Planning pool, One of the best houserule I've seen Options

[Blade]

A friend of mine has recently brought to my attention some kind of house rule he's seen on a website. It's in French, so I'll try to sum it up in English here.

When your players plan an operation, they do a lot of recon and legwork. But they're likely to forget things that their characters would think about. And sometimes you don't want to spend hours talking about the fine details of the plan. That's when the planning pool comes in handy.

The system is simple. When the PC do the legwork, they just tell the GM the various tasks they'll do: hack the place, recon the area, seduce a secretary and so on. They don't need to go in detail about what they do (except if you want them to). They roll their pool (opposed if necessary) and/or spend nuyens accordingly. Each hit they get give them one point in the corresponding planning pool (matrix, astral, social engineering, layout...).

They still need to come up with a global plan "we go in through a back door and infiltrate the place silently" or "we impersonate an important foreign businessman who demands to visit the lab" but they don't need to go into further details.

When they pull their plan, the GM tells them the obstacles they meet, and they can use their planning points to get past them. For example if a guard wants to check the PC's id, they can use a matrix point to show a spoofed id or a social engineering point so that the guard would be the one they befriended and so on. They don't have to use the points, they can also use their skills as usual, but the points makes it an automatic success. More complicated situations will require more than one point and completely unexpected situations can't be solved with planning points.

I've tried it yesterday, and it seems to work like a charm.

[Synner667]

Wow !!

The looks really interesting…
…And just so obvious.

[Elfenlied]

Now that sounds like a nifty idea. I'll give it a try this weekend, and post some feedback on it.

[Karoline]

Sounds like a great way to bring legwork into the game without having to spend hours coming up with all kinds of details, and then more hours planning things around those details.

[Scheme]

Great application of Keep It Simple and Stupid.

Could you please post a link to that site ?

[Blade]

The original document is here from this website.

[Ascalaphus]

Very interesting, pity my French isn't really up to reading it wholly. I'll have to grab my French-speaking friend by the scruff of his neck and make him summarize it to me (IMG:style_emoticons/default/read.gif)

[Paul Kauphart]

Just went through it, it's crazily well thought. And a good way to have the character plan the operation, rather than the player (who are, most of the time, not so good at it).

Digging in the website, I also found very interresting articles about how to do a bad guy that doesn't look like a bad guy, or how to take control of a character without making the player feel he's completely lost control over his character.

[Fatum]

Just went through it, it's crazily well thought. And a good way to have the character plan the operation, rather than the player (who are, most of the time, not so good at it).

That's precisely the reason I don't like it - it's the player who's playing the game, not the character.

[DireRadiant]

I always give the players the benefit of the work the characters have put in.

[Karoline]

That's precisely the reason I don't like it - it's the player who's playing the game, not the character.

Yeah, but the player shouldn't be penalized for their shortcomings. Why should a player who sucks at planning, but plays a logic 9 int 7 character who should be awesome at planning, be unable to come up with good plans? I mean you don't penalize players because they aren't ace marksman, so why punish them for not being as smart as their characters?

It's kind of like the old "How does your character avoid all the sensors while crossing the room?" "I don't know, because I'm not a skilled ninja assassin, but my character is, so my character knows how to get across the room with sensors all over it, even if I can't provide an exact explanation of how it is done.."

[Yerameyahu]

I feel like the legwork and planning is the best part. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Irian]

Hm, on the one hand, I like the idea of giving the players a planning bonus for what their characters know, but the players don't. But on the other hand, the legwork and the planing part IS a big part of the fun - at least for my players. I'll think about it, it's a nice idea... Perhaps I'll allow one roll for each player (with an ability of their choice) to gain a pool for problems related to this ability. For example, the decker might use the pool later to "remember" that he planted a little program in the system that will now save everybodies asses or something like that... Needs a little bit more time to think about.

[Karoline]

I wonder how big of a planning pool Ocean's Eleven has (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Method]

Very interesting idea. Might take some experimentation to get the balance right (I can envision my players coming up with every possible roll to boost their pool until there are no real challenges) but I like the concept.

[Yerameyahu]

When anything is an automatic success, that's just the GM playing with himself. If there are things you think a character knows but the player forgets, you should tell them without requiring hoops for your amusement. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Platinum]

Although I think that planning is crucial and the fun part. I used google to translate the pdf to english. I made an editable google doc for people to clean up as they come across things.

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYXrL1MC...uthkey=CKWtst0P

I plan on sending this back to the originator as an alternate language resource.

[Ed_209a]

So much idiom and French gamer-specific jargon...

I think I got the idea, but I hope a French/English fluent gamer comes along to help the rest of us out.

It's a great idea, even though I like the planning/legwork. It would be especially good for convention game, where time is so short.

[Mesh]

When do you get to roleplay?

Mesh

[sabs]

When do you get to roleplay?

Mesh

Having been told by several GM's that legwork/planning ruins games because its' boring and takes too much time. I suspect people think the roleplaying is when you go in and shoot people.

[Yerameyahu]

Those people are wrong. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Draco18s]

I wonder how big of a planning pool Ocean's Eleven has (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Try the Leverage's pool size.

Ocean's team accumulated a massive pool to pull off a single job (going so far as to build full scape replica bank vaults (which I'd like to point out they should not have had accurate plans to)), but Leverage pulls of almost equally well planned jobs on a weekly basis.

Though...to be honest...
"I spend a planning pool point (social engineering). My mother is the head of Interpol and springs us from jail." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif)

[Method]

I think I got the idea, but I hope a French/English fluent gamer comes along to help the rest of us out.

You mean like Blade? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Blade]

I have a few things to do right now, but if I have the time, I'll try to translate the whole document for you.

[KarmaInferno]

Perhaps rather than automatic successes, bonus dice to overcome obstacles?

"We planned for that."



-karma