That fine line…

…between being bright enough to come up with The Plan, and stupid enough to think that it’s a good idea. This IME is where PCs live.

For some plans this is an extremely narrow window, and may not even exist.

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The group in my triumphant Survivors campaign was a dream in that regard. The only disappointing bit in a seven-part “collect the set” limited series campaign occurred when they talked to someone else between planning and execution.

The driving core of that group ended up as criminal investigators for the high-level Imperial Department of Justice in my first Flat Black campaign. The adventures there were really thrillers, though in disguise as police procedurals, and tended strongly to end in a fashion that was more exciting than good police work would properly call for. After yet another bloody shoot-out one player (or perhaps character) remarked in complaining tones “in every single one of these investigations the perpetrators seriously overestimate how smart we are and very seriously underestimate how fucking lethal we are”.

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Corollary:

There’s a thin line for GMs between being gamist enough to know that the rules won’t support The Plan that the players cooked up, being simulationist enough to understand that The Plan would violate the laws of physics and reality as we know them, yet still being narrativist enough to think it would make for a pretty darn fun story if The Plan worked (almost) as intended, anyway.

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I’ve been listening to the How We Roll Podcast’s Call of Cthulhu games; for some of them they’ve got in Scott Dorward to run adventures he’s written. The man’s a pro, but even he sometimes boggles a bit at some of the plans they come up with…

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Good thing he didn’t become a football pro, or he might’ve become known as “Forward” Dorward.