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D&D Ideas — Planning vs. Plotting

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is the planning vs. plotting, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of planning vs. plotting in the module series Dark Paths: Shimmer a villain’s plot is long since underway and the plan is for the adventuring party to embroil themselves in a grand mystery. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

Nerdy News

What the F happened in the week that was? Discover who the F your D&D character is, nurture your own drake and ascend like a dragon plus a new live chats and game play round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Plotting vs. plotting came up as a topic during a Nerdarchy Live chat on our second channel where we post game plays and interviews with industry and creative people. The particular person was Guy Sclanders of How to be a Great GM if you’re interested in checking out our live chat here. Guy was on to talk about his new How to GM book so I had to ask, knowing it wasn’t his first book on this topic, is something changed or did he simply have more to say on the matter?

Since his first book Guy had an epiphany about being a Game Master and the phrase was coined during this part of the conversation — planning vs. plotting. Not only did we discuss this on one of our Monday night live chats but Ted and I decided to do a video on this. (It’s not up yet.)

I’m going to do something we rarely do here — share our notes from video planning even before the video goes up. Mainly these are talking points we use to center our discussions around.

Video Notes — Planning vs. Plotting

Today We’ll Discuss:

• Came up in a Live Chat with Guy Sclanders from How to be a Great Game Master
• What is plotting?
• What is planning?
• Pros and cons of each

Plotting

When the DM tries to create the story and control the outcomes

Pros

• Knowing everything that will happen
• Less need for improvisation
• Feeling prepared

Cons

• Can feel like a railroad
• Less opportunity for players contribute to the story
• Easier for the players to lose interest and feel their actions don’t matter

Planning

Introducing story elements and responding to how players react to them

Pros

• Players get to contribute to the direction of the story
• Never need worry about players going off the rails — there are no rails!
• Story is more flexible and easy to change according to character actions

Cons

• Feel less prepared
• Creating epic story arcs more challenging
• Need to improv more often

I started off as a Plotting DM and over time became a Planning DM. This also seems to be a natural progression as any DM gains more experience. As you can see from the notes above both offer benefits.

The truth of the matter is you could do a bit of both — the detailed prep of the plotter with the flexibility of the planner. If you focus on building detailed sandboxes for the areas characters will be exploring it’ll give the benefit of plotting.

The downside is you’ll work on things that won’t necessarily get used. This is less of an issue if you run a lot of games in the same area. Each campaign builds on the last and after you’ve run a few games in this campaign setting you’ll be more and more prepared. It’s kind of an easy way to build your world over time with each campaign getting more detailed than the last.

The downside here is as a world builder and DM you might get pigeonholed or bored. I like to vary up the kind of campaigns I run. Now the downside to always switching up your campaigns is you don’t have the campaign regularly fleshed out.

From Ted’s Head

Planning vs. plotting is a very button pushing subject when it comes to 5E D&D. I will jump the gun and state what works for you and your game group is just fine. However if you want to try something new it can be a lot of fun to see the other side if you are used to only doing one of the two.

If you are a plotting DM and decide you want to try planning it can be a little time consuming and a shock. For much of the first 5E D&D campaign I ran I allowed the players ultimate freedom and ran off of only a few sentences for each session — certainly more plotting than planning. But for my second campaign during session zero the group wanted a more structured game and number of sessions. For this game I was actually writing more material. I planned dungeons and actually statted out new monsters.

The trick with being a plotting DM and trying out planning is to build bridges. You can plan to go from one encounter to the next as well as one session to the next. As you become familiar with the players and the characters you should develop an idea of how they’re likely to react and can plan for this. For instance if given a choice the players in my monthly Untraditionally Arcane campaign always want to go left so I can plan for the answer to be on the left when I want them to get there quickly or I can plan it to the right when I want the dungeon to take longer. Use the knowledge of how players in your game react and plan around this.

Let’s look at the other side. If you are a planning DM and decide you want to try more plotting you might just have a bit of a control issue. When you are used to figuring out everything before hand it is culture shock to have to figure out things on the fly. What do you make in advance in order to get used to being more improvisational?

Access to random roll charts, random generators or any tool to help you moments of indecision provide the answers. There are a number of books and websites to help out this mindset should you feel you need.

When it comes to combat having a few monsters at the ready to place anywhere should you decide to drop in an encounter. Dare I say having access to Out of Box Encounters is always handy and has a variety of combat and non-combat scenarios. The style we developed for our signature product demonstrates our approach to running RPG sessions and you’ll find a very similar structure in our other modules too.

The things you make and prepare in advance can be things you can either reuse at different times, use in multiple locations or just generally useful any time. The more you play in this style the more you get used to it, which allows you to actually prepare less for the session.

With this style as a DM it is crucial to listen to the players. What they say in this session can be material for the next session or beyond. Take notes and use what is said. If they speculate then use it, or do the opposite. You will feel spectacular as a DM the first session you run coming to the table with nothing or little prepped and your players say how awesome a session it was when you create memorable experiences together as a group.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

Planning vs. plotting lies near and dear to our nerdy hearts when it comes to 5E D&D or any other RPG. Our friend Guy from How to be a Great GM galvanized all of us to explore the differences and reinforce our own perspectives on how we approach running a game.

The distinction between whatever plotting NPCs get up to within the game and the planning I do before a session really crystalized for me during my live chat with Dave. The good news is you’ll get better at both the more you run games. You’ll learn to recognize what your planning ought to entail this gives your plotting entities breathing room. It’s kind of like how characters refine their strengths as they gain experience too.

Planning involves preparing some resources so when there’s an opportunity then Something Happens to break state. This could be a perilous puzzle room, a treacherous trap or hazard, an ambush monster, an NPC with a message — literally anything. In a game like 5E D&D filled with magic and fantasy a gateway to another dimension can pop open anywhere at any time so your options are wide open.

Part of your planning to keep in mind is there’s a bunch of other people playing the game too. In my experience no matter what sort of incident breaks the state of inertia for players it’ll draw their curiosity or engagement to some degree. Solving a puzzle, safely navigating past a dangerous environment, surviving an attack or discussing the meaning behind a mysterious message all change the state of play. More importantly they put the ball in the players’ court and thrust agency upon them.

What I’ve learned is planning the kind of scenarios I’m more comfortable and confident about managing. A combat scenario in 5E D&D is probably the easiest thing to plan for because the very nature of calling on players to roll initiative signals a special kind of gameplay. Planning for a combat scenario almost never goes wasted and keeping it flexible enough to deploy whenever it feels appropriate for the emergent plot is especially helpful.

Planning for me largely means developing some ideas for NPCs and social interaction. Combat feels like the lowest common denominator and exploration is my jam — I can improvise some exploration all day — so focusing on what gives me the most trouble works out great. When you’re planning your game sessions think about the times when you felt most unprepared and focus on stuff to help you knock those things out of the dungeon.

Plotting on the other hand is what the entities in the game setting do and introducing these plots to the player characters signals they can do something about them. In fact it ought to be a clear sign the intention is for them to engage with the situation and act. If it’s not it might be wise to examine your motivations for running a game.

Think of it this way: every NPC, creature, extraplanar entity and otherwise is plotting something. A blacksmith plots to sell a set of plate armor for 1000 gp. An owlbear plots for lunch. At least one ambitious figure plots for world domination or whatever. The point is for a DM the plot well never runs dry. Anything leads to a story and a DM helps the players discover the one with the adventuring party at the center.

Both cases — planning and plotting — revolve around the beats. Planning for some things to happen creates a beat in the story while plotting depends on hitting various beats to accomplish a goal. During a session of 5E D&D they collide and this is the heart of what an RPG is all about. The mechanics of the game system guide the group through how these scenarios spin out.

*Featured image — Dream Weaver presents a compartmentalized adventure structure wherein the story begins and ends however — and whenever — characters encounter and confront each scenario. As a standalone one shot or a piece to a larger puzzle along with Thought Thief, Lightbound and Gathering this new scenario format creates dynamic encounters you can drop into your game at any time. Not quite an adventure and much more than a random encounter these circumstances engage characters and players with components for plotting their own unique story with planning from the Game Master. Check out Dream Weaver here.

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