Is it fun to plan a heist?

[Jd Smith1]

Planning a heist is the most boring waste of time I can imagine. Hours spent going in circles over minute details the players and their PCs are mostly wrong about and whatever half-assed plan they do come up with is immediately and inevitably foiled by the first NPC they encounter or the first failed roll. Complete and utter waste of time.

Well, don't take hours, and don't base a plan on perfect rolls.

 

[Jd Smith1]

They don't, because they are players and it's very hard to trust that a GM won't look to exploit a flaw in their plan.

A GM exploiting plans with information the NPCs don't have is a very bad GM.

 

[Blue]

Well sure, but the actual planning phase is sort of handwaved. We don't actually fully play it, which is the point.

Sorry, this is inaccurate. The actually planning phase happens in it's entirety, minus any planning that never comes up and therefore was literally wasted time. It is just that while all of it happens before the heist in-game chronologically, some of it doesn't happen before the start of action by out-of-game wall clock.

One comment, you use the word "planning phase". Blades in the Dark is a highly structured game with different phases, but there is no planning phase.

There is a Free Play phase before the heist, which often is used for gathering information and planning exactly as in other systems, but without the need to be exhaustive or to try to game out every possible contingency. Then the Engagement phase where you are actually on the heist, which can include additional planning and preparation that also takes place in flashbacks. Finally there's a Downtime phase, which additionally can contain planning and preparatory for future engagements via downtime activities such as Aquire Asset or Long-Term Project. Planning is not a separate phase, but integrated into all three phases of play.

No, planning is not handwaved at all. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the game to think so. It's heavily integrated and has specific mechanical support.

 

[Emberashh]

True, but incomplete. If you DO care for sessions where all you do is improv and rudimentary world interactions, you also aren't going to like planning.

No, I meant what I said. If your session of planning isn't literally that, your group is doing something wrong. Not only should players be planning in character and making moves in the gameworld to set it up, but the GM should be treating the session as an opportunity. A planning session is the group telling you what they expect and what kinds of challenges they want to confront.

That gives you a lot of material to work with to think up interesting complications and twists to throw in along the way.

Also has to be said that I think much of the aversion to planning, beyond just doing it poorly as a group, tends to be rooted in DND's and other games lack of resolution fidelity and the binary pass/fail nature of it.

Plans fall apart too easily and there isn't much room for letting the plan twist and turn without either sidestepping the resolution system or just doing things arbitrarily. Degrees of success and no hard failures aren't complicated to port into most games, and it improves the experience by miles, and not just for heists.

Part of the reason I think planning is so ubiquitous when it comes to games is just rooted in what games are best at. People want to be the cool guys that pull off a wild heist.

Its cute and all to emulate Oceans 11 when you just want another experience like what watching it was like, but its another kind of experience to be in on planning the heist from the get go and having to be the ones to adapt as it progresses.

 

[Blue]

No, I meant what I said. If your session of planning isn't literally that, your group is doing something wrong. Not only should players be planning in character and making moves in the gameworld to set it up, but the GM should be treating the session as an opportunity. A planning session is the group telling you what they expect and what kinds of challenges they want to confront.

That gives you a lot of material to work with to think up interesting complications and twists to throw in along the way.

You can't both have something in place that the party can investigate, plan around and prep for, and at the same time have nothing in place so you can design around what the party preps. I use Schrodinger's Plots all the time -- nothing is true until it hits the table -- but if they are trying to investigate and you give them information, that locks that into place.

That said, I can see doing this to some point -- but I also do not think that the average DM who does not homebrew and is running from a module will. So while there may be some correctness for a percentage of DMs, an RPG must cater to the lowest common denominator of their expected audience in it's mechanics.

EDIT: In a Story Now game I can see this being a much better fit, by the nature of whom their expected audience is.

Also has to be said that I think much of the aversion to planning, beyond just doing it poorly as a group, tends to be rooted in DND's and other games lack of resolution fidelity and the binary pass/fail nature of it.

This I can see. But the other part of it is that the players have imperfect information - that's what makes the twists fun to play - but that perforce leads to "what if" and exploring scenarios that end up being just wasted time.

Plans fall apart too easily and there isn't much room for letting the plan twist and turn without either sidestepping the resolution system or just doing things arbitrarily. Degrees of success and no hard failures aren't complicated to port into most games, and it improves the experience by miles, and not just for heists.

Part of the reason I think planning is so ubiquitous when it comes to games is just rooted in what games are best at. People want to be the cool guys that pull off a wild heist.

Which is part of why Flashbacks are a wonderful mechanic - they allow the planning PCs to be highly competent at their jobs. Because traditionally, with little mechanical support, the opposite happen as you say - plans fall apart too easily, so PCs are incompetent at planning, and don't get to be the cool guys.

 

[Lord Shark]

Making the planning part of the game is very much the focus of John Wick's Wilderness of Mirrors, which presumes that everyone involved is good at their job rather than ruining the plan simply because of a botched stealth roll. The planning directly pays off in the execution.

It's a spy game, but that's basically what heist games are anyway.

Wilderness of Mirrors is also unusual in that the GM is supposed to provide only the premise of the mission, and during the planning phase the players fill in the obstacles between themselves and the goal -- which is quite different from the "try to guess the DM's mind" type of traditional planning.

Also has to be said that I think much of the aversion to planning, beyond just doing it poorly as a group, tends to be rooted in DND's and other games lack of resolution fidelity and the binary pass/fail nature of it.

Plans fall apart too easily and there isn't much room for letting the plan twist and turn without either sidestepping the resolution system or just doing things arbitrarily. Degrees of success and no hard failures aren't complicated to port into most games, and it improves the experience by miles, and not just for heists.

There's been some talk in this thread about heists being spoiled by trigger-happy players -- but if you're running a game where the only way to deal with an alerted guard is to haul out your weapon and roll initiative, it's not surprising.

 

[Emberashh]

You can't both have something in place that the party can investigate, plan around and prep for, and at the same time have nothing in place so you can design around what the party preps.

Sure you can, because time is a thing. Most of the time, you're not going to be planning a big heist while standing outside the thing you're going to heist. You're going to be somewhere else, in secret, and moving in the shadows to scout and preplace things depending on the plan. The time between the planning and the heist means things can change and circumstances evolve, and the planning itself takes time.

Remember, even Oceans 11 faced the unexpected constantly.

And if the party literally is standing right outside the place they're gonna rob making their plans, thats where time especially becomes a factor. You're standing around in public talking about how you're gonna rob the place you're standing next to.

May be I'm biased because I've been using and had the Tension Pool used in literally every game I play, but even without a formal system for addressing the inherent risk (and stupidity) of something like that, it isn't an egregious railroad to say that's gonna get them caught before they've started, or for some other complication to arise.

Gygax himself famously ranted about the importance of timekeeping, and he was right. If you don't have any kind of time permanence going on in games like DND, but imo, in any game, then of course you're going to have problems with how certain kinds of things play out.

but I also do not think that the average DM who does not homebrew and is running from a module will. So while there may be some correctness for a percentage of DMs, an RPG must cater to the lowest common denominator of their expected audience in it's mechanics.

RPGs should raise the floor not race to the bottom. There's no reason that kind of GMing can't be taught, even through a book, and especially if we're talking a module.

Its still on the would be GM to want to put in the effort, but thats not something you can change. But you can change something about the great wealth of GMs, especially DMs, who have been absolutely starved of exactly that kind of guidance direct from the game they're playing for years at this point.

but that perforce leads to "what if" and exploring scenarios that end up being just wasted time.

This is why I said if one can't appreciate sessions of improv and world interaction that they're not going to appreciate planning. If you actually like these things, nothing that happens is wasted time.

I described in another topic an experience with Call of Cthulu where we spent several sessions exploring a rickety old house; not one that was actually haunted or had anything going on. We were lead to believe the house was haunted but in the metascheme it was just the Keepers impetus for bringing the group together.

But it didn't matter, because those sessions were notable for me due to an intense in-character debate with another player over whether or not it was right that Trotsky got assassinated that raged on as the pair of us crept through the basement, and for everyone else a similiar experience was had, because thats just how our group plays.

We become who we say we are and lose ourselves in the gameworld. And its awesome, and never a waste of time.

Which is part of why Flashbacks are a wonderful mechanic - they allow the planning PCs to be highly competent at their jobs. Because traditionally, with little mechanical support, the opposite happen as you say - plans fall apart too easily, so PCs are incompetent at planning, and don't get to be the cool guys.

Sure, but it also isn't very rewarding for the players unless they're getting a really big kick out of leveraging it to do something clever, but even then. Its not that fundamentally different than just saying "Goodberry" and now the wilderness isn't a problem anymore.

And its also not the only way. DND can in fact be fixed; that some people (not necessarily you, mind) are only willing to entertain that possibility if WOTC does it doesn't really mean the opposite is true.

There's been some talk in this thread about heists being spoiled by trigger-happy players -- but if you're running a game where the only way to deal with an alerted guard is to haul out your weapon and roll initiative, it's not surprising.

Improvise Action is a thing in DND. Some don't like to say it counts, but it does, especially in a game that does emphasize rulings over rules when you play it as it advises you to.

You can get a lot of mileage out of not prescribing different actions and just using a nice variety of Ability Scores and Skills to guideline checks. Thats much of what OSR style gameplay revolves around, after all.

 

[Tonguez]

View attachment 360907

I found being the DM for heist or similar needs more fail-forward or free re-rolls to make it work better. you make each PC roll 10 times to stealth, then eventually they all fail. I ran one where I gave a free re-roll token each part of pre-planning the players did. Someone went to the library to investigate, another went to the local thieves' guild to try and buy plans of the building. People tried to sleeping poison to the ale being sent to the guards. They detected the future weather to when it was going to rain. Eventually they group had a good idea of what was there and how to do things. They needed the re-rolls to help get further in before things fell apart.

It might have felt a bit more railroadish in that they would succeed, but the re-rolls were mostly a tool around what the PCs would have known and the players did not know.

This, planning is a great way to confirm situational Aspects that get invoked for advantage (or reroll) during actual play.

 

[Committed Hero]

I wonder if there is a way to do the lion's share of rolling during the planning? It would become a little more exciting, and players will be forewarned as to where problems might occur.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One comment, you use the word "planning phase". Blades in the Dark is a highly structured game with different phases, but there is no planning phase.

Yes, that's the point.