I concur with planning some things outside of the game session. While some short-term planning is inevitable, long-term planning can suck the life right out of a role-playing session if one overdoes it. E-mail is a powerful tool this day and age. I recommend that my players use it. They are always free to exclude me from the loop. I just like to know where they want to go and who they want to see, not necessarily the why and how.

Our group tends to be the same. When we have our act together, we act with military precision and rock our DMs’ worlds. When we don’t we tend to fall on our collective asses.

It comes with age and familiarity. A mature group comes to understand one another and operate together more efficiently, and DMs have to deal with the “numbers versus one” disadvantage.

@Kurt “Telas” Schneider – I’m going to try Hero Forge again. I don’t have excel at home, but hopefully Open Office will run it well. Macros can be tricky, but a shortcut’s definitely good at this point. Thanks for the reminder!

(Your final paragraph, about a good plan making it an anti-climax reminds me of the 3:1 doctrine. If PCs always setup a 3:1 advantage, they’d never be at risk, even if it’s the best strategy.)

@BryanB – It helped the group that one of the PCs trailed the dinner party and entered the hotel separately from the rest of the group. While it’s not always a good idea to “split the party”, it was fun for it to help this time. You never know how it’ll work out– next time the bad team might grab the one guy while everyone else dines on unknowing.

@Jennifer_W – I’m glad my guess was a good one– as Kurt mentions, it’s tough to stat up the whole world. It’s fun to follow the player’s lead, but it does demand a very different type of prep.

Usually we discuss our plans out in the open, but this was an idea some sparked right near the end of the previous gaming session. So it was more of a “oh, man, you know, we should xxxxxx.” And then we didn’t meet for weeks to game. In fact, Scott remembered the “plan” far more than I did.

But, as a gamer, I’m also OK with some planning out of the GM’s ears. Not if that planning is meant to intentionally make the GM’s life harder, but rather if it’s a chance for the players to talk about possibilities without wasting valuable game time. Plus, it really does help make it seem like the game is open ended and not a “path.”

Now, as a GM (and a total newb at that), I’m bad at handling flexible planning. I’m still in the “read the block text” stage for the most part. But having people go off-the-beaten path helps me as a GM remember that I get to roleplay as well, and need to stay quick on my feet.

The players were protecting an NPC that was the target of cultish assassins, because she was a threat to revealing the truth about the cult leader. I had planned to have the assassins attack the next time the players were together with the targeted NPC. I stated out the opposition with their plans, methods, and means of support. The players then did what players are best at. They DO NOT meet up with the targeted NPC at the “when and where” that was expected.

Since the bad guys had been waiting to attack the NPC since their first attempt in the opening session of the series, they have had military trained terrorists/mercenaries on stand by, awaiting a second opportunity. This opportunity was going to be planned for the NPC target’s place of employment, using a security pass card to get them into the targets location.

Since the PCs didn’t meet up at the target NPC’s workplace, I had to determine when the second attack might occur. When the NPC took the PCs to dinner, it provided an opportunity for a cult spy to notice the NPC target entering her favorite dining establishment at the top of a grand hotel. The well-organized assassins were then able to send their hit squads to the improvised location on relatively short notice.

Players can improvise to!

It helped the group that one of the PCs trailed the dinner party and entered the hotel separately from the rest of the group. It gave the group a tactical advantage; One that the bad guys had no way of planning ahead for.

It took a little bit of adjustment but the game rolled on. The most important thing to remember about improvising: Consistency. One should try to make sure that the planning adjustment is a practical one and isn’t something that seems illogical, irrational, or improbable. That can be a tough judgment call sometimes…

If you can narrow down the players’ options, flexibility is a wonderful thing. Otherwise, you might end up having to stat up the whole world. (At which point one of them will discover a planar travel spell/device/etc… *Sigh.* No rest for the weary.)

As someone who wore a uniform, a well-planned battle should be an anti-climax. But that’s not exactly why we game, is it? *wink*

I think my favourite is still their plan to give the goblins radiation poisoning by leaving a broken nuclear generator near the goblins’ lair. It was discarded when someone pointed out that no one has any idea what effect radiation has on goblin physiology, and they might end up turning them all into mutant supervillains instead.