A question about Plans:
I enter the tavern, and the other two put a bomb outside, detonate it and make a mess, so everyone goes out to see wht’s up or gets the hell away. While everyone is out, I slip in the rear room and take the swag…
This is infiltrate, for me, but my players call it deception.
Is it important to determine exactly WHAT type of plan is it? Who decides? And, if you chose deception, can you (sort of) switch mid plan and infiltrate?
I’d say yeah, you can start to deceive someone, and then put a knife in his eye if he starts to bother you.
As I understand it, plans are to help get focus, quickly. That’s their only function. Help the players get past deliberating and get on with the show. Once they’ve prodded things into action, they fall away, like booster rockets.
It would seem they provided you with [a method], so it’s a deception plan. Plans rarely work as planned anyway.
The PLAYERS (not characters) say their plan, and you ask the plans accompanying question: “What’s the entry point”/”how are you doing this (method)?”/etc…
Then theres the gather information phase, were you’ll provide clocks.ask how’s on point and the action unfolds.
My take, when presenting the clocks:
No clock for entering the tavern, but maybe for getting to a safe place? If the players don’t mention this, I’ll make a not of it and say it’s the DANGER.
A simple clock for setting up the bomb, I’ll probably have “you’ll get noticed” and “the bomb goes off” as DANGERS.
I’m pretty sure there’s some clever guy who’ll be on watch, so a simple clock to get into the rear room and there’s going to be a safe box or something there.
I think “deception plan” is right, but I’m pretty sure that the Ward Boss will think that this in no way is “deceptive”.
Yeah the type of plan doesn’t matter at all, there are no mechanics associated with it, it’s just a tool to get to the action quicker IF there are people at the table would like a quicker planning phase.
Yes to all so far!
That said, plans give you fictional context. So in you example Diego, I might offer a DB to you as you slip in the back that one of the Patrons is well aware of such deceptive tricks and is waiting somewhere inside…
Also, the new Setup teamwork action will hopefully help resolve this common issue. People love two-pronged, “I’ll distract them with X” plans, and Setup can now easily do exactly that.