Player Forsight

[Teflonknight]

I was thinking today about Return of the Jedi. Luke sent Artoo to Jabba so that he would be there when Luke needed him. Batman does this all the time, planning for multiple contingencies. Leverage is built around this concept.

Have any of you had players that would create backup plans or send PCs or NPCs in a head of time to be in place if something went wrong. Just wondering how this would work in a RPG.

[KillianHawkeye]

Usually we like to keep the group together so that if anything happens, everyone is around to help. However, in certain situations similar to the one in Return of the Jedi when we know that we have to inlfitrate a certain location, we might try to have anyone that can legitimately enter to go in ahead of time, followed by those who might be able to talk their way in, followed by those who need to sneak in or break in. Again, this is primarily so that everyone is on board in the likely event that the plan takes an unfortunate turn.

[Benthesquid]

More often than actual play, I've seen this in CharOp discussions, especially with regards to Contingency.

[valadil]

Yes, but it doesn't look like foresight like you see in the movies. When my players have a complex plan that puts them all in different places, we play out all those individual plans and then let the rest of the party join up.

In RotJ terms, everyone would come up with the plan. Artoo would be the focus of play for a while. Then eventually Luke would show up. It wouldn't look like Luke had a backup plan, it would look like a bunch of individuals took turns showing up at the palace.

I think the only way to pull off something like this is with an NPC ally ally. In my experience, the ally is either weaker than the PCs and unlike to be trusted with such an important role or much more powerful than the PCs and unwilling to follow their orders.

[JoshuaZ]

People can plan out contingencies. But unless the DM is actively cooperating with the players in a highly unrealistic way, you can't do plans like Luke's. There are too many variables and too many chances for something to go drastically wrong.

[RochtheCrusher]

My players... well. It usually takes some doing to get them to agree on a plan... even a very simple one like, "kick in the door, see what's in there."

If, heaven forbid, there was like... a three part plan or something? That required patience and following the checklist? I have a player who periodically gets (and acts upon) these wonderful ideas which make me cackle madly and make the other party members lunge forward yelling, "No! Stop! What are you doing?!"

What I'm saying is, no battle plan survives contact with the Seffanie.

[KillianHawkeye]

People can plan out contingencies. But unless the DM is actively cooperating with the players in a highly unrealistic way, you can't do plans like Luke's. There are too many variables and too many chances for something to go drastically wrong.

Don't forget that Luke can actually see the future, although it relies on his friends being in danger. So what does he do? He sends his friends in first! Now he can see what will happen and thus come up with a complicated plan that actually works.

[Dimers]

In the previous edition of GURPS Supers (dunno about the current one), there was an advantage you could take called Gadgeteer to represent being able to build lots of spectacular devices. If you were already a Gadgeteer, then you could also buy the Gizmo advantage. With Gizmo, one time per play session, you can pull out of your pocket a thing that you could reasonably have made, that you didn't specify before.

THAT is how Batman stayed prepared. He had Gadgeteer and several iterations of Gizmo. Whatever problem he faced, he had just the right solution. A creative player with a Gizmo is very versatile.

One answer to your question would be a social or logistical version of Gizmo, where the player doesn't have to define what the advantage is until it's time to actually use it. That way, you can create a chessmaster character who has crazy-good foresight, without the player having to know much of anything ahead of time.

[JoshuaZ]

In the previous edition of GURPS Supers (dunno about the current one), there was an advantage you could take called Gadgeteer to represent being able to build lots of spectacular devices. If you were already a Gadgeteer, then you could also buy the Gizmo advantage. With Gizmo, one time per play session, you can pull out of your pocket a thing that you could reasonably have made, that you didn't specify before.

THAT is how Batman stayed prepared. He had Gadgeteer and several iterations of Gizmo. Whatever problem he faced, he had just the right solution. A creative player with a Gizmo is very versatile.

One answer to your question would be a social or logistical version of Gizmo, where the player doesn't have to define what the advantage is until it's time to actually use it. That way, you can create a chessmaster character who has crazy-good foresight, without the player having to know much of anything ahead of time.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. I've seen mechanics like the gadgeteer before. In 3.5 people sometimes use the factotum to do something similar. I'm not completely sure of a mechanical way to do that for social interactions that would actually work though.

[The Fury]

Being a tactician is sort of my new jam. Unfortunately I'm pretty garbage at it. I do come up with plans, and the better ones work too... though I habitually don't plan ahead far enough so I default frequently to the Indy Ploy.

The highlight of my "tactical genius" is best summed up by this:

Me: "Great! I managed to take out four vampires with that fire-bomb trap! I gotta tell ya, I almost thought that wouldn't work."

NPC: "There's still at least another three out there, we're pinned down and cut off from the rest of our group."

Me: "...Crap!"

[NichG]

In my campaigns there's an ability called 'Mastermind' which lets you, 1/game, retroactively declare that you had some plan in the works to exactly respond to something that just happened on screen. The only requirements are that it be something you could have set up without making a roll, and that it not be inconsistent with anything else that has happened on screen so far.

[nedz]

Well, movies are heavily railroaded.

One view of Star Wars has "The force" play Xanatos chess with all of the characters. I'll skip the details because it's not important.

I find that players often plan heavily for a tactical situation, they may even plan for things at an operational level (logistics and the like), but grand strategy: not so much. This is a bit strange really though usually there are too many unknowns.

If your party Kick in the Door and Leroy everything however then you won't see this.

[Emmerask]

The plans you see in movies are for the most part completely unrealistic and will never ever happen in that form in games or rl.

Take for example "Now You See Me", their plan had so many details that could have gone terribly wrong or where based on an exact reaction by someone so that the rest of the plan could go on...

Not that the movie was not enjoyable, I liked it still, but these kind of things require heavy suspension of disbelieve.

In games you will see mostly easy plans that maybe have 2 variables and maybe 1 alternative plan but not the 1000 variables kind of things you see in movies

[Segev]

A game I'm actually just about to join (Rifts; I'm giving Paladium a chance under a GM who's run it for years to see how it works) actually is, as I join up, planning a raid on a major Coalition military base in order to rescue a friend and possibly steal some technology. (For those who don't know Rifts, think "technologically advanced, magic-hating, human-supremacist empire" and you'll get the right view from the party's perspective for purposes of this discussion.)

They sent in one of their member as an itinerant worker "looking for a job" and he works in a rations-packing factory as a janitor, now. Another PC will be "wandering" in a few days before the operation to coordinate some last-minute intelligence and to be in place for when the hurricane they hired some powerful druid-equivalents to whip up hits the harbor. They've paid off the biggest gang in the prison to arrange for their friend to be moved to the general population, and done so in a way that makes said gang thing the party wants that person killed by said general population (rather than the truth, which is that they're coming to rescue her).

The rest of the party will attack at the height of the hurricane, while the already-in-place plants will be sowing and taking advantage of confusion to effectively steal the supplies that are a secondary objective and load them on a military vessel currently in for repairs. They hope to use that as a get-away vehicle.


So, yes. There are parties that plan like that.


As a general rule, however, it's tricky, because the GM is torn between making sure it's a fair challenge and making sure he doesn't use HIS out-of-character knowledge to auto-trounce the strategies of the players. On the other hand, because the GM is likely not as brilliant as his most capable NPCs, he has as well to allow himself a certain amount of meta-gaming to have "obvious" ploys against which he didn't think to defend have defenses in place.

Fortunately, if you're using a "Xanatos Gambit skill" type thing that allows your Chessmasters to roll to see if they thought of some contingency the player has just now come up with, it's equally valid for NPCs to have and use where appropriate.

[Segev]

The plans you see in movies are for the most part completely unrealistic and will never ever happen in that form in games or rl.

Take for example "Now You See Me", their plan had so many details that could have gone terribly wrong or where based on an exact reaction by someone so that the rest of the plan could go on...

Not that the movie was not enjoyable, I liked it still, but these kind of things require heavy suspension of disbelieve.

In games you will see mostly easy plans that maybe have 2 variables and maybe 1 alternative plan but not the 1000 variables kind of things you see in movies

Yeah, most movies get into Xanatos Roulette, which is generally not believable if you stop and think about it. "How did you KNOW a meteor would fall just then to destroy the artifact that would have undermined your entire plan if it had stayed in the hands that you yourself put it in?"

What people tend to really like when they see it done is the Xanatos Gambit: Plan A is the overt plan, but a very careful arrangement of events to obscure Plan B means that Plan A's failure all but guarantees Plan B's success, so even if you lose, you win.

They are more believable because they do NOT rely on knowing a specific person really well (which is the crux of the Batman Gambit), nor do they rely on a lot of variables. Instead, they're all about contingencies that are automatically in place. They're about playing both ends against the middle, but without actually "betraying" anybody. It's a matter of finesse and very careful set-up of the scenario, but not about relying on a Rube Goldberg device running perfectly.

Ultimately, it's about planning for failure by having things set up so that you benefit either way. The trickery is in making sure nobody sees both sides of what you've done before things resolve.

[JoshuaZ]

A game I'm actually just about to join (Rifts; I'm giving Paladium a chance under a GM who's run it for years to see how it works) actually is, as I join up, planning a raid on a major Coalition military base in order to rescue a friend and possibly steal some technology. (For those who don't know Rifts, think "technologically advanced, magic-hating, human-supremacist empire" and you'll get the right view from the party's perspective for purposes of this discussion.)

They sent in one of their member as an itinerant worker "looking for a job" and he works in a rations-packing factory as a janitor, now. Another PC will be "wandering" in a few days before the operation to coordinate some last-minute intelligence and to be in place for when the hurricane they hired some powerful druid-equivalents to whip up hits the harbor. They've paid off the biggest gang in the prison to arrange for their friend to be moved to the general population, and done so in a way that makes said gang thing the party wants that person killed by said general population (rather than the truth, which is that they're coming to rescue her).

The rest of the party will attack at the height of the hurricane, while the already-in-place plants will be sowing and taking advantage of confusion to effectively steal the supplies that are a secondary objective and load them on a military vessel currently in for repairs. They hope to use that as a get-away vehicle.


So, yes. There are parties that plan like that.

This seems much closer to a standard plan. It doesn't require too much expectation of what the enemy will do in response. The only possible point of failure is the gang step. This is a lot simpler than most movie plots.

[Segev]

This seems much closer to a standard plan. It doesn't require too much expectation of what the enemy will do in response. The only possible point of failure is the gang step. This is a lot simpler than most movie plots.

Oh, sure.

I was specifically responding to the question about whether they send in PCs individually to arrive "separately" and be in place when the plan begins. Sorry if I was unclear on that. ^^;

[SethoMarkus]

Fortunately, if you're using a "Xanatos Gambit skill" type thing that allows your Chessmasters to roll to see if they thought of some contingency the player has just now come up with, it's equally valid for NPCs to have and use where appropriate.

Makes me think of this.

Though such a contingency/Xanatos Gambit can make for an interesting story or plot twist, I don't think it translates well into a cooperative game that has NPCs vs PCs (even if the game is not DM vs Players). If such a thing is to work, it either needs mechanics such as the Gadgeteer/Gizmo features stated earlier, or needs the DM to work closely with the players.

Of course, certain allowances could/should be made. Such as an evil genius BBEG "forgetting" to set defenses on one side of his base because the DM didn't think of it - in that situation, it's probably best to assume that the BBEG would have thought of that weakness and accounted for it. I'm not suggesting anything like this, but the Int 16 rogue probably had the foresight to pack extra socks even if the player didn't mention such.

[Segev]

I'm at work, and can't watch youtube videos. Can I get a summary, please?

[SethoMarkus]

I'm at work, and can't watch youtube videos. Can I get a summary, please?

Sorry! First link is How It Should Have Ended: Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. In the video, Sherlock and Moriarty continually reveal counter-contingencies to thwart the contingencies of the other, in a sort of Gambit Pileup.

The second link is a clip from the movie "The Gamers", particularly when the group are walking down a hallway. The thief character leads the way and trips a trap; he petitions the DM saying that his character, an experienced sneaky type, obviously would have been searching for traps. The DM concedes, but the thief ends up walking into the trap anyway.

[Segev]

Ah, gotcha. Thanks!

[Benthesquid]

The plans you see in movies are for the most part completely unrealistic and will never ever happen in that form in games or rl.

Take for example "Now You See Me", their plan had so many details that could have gone terribly wrong or where based on an exact reaction by someone so that the rest of the plan could go on...

Not that the movie was not enjoyable, I liked it still, but these kind of things require heavy suspension of disbelieve.

In games you will see mostly easy plans that maybe have 2 variables and maybe 1 alternative plan but not the 1000 variables kind of things you see in movies

To be fair, in "Now You See Me," they had four highly talented stage magicians (who tend to be experts in steering people into pre-chosen paths and making them think it was their own choice or random chance).

Spoiler

Show

They also had a fifth magician who had the added advantage of running the investigation that was supposed to foil them.

So it was more a matter of constant manipulation than setting everything up to go perfectly on the first try without any further adjustments.

[Yora]

For players to be able to prepare ahead for the future, they need to have the opportunity to get a good idea what is going to happen and where it will happen. In a standard linear adventure module, that is rather hard, since players rarely have much options except visiting each of the stages in the order that the module has set out. They could go to other places, but there wouldn't be anything meaningful to do there.
If the characters would realistically have the option to strike against an enemy before the scheduled time, the players usually are not given the neccessary information to even know about the locations or the existance of the enemies.

To get the players to come up with plans, they have to be able to figure out what's roughly going on and investigate the details on their own initiative.

[Jay R]

It's not quite the same thing, but I once was able to use advance preparation, when a guardsman was trying to not allow my lower-level wizard into the city. I said, "I pull out my Wand of Frost and tell him that if he doesn't move, I will freeze him."

He let me through, but about five minutes later the DM said, "Hey, wait a minute. You don't have a Wand of Frost."

"I know. It was a bluff."

"But you don't have a wand."

I replied, "It's been on my character sheet for the last four games. Here, look."

There, in my inventory, it very clearly said, "fourteen-inch polished stick of wood."

[JoshuaZ]

There, in my inventory, it very clearly said, "fourteen-inch polished stick of wood."

Ooh, I think I'm going to start carrying around one of these.

[Lorsa]

It's not quite the same thing, but I once was able to use advance preparation, when a guardsman was trying to not allow my lower-level wizard into the city. I said, "I pull out my Wand of Frost and tell him that if he doesn't move, I will freeze him."

He let me through, but about five minutes later the DM said, "Hey, wait a minute. You don't have a Wand of Frost."

"I know. It was a bluff."

"But you don't have a wand."

I replied, "It's been on my character sheet for the last four games. Here, look."

There, in my inventory, it very clearly said, "fourteen-inch polished stick of wood."

Brilliant.

[Teflonknight]

One answer to your question would be a social or logistical version of Gizmo, where the player doesn't have to define what the advantage is until it's time to actually use it. That way, you can create a chessmaster character who has crazy-good foresight, without the player having to know much of anything ahead of time.

I like this idea. I will have to keep this in mind if I ever run this style of game.

[AMFV]

My experience has been that the more paranoid players are the more they will plan. If you give them a scenario that seems open-ended they try to plan more. It depends a lot on your players as well I've had groups that were very into intense planning and players who prefer kick in the door style games.