Help Your Players Plan FAST in DnD/TTRPGs
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- DnD / TTRPG players LOVE planning, but as DMs / GMs, we can do a lot to help them do it better, faster, and with more confidence.
The over-planning poison can cost your sessions a ton of time, but I've got some tips on how to keep your players away from temptation.
Gnome Stew article on the history of The Caller:
gnomestew.com/...
Lots of love to @salty-nick for the inspiration and collaboration on the house rule 💚
It's Irn-Bru in the bottle (Scottish cola) - my dentist might think it's poison I suppose, it is INCREDIBLY sugary!
If you want to nudge them, ask them to roll wisdom/intelligence/countersurveilance/heavy machinery/whatever rolls, whisper results. "Both the guards and washladies are regulars. They know each other", "That telegraph wire is strong enough to hold but one person at a time", "You remember the omnipresent, deafening noise of the core drill. When it's on, you'd sooner feel the gust of exhaust gasses than hear the crack". Remember, it's the CHARACTERS that are planning. The characters see and know what the players don't. You, the GM, are their eyes, ears and insight.
Sometimes you've just got to say, "Okay that's a good idea... How are we going to execute it?... Okay, let's put that rail down and move ahead. Things will change."
Thank you! Great content!
Brilliant video - so mamy good ideas! Our group definitely suffers from this. Every session 😅.
Also your scottish accent is incredibly authentic and to maintain it for the whole video is admirable ❤
Thank you! This video definitely falls into the "things to think about" rather than the "you must do this" variety. As GM it's always weird for me to try and interrupt a group planning; the house rule is something I've used to give myself a framework to interrupt with confidence, rather than just getting annoyed and telling people to "get on with it!"
Also the Scottish accent has taken a lifetime for me to perfect - here's my video all about it:
th-cam.com/video/PvTgkD4tfh8/w-d-xo.html
@RenegadeRolls haha that was a great (and i formative) video! I was just kidding about the accent 😅. As someone who switches codes a lot I find that stuff fascinating
All good! Having an interesting accent makes me super-aware of accents of other people, sadly it doesn't help me actually do different accents when GMing. It means that yes I can do a good Scottish Dwarf, but my Elves are Scottish as well as my Humans too!
The flashback mechanic is brilliant!! I think I'll use it in my own games and ask the DMs about using it for other games. Cause I know my friends and I tend to fall into the overplanning trap, and ultimately, all we did was give our DM ideas for challenges to throw at us. Meanwhile the solution was...literally just the first/most simple thing we had come up with, but were sure it was far to simple!
Do let me know how you get on with the flashbacks! Simple plans, relying on the fewest moving parts are usually the best, though I am guilty sometimes as a player of getting overcomplicated with the "perfect" play. Of course the GM then realised that their encounter is going to get bypassed, and finds different ways of making things challenging!
When we want to speed up the game, these topics can be helpful. At the same time, it's not always good to speed up: when the game is about overcoming challenges with limited resources (D&D can be played this way), giving players more time to build a solid plan can be good. There can also be interesting role-playing in this phase.
Yeah in that case they're probably just *planning* rather than *overplanning*, and it shouldn't be discouraged.
Sensational ❤
From my experience, if there's behavior the GM doesn't like that keeps happening, often its the GM incentivizing it.
If loot may be in any room of building, and skipping a room means missing out on loot, then your players will search every room.
If every NPC is a potential enemy, players are going to vet each new NPC thoroughly.
If you are really strict about strategizing during combat, then players nervous about upcoming combat will want to spend a good chunk of time preparing beforehand. This is especially true if combats are brutal... like if even zombies are clever enough to hit a prone, revived party member before they've had a chance to act or show that they have been revived. Or multiple pairs of hostile city guards are within 30 seconds of a random house.
I've actually had a DM that did all those things and then complained about how slowly the characters were going. If there was a known "roll to search the whole house afterward" rule, then people could clear the house of monsters and traps rather quickly. If there are NPCs they can trust and go back to, then they don't have to constantly vet new ones. If players can strategize in combat, yes, that slows combat down a little bit... but they don't have to argue about the right strategy for an hour beforehand, which is even slower!
Great comment!
I was thinking about strategizing in combat vs before combat and realized that while we may come up with a good plan before combat, covering several likely courses it may take, only one of those will happen, and we've wasted time planning for others. This way strategizing during combat is faster, even if combat feels slower.
great vid! lots of useful advice for well run sessions
First plan= Best plan. My bard convinced the party that the best way into the hill giant’s camp was by mock hunting the sorc polymorphed into a T Rex (with the rest of the party hiding in its mouth) and then getting the enemy camp to bring them inside Trojan Horse style. Did it work? Heck yeah
Well that just sounds spectacular! I have questions now - what happened next??
Great video! I've found a flashback move really useful with one-per-night adventures to stop people over planning, good to see the idea being spread 👍
In non-Blades in the Dark games, I tend to use flashbacks to change the current world very rarely. BitD is built with it in mind, but in other games, it can make them go a bit gonzo quickly. "flashback to me putting a bucket of water over the door that will drop on them when they enter the room" MIGHT work in your game, but will totally undermine something where you're aiming for a more serious tone!
@@RenegadeRolls Yes, totally, there has to be a cost. In Impulse Drive I have them cost Stress, I think in Monster Of The Week I'd have them cost Luck, and so on...
Great advice, though a door can be higher than complexity 0! In a recent session, the GM gave the party 3 doors to get past, one being a metal detector with a guard standing beside me.
Your pirate skit reminded me of wash :o
Oh definitely, there's situations where Getting Through The Door is the toughest challenge of all. Mileage varies massively on that houserule!
Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball surely?
My group used to waste alot of time over planning but we finally realised that things often never went to plan anyway so we were just wasting our time. I think it traumatised one of the players because he often plays a battle eager type character now hah
I like that approach! For me, it's letting the players know that they can trust me a GM that there will still be a fun story, whatever they decide. Whether their choices lead to untold physical and psychological damage for their characters is another matter!
ah, planning, the bane to any good rp session. I play a lot of Burning Wheel and that game has excellent social mechanics that can bypass much of these issues (if the players understand it's not dnd.) Two good ideas? Test persuasion vs persuasion, winner's plan we go with.
Thoughts on splitting the party? Sometimes being stuck during planning is caused by disagreements in what to do/how to do it. I’ve played in some games where the GM says “you all need to agree”….
I've had games like that too - it's tricky when there are competing influences within everyone: "keep my lovely character alive" vs "do something cool and dramatic" - my favourite games are the one with the cool dramatic stuff! (besides character death is super dramatic!!)
Yes we have the stats on the poison, but what does it taste like?
It’s Irn-Bru …so it tastes like girders.
(that’s one of their old advertising campaigns “Irn-Bru: made from girders” - tbh all their advertising campaigns are pretty memorable - search for “Irn-Bru Baby” or “Irn-Bru Piano” and be amazed at what gets through UK TV advertising standards!)
🥳🫂👍🏿
One for the house rule quest
@@TwinSteel Finally, I am immortalized on the house rule quest playlist.
But if I want to run a dangerous game, I feel kind of responsible if I move along with the plan and they die. Do you have any advice for this?
Be ready to wrap your campaign including the accomplishments of your characters, their effect on the world and what's yet unresolved always, counting from minute one. That's what dangerous means. That you can die at any time.
Great question - one thing which is worth checking in with your players on is: do they accept that what they're playing is a game, with the potential for defeat, and not just group storytime? The dice really might be atrocious sometimes!
I wouldn't allow the players to proceed with a plan which I knew was doomed to fail utterly - that probably means that I hadn't given them enough information to make an informed choice. I still like throwing in complications to their plans once they start, but never a "haha you lose" thing. That's not going to be fun for anyone.
A question for you: do you find your players will double-down on bad choices? e.g. not retreating from a battle. I ran a campaign a while ago that was based on a module, and I had to say "there are some places here which are WAY beyond your characters ability to handle - I hope they will be wise and run away" - to their credit, they did, and it then became a source of pride later for them (when they'd levelled up) when they were able to take on the creatures that had humbled them before.
@@RenegadeRolls I think you might have misunderstood what the original question was about. I was trying asking about balancing quick gameplay in high-stakes situations - like, how to keep things moving without rushing players into deadly mistakes. Your advice about general risk management is solid, but what do you think about that specific challenge of pacing vs. player safety?
Yeah, that's not helpful. Especially hurrying the players is really bad decision in my view.
You wouldn't intervene in what they're doing unless they got themselves in a situation where they've stopped having fun.