I agree with Lesnik that it should probably have some sort of limit. Maybe, “You can get a total of 10 (or whatever) points as bonuses to good things or maluses to bad things. This represents the time and resources you have available. Prioritize.”

Then they can say, “We think it will be important to have the bonus to initiative against the guards. We’re going to bribe one of our contacts to watch them and note when they change shifts. How much is that worth?”

It involves “colorful” planning as opposed to just numbers, but at the same time limits how much information-gathering the players can do.

Of course, then you might get the number-crunchers in the group stuck with endless calculations on whether it’s better to have +4 init, or +2 init and +2 bonus on sneak checks to get past the perimiter.. But then, at least there’s something for everyone!

However, it is kind of abstract and people who like to plan the nitty gritty details will either push it aside for more precise details or will try to collect the bonuses AND the nitty gritty details. I guess as a GM you could force them to stick to the ’shopping list’ and give them little info.

Of course, now that I mention a ’shopping list’ you could make the party have a certain amount of research points they can use to purchase chances to get information. The GM would then need to provide the information in bite size chunks, but it would at least put a limit on the total amount of information the party can receive. You could then make each research item require a skill based roll to get the complete information. If they fail slightly, they might get the watered down version of the information. Fail badly and they get no info. In any case, after all their research has been expended, the party will know they are done and will receive no more information. Its a bit artificial, but I find it interesting.

Find out the guard schedule: +4 to initiative checks for the first 3 battles in the castle.

Discover castle layout – +4 bonus to Search checks for secret paths, +4 to spot to notice hidden guards.

Study guard behavior: +4 bonus to Sense Motive & Intimidate Checks.

Research magical defenses: -2 to enemy saving throws.

Etc.

By building a list of bonuses that can be racked up, you might be able to streamline players’ efforts. Once they know they qualify for a certain amount of bonuses, they might be content and ready to roll.

Sarlax’s suggestion to Emphasize the PCs’ power is good– powerful characters can act in direct (pulp-like) ways in any genre.

Information gathering, mentioned by many of you, is its own beast. In the Cloud City example, we had a lot of fun gathering the information– it was once we had the information that we dropped out of character and planned for so long. Ignore the nominal title: John’s article is packed with good advice on information gathering.

I love your example Swordgleam; I’ve played in games that worked out exactly like that. “Blast of fire to the face” indeed!

I hope the article’s useful to your GM, John. If you find the gnome, be sure to point him out to us.

Kurt: Your second sentence is a perfect summary and an important reminder– if your group IS currently having fun planning, don’t yank it out from under them. It’s only a problem if some players don’t enjoy it. I know that I’ve played in groups that have pushed into the over-xed, torturous sessions… though I’ve rarely noticed NPCs hanging around when the planning goes on. NPCs in our games seem to have an almost supernatural ability to dodge those planning meetings.

Some players (and even entire groups) are fine with long planning sessions, while others aren’t so happy. Your mileage may vary, etc…

Also, a well-thought-out planning session might be a joy, but an over-analyzed, over-argued, and over-thought-out planning session is sheer torture.

As a GM, I tend to ‘help out’ when the party gets too deep into the planning. If they’re completely barking up the wrong tree, I usually have an NPC provide a ‘common sense check’ on their plans.

I love the term Planning and Analysis Paralysis. It really gets to the heart of how extreme planning can cripple the flow of a game. In the star wars game I am currently playing in we could have gotten into a planning paralysis. We went through elaborate steps to gather information on a rebel base we were going to take on. When it came down to it the GM just wanted to have us do a quick dungeon crawl, but it was hard not to want to be completely prepared for what would go on. Since the GM presented the game as “intrigue in empire” we focused on how much info we could gather to help us at a later date. We’re trying to plan two steps ahead because of our perception of the situation. I’m definitely pointing our GM to this article. It’ll definitely speed up our game.

They spent hours of in-game time researching this corporation, and found out a few helpful things. They spent at least an hour of realtime discussing their options. They finally decided that they were going to pose as lawyers for another coporation, who needed to talk about something of interest to that particular businessman’s division. After some successful bluff checks and conversations with secretaries, they made it to his office.

First thing they do? Blast of fire to the face! This guy being a “boss villain,” one attack was not enough to finish him off. He yells, “Guards! Guards!” and three security guards burst in from the next room. The party barely managed to kill him and escape with their lives, and were none too happy about the collateral damage they ended up inflicting to try and preserve their secrecy.

We all laugh about it now.

Something that worked very well happened in a friend’s game. We needed to protect this village from a small army of evildoers, who we were pretty sure would show up within the next few hours. The GM said, “I’m taking a break and eating some snacks. This corresponds to the time it will take for the army to get there. When I come back, tell me what you’ve done and what your plans are.”

We knew we had a limited time, but not exactly how long that was. We focused on the most important things, and kept disagreements to a minimum – if we had differing opinions, we compromised immediately or yielded to the other person’s idea, even if we still had reservations. A couple of players were less interested in planning, so they just took a brief break as well. When everyone came back, those of us who had planned told the others what we’d done, and the battle began. The result was an awesome battle, where are our planning was rewarded, even if there were a few things we hadn’t counted on.

However, for games like Shadowrun, I have always found that the planning and information gathering were vital parts of the game. Especially when you get in character debate about means and ends. But action is ultimately where it is at.

I’m sure the mileage varies on that one.

Hmm… If it were my group I’d call that using half a session, not losing it, and if I were GMing it I’d being handing out loads experience for debating the merits of various approaches in character.

I love those kinds of sessions. I’ll often tweak an adventure or challenge in my head as players argue various plans because they might come up with a logical solution to a challenge that I hadn’t anticipated, or their plan might be doomed to failure the way I’ve planned the adventure, but I’ll change it because I like their plan and want to give it a chance to work.

I actively avoid creating solutions to the challenges I provide players, I find that their solutions are far more innovative, bold and creative than any I would have imagined.

And three hours spent in role-playing among the players is three hours of game time with no corresponding prep-time cost for me. I can use the time I would have spent creating entirely new maps and NPCs to flesh out the existing NPCs and make the setting that much more interesting, and that means even more fun for the players as they move to execute their plan.

I’ve seen planning go to either extreme and I think that genre emulation has a lot to do with the value or practicality of said planning.

Years ago, our group would meticulously map out every conceivable planning angle for our Shadowrun games. Certainly Shadowrun can require a great deal of well thought out plans, but our group went overboard. Often times, we would spend four hours planning a run that took an hour to play out. Our plans shifted during the course of play so much that they rendered the original plan moot. Much time was wasted by our group until we realized that we could take 20-30 minutes to make a plan of approach and then modify the general plan on the fly instead.

Pulp is a genre that asks for more of a “play-by-the-seat-of-the pants” approach. After playing in two Spirit of the Century games, the one that was more successful at emulating the genre was definitely the one that had little planning and more improvised plans of action. The second time I played Spirit of the Century, the PCs planned too much and thought too much about what they were trying to do. The game was still fun, but it could have been even more pulpy if we had been more in tune with the genre elements (as we were in the first SotC game).

I think the strategy “chit chat” that our Hanford group had (via e-mail) during the Star Wars Saga Edition series was very helpful in keeping the planning focused and shorter in duration. This allowed the PCs to get right to the chase once we had gathered for the next session.

I’m much more about playing than planning, but there has to be a happy medium that can be achieved during actual play. I think sitting around for an entire session in planning mode is way too much, while having no planning at all doesn’t necessarily work well in all cases either.

However, if the party decides to sit on their haunches and deliberate on a plan, you can also bring the action to them. This might be as simple as a message received to ‘pull’ them out of their hiding (court summons), or as extreme as an attack on them.

In any case, I like to break up the planning with unexpected extra action events to keep the planning from being too single minded.

And, as already stated, I try to encourage the players to work on it ‘offline’. If I know the players are going to go into planning stage at a certain point, I try to end the previous game at that point. Even if they don’t do the plan until the next game, usually one person has been mulling over the situation with the information they had on hand and devised a plan at least to get more info.

This seemed to happen a lot in my last campaign. There’d be a scenario, I’d wait for the players to give me a plan of action, and they’d debate it to death before telling me what they were actually doing (and often before then the party instigator would get bored and do his own thing anyway.)

What I blamed it on is related to your genre conventions point. In previous games, they had played with a DM that was very punishing, and if you hadn’t worked everything out, there was a good chance your character would die. In my games, I encourage pushing things forward, and dealing with the consequences (also PC death was rare.) So it also helps to make sure that your players are on the same page as far as risk-taking.

Frequently, I find the groups I have played in and with dislike the limits of options. It truncates creativity and forces players to feel like they are being shoe horned into the plot rather than having the plot be dynamic depending on their actions or lack of actions.

Being flexible and allowing for several options eliminates some predictability of the plot, and can allow for interesting situations especially if the characters do not find valuable information and intercede at the right time.

Cheers,
RD

I had this occur recently: The PCs (“The Saviors”) had recently destroyed a vampire. They’d been scrying his tower for weeks and learned that half blue-dragon kobolds, who had been the vampire’s allies, were now infesting it. The tower was also constantly conducting electricity and was patrolled by razor-bladed iron golems (modified to be empowered by lightning) and feral, steel cat like creatures.

A great amount of planning went into the strike. When they met their first invisible iron golem, they became even more cautious.

It seems pretty bad, but the party is all 16th-level. An iron golem is CR 13. Frankly, I was surprised at all the planning that went into the strike, as the Saviors’ collective power might be best described as “overwhelming.”

The idea behind the world is that an imminent illithid army invasion led to a pre-emptive githyanki invasion. The githyanki invasion destroyed most major cities and killed a lot of powerful NPCs. Once the githyanki left, the illithid thrall army rose up and started battling those who resisted. The PCs started at 3rd level but have quickly risen up.

Because all the bigwig NPC are dead, it’s been a theme of the game that there’s no one more powerful than themselves to which they can turn to for help. Right now, they are about the most powerful people on the continent, if not the world.

I had designed the tower expecting that the PCs would stomp through it easily, but it became a cautious strategy session instead. I think this could have been avoided both if I had emphasized how powerful the PCs are, and if the players had kept that in mind.