Over the last couple of days, I’ve been discussing the usefulness of not allowing a character to perfectly predict her opponents’ actions when planning, and making her predictions accurate in the main but not in the details, thereby requiring the plan to change. But I haven’t talked much about ways to implement that, so let’s think about the hazards of planning around actions someone else is supposed to take.
The easiest way to take this apart is looking at elements of the response to whatever the character did to set this off. This boils down to who, what, when, where, why and how. What do these matter, and how can they go wrong?
- What, in general, is the most vital part of the operation. Just about every plan that revolves around the actions of another set of characters requires them to do something and/or something to happen to them. People go from Point A to Point B, guard one location or leave another open, die or cheat death, walk into traps or make decisions, but regardless, there’s an overall something that happens. In most cases, what is the element you’re going to want to make go according to plan, and leave the devilry to the details.
- Who is usually one of the most impact-heavy elements for the manipulator or the character with a specific target. Take assassinations: sometimes, icing the wrong person en route is an inconvenience, but as often as not, it creates far more additional havoc. Setting a trap for someone works a lot better when that person actually shows up, and there’s not much quite as frustrating as luring everyone away from a certain location so you can do something there except for the one you didn’t have a backup plan for. In cases where all that matters is that a certain thing gets done, though, people can be pretty much interchangeable; as long as the magic circle binding the unspeakably evil creature is breached, it might not matter for the plan itself who did it. (For the aftermath, on the other hand….)
- When, logically enough, is the biggest inconvenience to the plotter who has a lot to do and not much time to do it in. Sometimes it’s because the planner has to observe her plan herself, and the longer she spends waiting for her intended patsies to show up at the appropriate location for the next phase, the more time that takes out of everything else she wanted to do—and she might miss them entirely if they chose a different day to do whatever they were supposed to. She might be mounting a diversion for something else, in which case the characters finishing early and heading back can put the kibosh on whatever it is she’s doing. Or perhaps the problem is synchronizing what’s going on with other events—this is usually most important when trying to frame someone for a crime, making sure they’re in the right place at the right time.
- Where, as a planning element, works a lot like when, and the consequences of a deviation or miscalculation are pretty similar; time wasted waiting for people who never showed up, not going far enough afield or going too far afield, being a block away from the intended witness rather than just on the other side of the window.
- Why and how are often the least likely to impact a plan. After all, for many people, as long as the right thing gets done, or the right people are in the right place at the right time, the plan’s just fine. But every now and then, method and reason matter—and often, reason impacts method, so it’s hard to fully separate the two. Someone does something out of anger, and gets a little sloppy because they’re too busy being upset; out of duty, and might do it more (or less, depending on the personality) completely than the planner wants; out of desire to please a certain person, and misses the parts that they don’t realize would matter—you get the idea.
So when you’re choosing elements in which a plan succeeds, and ones in which things don’t quite go according to plan, think carefully about which ones to use how.