So we played a session today at lunch with a small crew. Just three PCs, Caveman (Leech), Cobalt (Lurk) and Gun (Cutter), and using a random score generator came up with an occult dealer looking to have a vampire be put down, but this vampire is holed up in a workshop doing experiments on corpses and is somehow related to the Forgotten Gods. Unfortunately I let the session get away from me, and the whole thing ended up being a lot of talk about plans! I didn’t even realize it was happening really, until I realized it was time to get back to work and we had barely accomplished anything. Truly I am ashamed.
There was talk about what kind of plan they wanted, and then they decided they wanted to rig up a corpse to explode. This turned into discussion of planning how they were going to get him to take the corpse, which turned into planning how to pressure a spirit warden to take the rigged corpse and store it in one of the depos awaiting destruction. And they never actually did any of it. It just goes to show that it requires CONSTANT VIGILANCE to keep PCs from going into planning mode, and spending a whole 40 minutes on it.
A few questions I had as well.
– How do you guys handle gathering info about a job? Do you require that be a downtime action? Do you just let them roll free actions before a score? Some other thing?
– When questioned about it, one player said he feels like if he plans beforehand then its free, but if he decided to flashback to rigging a body to explode mid-mission that it would probably cost him some stress. What would you tell this player? That’s just how the game works, you can’t pre-plan, planning for missions is stressful and you need to accept that?
– Do you guys have any interesting strategies to stop PCs from entering planning mode?
So, for a lengthy discussion of the relative merits and methods of pre-heist planning, some of this previous discussion may be interesting.
https://plus.google.com/113881370051836623777/posts/U3jkzGxLZq1
I feel I need at least the most basic framework of a plan ahead of the heist or we’d have to go back and revise the beginning–for the plan that emerges, they wouldn’t have started where they did. So yes, there’s some planning early on–enough to get a sense of what they are trying to do and how. The goal is to make it short and pithy.
It is useful to remember that if the players think the GM is the opposition, they’ll want to plan to protect themselves. If they believe the GM is fair at worst, and rooting for them at best, they’re much more likely to relax. Also, not everyone can just whip out a plan, so sometimes it takes a few minutes to settle on a framework.
If that gets out of hand, I have two ways to short-circuit letting the session turn into planning. One is to give them a significant advantage based on their plan, and the other is to point out that if it is sensible they would have thought of it (based on their overall plan) a flashback may well be stress free.
So, in your example, if they start spiraling off into planning territory, I might look at Caveman’s list of friends, and pick one, and say Caveman knows he supplies corpses to the vampire. They’ve got an in, and I’ll even have the employer contribute a bomb they can use.
With that in place, I’d ask if the Lurk wanted to scout the place beforehand; there’s a broken sewer pipe under the back store room, and some painted in skylights over the workroom. Then I’d ask them what kind of plan, suggesting assault or infiltration.
That’s a number of big kicks forward, and hopefully the group would respond to that instead of retrenching for more cogitation. =)
Of course, you can ask anyone–I’m a big softie as a GM, not a proper hard-biting scoundrel. I don’t kick players in the teeth nearly enough. So, your mileage may vary.
On the other hand, we tend to get stuck in pretty fast and fire through one or more heists in a session. So, sometimes play speed is the reward for extending advantages to characters.
Every group needs to find its groove.
How do you guys handle gathering info about a job? Do you require that be a downtime action? Do you just let them roll free actions before a score?
If it’s something they’d reasonably know, or something I’m not interested in concealing from them, or something where I already know what might be cool, I tell them or I let them make it up. Otherwise, I let them roll free. But honestly, Gathering Info rolls have been the most rare rolls in my playthroughs – rarer than Engagement rolls, which the players have to remind me to make – because of the group authorship and the allowance that Our Duskwall Will Vary.
When questioned about it, one player said he feels like if he plans beforehand then its free, but if he decided to flashback to rigging a body to explode mid-mission that it would probably cost him some stress. What would you tell this player?
To Andrew Shields ‘s point: player planning is a rational response to an adversarial GM! So if you make clear that you’re going to make their lives interesting but not impossible, that might help.
The phrasing I’ve used with my players is: “you can not plan your way out of drama. No matter how meticulous a plan you make, I have to complicate it somehow. That’s what the dice tell me to do. So let’s skip the effort of player planning and get to the fun stuff.”
(That may be a useful distinction to draw: player planning vs. PC planning. The PCs make detailed plans, but we don’t spend table time determining what they are. The players roll dice and improvise cool ideas to find out what those plans are)
Also, to ease them into it, I’ve been very forgiving with the stress costs of flashbacks. If the crew had plenty of time beforehand to rig it and are relying on established strengths or assets, it’s usually 0 stress. If they had to do something risky or complex, it’s 1 stress. I think, in 9 sessions, I only ever charged 2 stress for a flashback once, and that was the rare “Providence-sitting-in-your-lap” type plan.
Do you guys have any interesting strategies to stop PCs from entering planning mode?
Aside from the speech I mentioned above, I prompt them with direct questions. “Okay, so the plan is to rob the Bluecoats’ payroll. What type of plan – assault? Infiltration? Deception? … Based on what you guys are talking about, it sounds like an assault plan. Okay, what’s the point of attack? […] The armored carriage, after it leaves the mint but before it gets to HQ. Got it.”
Then, I immediately start narrating the scene, like we’re watching it in a critically-acclaimed but mid-budget cable TV drama. “The last of the heavy bags is loaded into the wagon. The guard shuts the door and slaps it twice, and the carriage rattles off. You’ve got a couple guards hanging on the side, one in a pintle mount on top, and squads jogging along in front and in rear. And, of course, who knows how many inside.”
I keep narrating until someone speaks up with what their action is. I also prompt occasionally. “Okay, the wagon reaches the bridge dividing Nightmarket and Coalridge. Are we taking it here? No? Okay, it passes through Such-and-such Square, the last big intersection. From here, you know that it’s one of a couple routes to the Bluecoats central station, and it looks like … okay, they’re taking Made-up-name Street.”
By that point, usually someone will have jumped in. Less improvisational players may need more prompting. That’s okay!
Once they get in the thick of the action – especially when things get desperate or when complications start stacking up – remind the players that they can already have a plan in place for this. What’s the thing that would most help you right about now? A friend? A cohort? A timed explosion? That’s an option!
This is not easy, especially for experienced groups. It takes a lot of unlearning, both by the players and the GM. But keep working at it – it’s very rewarding.
John Perich While I don’t generally think of my GMing style as adversarial, I have noticed that PCs don’t flashback as much as I think they should (it’s a really cool mechanic, use it!). This is most likely my fault, because I must be charging more than my players are willing to pay. I think the cost I use most often is 1, with 0 and 2 both being relatively rare. I’ve resolved to be nicer in this regard, but we’d have to get to actual play for me to put that in practice.
One of my players is of the type who seeks to make a plan to avoid any drama or tension in a scene. You know the type, always plays the wizard regardless of the system and seeks to always have the spell prepared to autowin any scenario. Perhaps I need to make it clear to him this will not happen, as dice always must be rolled, and will sometimes turn up without a full success.
Mark Griffin : I know that mindset and it’s sooooo tempting! So many other games reward it. I don’t have a great way to coach that – I’ve been spoiled with players who like seeing their characters’ lives be fraught with peril.
What you’re going for is the feeling of Leverage or Locke Lamora where the plan isn’t necessarily shown in advance, but when things look dicey there story rewinds to show why things are actual much more okay than they look.
The problem with planning is it’s a lot of guessing and prediction and querying the GM—often about information the GM hasn’t made yet in Blades—and putting together plans and contingencies that will mostly never come to fruition. This is not particularly fun for most players. In fiction, the story usually pares planning down to the Chekhov’s gun type of thing: if it’s planned for, it’ll matter.
So instead, drop that and pare it down to planning only for the parts that happen. But the best way to do that is to do it retrospectively. That’s what flashbacks are for, and they absolutely have to be easy and free, often. Anything that could/should have been planned in advance should be free. If it wouldn’t have required a roll in advance, it shouldn’t require a roll in flashback.
Basically, you get the players not to plan by telling them, “Don’t plan now, I’ll let you have planned retroactively when problems come up.” This is why loadouts are elaborated on the fly, too.
You only start charging stress when the “plan” is something that no reasonable group of players really could have planned in advance. This is usually in “entirely subplot not hitherto revealed” territory, or what in a story would maybe be an entire mini-chapter about how things worked out.
If you routinely make flashbacks cost stress, you are saying that there’s a price for not having planned. And then players will plan no matter how much you don’t want them to.
Andrew Shields I like the idea of going player to player and giving them shortcuts in planning, keeping them involved and giving them moments to shine. It does remind me of the journey in Dungeon World where you assign roles to party members – scout, trailblazer and quatermaster. They get a roll each and it governs random encounters, speed of travel, and supplies used (in that order). You could do similar in planning.
ie – abstract it to a roll for a particular planning role, how well it goes determines how they get to narrate it and if it effects the engagement roll
Daniel Helman So I had already resolved to make flashbacks cheaper, but in so doing I think I’m going against the intent of the rules. The flashback rules state that you should charge 1 stress for a complex or unlikely action. The example given is hiding your weapons inside a building to avoid losing them during a pat down (I imagine this is more complex than unlikely). This is something the the players reasonably could have thought to do, so you say it should be free. The rules disagree and originally I agreed with them. However, my players are so adverse to taking stress for flashbacks that I’ve changed my mind, for the moment at least.