Planning, Overplanning, and Underplanning

[firstfrost]

A couple of runs I've been in recently have run into one of the traditional player schisms, between "keep talking/figuring stuff out" and "time to start the action". The battle cry of the "action now!" people is "A bad plan now is better than no plan later", but often the choice is actually between a bad plan now and a good plan later. Not all attempts to figure something clever out are doomed to failure.

I'm willing to go with a half-assed plan into a combat. A better plan probably won't survive contact with the enemy anyway, and a party in combat often has bonus resources (karma points, one-shot items) that can be thrown in, in the even that things go badly. And, usually, even if the fight turns out not to be winnable, it can be fled from.

But the half-assed "Get 'em!" plan works a lot less well for other plots and conflicts. You can't just charge into a murder mystery and browbeat the first potential suspect to make them confess. Deciding a complicated moral conundrum quickly isn't likely to be satisfactory, and a hit-and-run persuasion will probably not win over the target.

I don't want to bore other players. But it ought to be acceptable to let the thinkers and the action types both have their fun, even if one of the types of fun is slower-moving than the other.

Comments

[twe.livejournal.com]

"A bad plan now is better than no plan later."

Hey, that was my line! Of course, as treptoplax and I periodically admit to each other when reminiscing, it's not actually true; Mara just had 30 points of "overconfident & impulsive." Ironically, I think (you might have a different opinion) that I am usually firmly in the non-combat end of the spectrum these days: sure we could get 'em, but it many genres, a fight feels like the last refuge of the incompetent, or at least the bad guys, and so I strive to find another way out. Maybe I just haven't built a lot of combat heavy characters, but I think when I do, I'm happy to be mostly ineffectual in the fight, as long as I'm allowed to try and deflect what fights I can.

Hit & run persuasion should not be dismissed outright though. Sometimes the really outrageous stories just escape one's lips unbidden.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Hit & run persuasion should not be dismissed outright though. Sometimes the really outrageous stories just escape one's lips unbidden.

This is the distinction between persuasion and fast talk, I think. Fast talk is often best done without any thinking at all, but you mostly leave confusion in your wake rather than allies. :)