either side with weapons drawn, character C stands back and uses their mage hand to turn the nob ... etc. Some characters then get bored with that and say "I open the door." which takes a lot less time and no planning. Honestly, a party should not have to "plan" how to open a door. It isn't really a good use of play time.
- the party plans how to attack an enemy camp or base ... sometimes this is a good idea but "analysis paralysis" can set in when it comes to execution.

[CheddarChampion]

You missed an early step 1.a. in my opinion...

FWIW, I don't quite get why 5 is necessary, but I realize that you are brainstorming here.

Good stuff.

#5 is about if the group decides or plans on one thing and one person still makes plans to do something else.
For example: the group wants to bribe a dragon to battle a group of marauding orcs. One person tries to get everyone on board with their plan to kill the dragon and take its gold.

This satisfies #1, #2, and #4. It doesn't necessarily go against #3.
That said, #5 is probably basic knowledge. It might not need to be included.


Could you please tell us what B's plans are like?

Like, from the list you made seems to indicate that aside from not caring about other players' fun, B keeps insisting that the other PCs should actively work against their own interest in-character?

Not everything I listed is an issue that B has. I'm just trying to make this thread more widely applicable.

The most recent plan was:
CheddarChampion: "Okay group, your mission is to go out into the wilderness and hunt this mysterious group of monsters. For each head you bring back you get X money."
Group: "These things sound like bad news. We should try to scout the place out and spy on them first."
B: "Hold on guys. We can go back to the mountain from a few sessions ago, bring a lot of food with us, and bribe the hill giant there to fight the monsters for us. A ration only costs Y money, right? So how much could a hill giant really eat in a day? We'll go pick up a lot of food from the village, bring it out there, promise the giant more if he helps us, go back the the village to get more food but leave the giant far enough away so that he doesn't go after the people, then we go out to the wilderness and watch the giant go at it! That way the monsters die and we don't have to put ourselves in any danger. Easy money!"

Before that it was:
OtherDM: "The horde of the Demogorgon is approaching your nation. You have a few days left - you need to gather up as many allies as you can to face the horde."
B: "Wait how many days do we have? Can I convince the nobles to give my wizard X amount of money in spell components and to lend me their mages so we can all go out to the battlefield beforehand and cast Glyph of Warding imbued with fireball? Depending on the stats of the mages that help me I can lay down Y amount of Glyphs per day. If I put them Z feet apart from each other in this pattern then I can guarantee that each space is hit with at least two fireballs. OtherDM, can you give me the stats of these mages?"
OtherDM, exasperated, and only after having B talk in character to the head noble: "Okay B, they give you X amount of mages to help and Y amount of money for spell components."
B: "Well with this amount I can-"
OtherDM: "Just email me later dude."

B sent the email to the whole group and it was lengthy.

Again, we talked about it and we're going to work together to make it better. I'd like a checklist as a teaching material of sorts.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'd actually say the most important part of any plan is the ability to improvise.

Most DnD plans I've ran into require everything to go off without a hitch. But because most plans use Skills, and Skills are still dependent on the roll of a fickle 1d20 (where most utility spells are not), it's highly likely for something in the plan to fall apart.

And that's before accounting for anything you didn't account for, like reinforcements or a locked door or something.


Although this is more of something to account for on the DM's side, I'd say the most important element to a plan is room for failure.

Scenes where the heroes are forced to improvise are the most dramatic and interesting moments in most movies that revolve around plans (like the Ocean's movies), as those are when the character's experience and expertise really shine.

[Unoriginal]

Good stuff.

#5 is about if the group decides or plans on one thing and one person still makes plans to do something else.
For example: the group wants to bribe a dragon to battle a group of marauding orcs. One person tries to get everyone on board with their plan to kill the dragon and take its gold.

This satisfies #1, #2, and #4. It doesn't necessarily go against #3.
That said, #5 is probably basic knowledge. It might not need to be included.

That's not "working against the group" though.

A PC/player has the right to try and convince the group to follow a different plan, as long as they're accepting everyone has an equal say in the group's plan and that once the group has voted the time for arguing is done.

[CheddarChampion]

That's not "working against the group" though.

A PC/player has the right to try and convince the group to follow a different plan, as long as they're accepting everyone has an equal say in the group's plan and that once the group has voted the time for arguing is done.

Fair. I guess it would be better to just say "Don't keep trying to convince the group to do something when everyone is trying to move forward with a different plan."

Not on the 'list of qualities' but still relevant advice.

[heavyfuel]

2. A good plan involves other PCs.
.....a. Don't let anyone be sidelined for too long.
3. A good plan doesn't stop others from having their fun.
.....a. If people are excited for a certain part of the game, don't make a plan to avoid it.


Well, if the plan is "try to negotiate with the warlord instead of killing him" and one the PCs is a Fighter with 6 Cha, no social skills, and who only likes to kill stuff, then maybe letting him be sidelined for as long as the plan goes is actually advisable.

Unless you mean to say that every other player should be bound to always go for the combat option because one player decided their character would be good at combat and nothing else.

Edit: Quoted the wrong person

[CheddarChampion]

If a plan has more than three steps it is probably too long :)

A plan should involve input from all the characters and ideally make some use of all their abilities.

You shouldn't have one person always making the plans and everyone else just following along UNLESS that is actually what the other players really want to do.

You don't need a plan for everything. Some of it you should just improvise.

Good stuff.



I'd actually say the most important part of any plan is the ability to improvise.

SNIP

And that's before accounting for anything you didn't account for, like reinforcements or a locked door or something.

SNIP

Scenes where the heroes are forced to improvise are the most dramatic and interesting moments in most movies that revolve around plans (like the Ocean's movies), as those are when the character's experience and expertise really shine.

Okay yeah - don't dwell on it if the plan fails, try to improvise. Don't try to make it airtight because that's 1. asking for trouble and 2. not completely possible.

[jjordan]

Most DnD plans I've ran into require everything to go off without a hitch. But because most plans use Skills, and Skills are still dependent on the roll of a fickle 1d20 (where most utility spells are not), it's highly likely for something in the plan to fall apart.There's been a lot of good advice on this thread, but this. In D&D every plan needs an admission that someone is going to fail a roll and the party will need to rush in and kill everyone.

[da newt]

The planner needs to understand that their plan is one option that the party may agree to, modify, or reject their suggestion and be cool with that.

The piece that I find missing from many plans / planning sessions is an agreement of what the goal is specifically. I can come up with 101 ways to skin a cat once we all agree that the goal is to skin as many cats as possible in the shortest amount of time (and the skin is the important bit - not the cat), but if you can't define the desired goal, how can you come up with a good plan to achieve it? (BTW this is not a D&D specific issue - this IRL all the time)

Simple is better than complex 98% of the time.

Make sure everyone has a chance to contribute.

Understand that step 2 of every plan is adjust the plan for whatever happened after step 1 that you didn't predict.

[Sigreid]

Well, in the real world, the real value of the plan is it forcing you to think through things. I think it was General Patton that said something about no plan ever works, but the process of planning is invaluable.

[Keravath]

After reading the examples of plans from player B that the OP posted ... I can see the issue.

The big problem from my perspective is that the plans are overly complicated but more importantly require the DM to do something unlikely to make them possible. If the DM says that these things won't happen for very logical reasons, the player gets upset, complains, says the DM is railroading etc.

In the examples ...

Convincing some hill giant the party met to go kill off the bad guys while paying him in food and preventing him from attacking a nearby village ... its a ridiculous plan on the face of it.
- it requires the party to be best friends with a hill giant (but if the hill giant is likely to eat villagers instead of monsters ... I don't know that is a reasonable assumption).
- it requires traveling, finding the giant, convincing them that they really want to kill monsters in exchange for food ... the hill giant is most likely to tell the characters to leave him alone and go away

Finally, the "plan" doesn't actually involve what the party will do ... just the one player negotiating with the giant and hoping he will solve the monster issue. It is the type of plan where the players laugh and then move on to coming up with a real plan that might actually work.

Convincing the lord of the city to give the character the services of a horde of mages to cast many glyphs of warding spaced to give overlapping fireballs ... it is a plan requiring huge investment that likely wouldn't work anyway. Most reasonable DMs would just shoot it down. Why?
- are the opponents unintelligent? If you are talking an intelligent opponent with an army then they would expect traps, would have someone watching for them and a detect magic spell (ritual cast) can easily note the presence of glyphs. Even without that glyphs are not invisible and unless you are careful with the trigger conditions you could get them set off prematurely or not going off at all.
- in addition, in a magic world, armies won't typically march in "fireball formation" ... why would they, they know the opponents may have fireballs, clustering troops except on specific objectives would be a bad idea.
- basically, the plan requires a huge investment in resources and wouldn't work. It also requires that the DM agree to the plan ... not even the other players ... since it requires NPCs to take actions on the party behalf.

In fact, that appears to be the common thread in both these examples ... plans that require NPCs to take actions FOR the players, thus requiring the DM to agree to the plan OR shoot it down since neither of the plans would really work anyway. The plans suggested aren't for character actions or activities ... they are trying to organize the game world to suit the desires of the player rather than planning what the characters will do in response to the circumstances in the game world. I think that is what would fundamentally bother many DMs about these "plans", the DM has to make the world conform to what the player wants or get into an argument with the player about WHY these suggestions would not work and don't make any sense from an in game context.