I don’t like directly calling out my readers. And especially not my supporters.

Okay, that’s just a lie. I love calling out my readers. And especially my supporters. So it’s with no small amount of glee that I say this:

I hate Angreon @DragonWhoosh of the Angry Discord Server

Until a few minutes ago, I wasn’t going to use the big H. I was just going to say something like, “lately, @DragonWhoosh is causing me a crapton of stress.” I might even have used the phrase bane of my existence. But just this morning, while I was hanging out with my loyal supporters in the aforementioned Discord server, @DragonWhoosh managed to trick me into revealing super secret information about a super secret project. On purpose. He outsmarted me. Momentarily. A tiny bit.

But @DragonWhoosh was already on my s$&% list for this pain in the a$& article. And the two planned sequels. How? It’s like this.

Today, I’m answering another one of those oft-asked questions. In fact, I’m answering the oft-asked question that tied last month’s oft-asked question for the most oft-askedest. Seriously. We had a vote in Discord to decide which article I’d write. And it was a dead tie.

The oft-asked question that wasn’t chosen by the Wheel o’ Topics — we have a s$&% ton of fun in that Discord — is the one I’m answering today. The question is this:

How do I get my players to play more strategically and tactically and make better decisions and act like an actual f$&%ing team?

And no one pushed that topic harder than @DragonWhoosh. He’d been pushing it for weeks — maybe months — before it ended up competing with that NPC thing for a coveted space on the content calendar. So, at long last, I’m writing it.

Now I’m on my third draft and my fourth outline and this article has been stuck up my workflow hole for two days too long. And it turned from a quickie little bulls$&% piece into something that I need three articles to handle.

And I blame @DragonWhoosh.

And I hate him.

Enjoy the f$&%ing article.

Can’t You Just Play Better?

Today, I’m answering another one of those “questions I hear literally more than any other.” Though this one is not so much a question as a general lament. Or maybe it’s more like an endless undercurrent of pissing and moaning and whining. Basically, lots of you GMs want your players to play… better. More strategically. And more tactically. To make better decisions. To make them more quickly and more efficiently. And to work like an actual f$&%ing team of professional adventurers instead of an anarchic band of self-serving misanthropic lone wolf a$&holes.

You don’t want much, do you?

Well, I’ve never been afraid to handle really big issues. So, handle it I shall. Your players suck at strategy. They suck at tactics. And they suck at teamwork. And I’m here for you.

But there’s a few problems.

First, I can’t fix your players. I tried. I tried with that whole Memo to the Players idea. But copious amounts of feedback told me no one could get their players to even read those single pages. And they were hard as hell to write. So, it’s on you. If you want better players, you’ve got to make them better. Coach them.

Now, I know some of you think that’s an unreasonably stupid demand. And you made me very much aware of that in your responses to that article on in-game tutorials. Turns out, lots of you either already have perfect players — you bunch of f$&%ing liars — or you’re perfectly happy to just kill your players’ characters over and over until they fix themselves. Despite that it’s terrible game design, dickish behavior, and does no one anyone good. Not even you.

But, yeah, I’m the unreasonable one. Don’t you all ever get tired of being a bigger a$&hole than a guy who advertises as one?

Anyway, the non-terrible game-designer non-dicks amongst you will have to step up and coach their players. But don’t worry. I can help you. This brings me to the second problem with my plan. After many protracted discussions with many, many GMs about strategy, tactics, and teamwork, I’ve discovered most of you suck at that s$&% too.

To be fair, I don’t expect GMs to be teamwork masters. GMing is a solo gig. You’re always alone and always outnumbered. But the strategy-and-tactics issue? That’s bad. You need that s$&%. Not just to run good monsters, but also to prep and run games.

The problem’s that lots of you don’t even know the difference between Strategy and Tactics. Several of you think they’re interchangeable. Well, not only are they very different, but the difference highlights the fundamental Homebrewer GM paradox. The push-and-pull between game design and prep and actually running games. Game prep? That’s Strategy. Game running? Totally Tactical.

Since you can’t teach what you don’t know, here’s how we’re gonna fix this. I’m writing a three-part series on Strategy, Tactics, and Teamwork for GMs to Teach their Players. Basically, a for Dummies to Teach Dummies series. Not all at once. I’ll probably intersperse them with other s$&%. Like a Town Mode article and an Angry Table Tale. I don’t know. I haven’t planned that far ahead.

So, today’s the first part. It’s mostly about Strategy and Tactics. And it’s mostly definitions and concepts. The next part’s about Teamwork and Strategic Planning. And it’s mostly practical at-the-table s$&%. The third part’s about Coaching. So you know how to walk your players through Strategic Planning, Tactical Decision Making, and Teamwork. Which I’m hereafter calling ST&T.

So, let’s talk Strategy and Tactics.

Or not.

Why This S$&% Doesn’t Matter

Before I cross the thousand-words-wasted-on-this-s$&% threshold — not counting the previous, aborted drafts; thanks Whoosh! — let me warn you that neither you nor your players need any of this s$&%. And that’s true regardless of the system you’re running. Most modern RPG systems — those published in the last decade — don’t give a single, solitary, flying f$&% about ST&T. They’re designed so each individual player can just do whatever they do best in every situation, ignore everyone else, and still win the day.

Hell, the modern games that do make a big deal about ST&T usually include a bunch of abstract rules, systems, and mechanics to simulate the character’s Strategic Planning, Tactical Decision Making, and Teamwork without actually requiring the players to play it out. So, if you want to blurt out how Gumshoe and Blades in the Dark are amazing for ST&T, stop typing that comment right now. Those games let the players pretend to be a strategic, tactical team without actually having to act like a strategic, tactical team.

And I ain’t saying that’s a bad thing. Or a good thing. It’s just a thing. But it’s a thing that means the next 14000 words I plan to vomit forth on this topic are totally unnecessary and optional. And I can’t even give you a good reason to care. Because, frankly, it’s hard to train your players. And you don’t have to.

That said, I care. I personally care. My games demand more Strategic Planning, Tactical Decision Making, and Teamwork than the average gamer is used to. If my players want to win one of my games — and win best because there are lots of less good ways to technically win my games — they’ve got to make that happen with their own cunning, clever player brains. That means, my PCs tend to lose more often than most gamers like to. And they even die sometimes.

I’m kind of an a$&hole killer GM. But people keep coming back for more of that s$&% for some crazy reason. Emphasis on crazy. Probably masochism of Stockholm Syndrome or something. I don’t know.

My point is that your players don’t need ST&T to win any normal, modern RPG adventure. And no matter how much you coach them, if they don’t need that s$&%, they won’t use it. So, if you want them to use it, you’ve got to make their lives hard enough that they have to. And that ain’t for everyone.

So, before you read the next heading, maybe you should think long and hard about why you think this s$&%’s important. Why do you want your players to play better. If you don’t come up with a good answer, hit Alt-F4 and skip this article’s sequels.

If you do have a good answer, then read on MacDuff.

ST&T Ain’t Creative Stuntery

Still here? Okay. Let’s pass the next off-ramp.

This three-part player-embetterment gangbang is about Strategic Planning, Tactical Decision Making, and Teamwork. It’s to help you teach your players how to formulate plans together to accomplish their goals efficiently and deal with the problems that arise on the way. It ain’t about fighting creatively. Sure, that does come up. Creative fighting is sometimes a part of Tactical Decision Making, but often, the best tactical choices ain’t wild off-the-wall stunts.

The problem is that lots of GMs say they want more tactical players when what they really want is just some cool, creative, swashbuckling action. They want their players swinging from chandeliers, attacking weak points for massive damage, disarming foes, and shoving them into tar pits. That kind of crap.

This series ain’t about cinematic action. If that’s what you’re expecting, you’re going to be disappointed if you keep reading. But if that is what you’re looking for, if you make a big enough stink about it in the Angry Discord Server, I’ll eventually struggle to write it and hate you for it.

…for Dummies Teaching Dummies

Above, I called this a …for Dummies Teaching Dummies article. And I meant that. Though, not literally. I don’t really think you’re a dummy. But I wanted to set the right expectations.

Strategy? Tactics? Teamwork? They’re big, meaty subjects. Three big, meaty subjects. There have been lots of books written about them. And I’m not writing lots of books. I’m writing one-third of one crappy novella. And I’m not trying to help you win a war or become a CEO or anything. I just want you to have a better experience when you’re pretending to be an elf with your friends.

The point is, this isn’t some masterclass on strategic thinking that’s going to change your entire life. I’m not qualified to teach that class. If I was qualified to change lives, I’d start on my own. And one look at the life I’m living is enough to prove I don’t know the first thing about changing lives.

But I digress.

This is just a basic look at some very simple, very general Strategic Planning and Tactical Decision Making approaches. If it seems like I’m leaving s$&% out or oversimplifying or sweeping s$&% together or getting s$&% a little wrong, that’s because I am. Because I’m writing short essays on pretend elf games.

So cut me some slack and leave me alone in the comments. Capisce?

Okay. I think we’re ready to proceed.

Plans and Goals, Strategy and Tactics

Okay, let’s get this actual series started. Today’s mostly about definitions and concepts. And six important concepts need defining. They are ST&T, Plan, Goal, Strategy, Tactics, and Teamwork.

First, ST&T. That’s the central topic of this series. It’s an abbreviation. It stands for Strategic Planning, Tactical Decision Making, and Teamwork. It’s the s$&% you wish your players were better at.

Last, Teamwork. That’s the central topic of the next article. So I’m only going to give a brief, partial definition right now. Teamwork is what it’s called when individuals cooperate to achieve a shared goal. There’s more to good Teamwork than just cooperation and shared goals, but that’s a story for another time.

Since I’m not doing Teamwork today, the rest of this article’s going to refer to individual, personal Strategic Planning and Tactical Thinking. I’ll be talking to you about your Plans and Goals and Strategies. But you can replace you with your team and everything I say today still works.

The other four terms are the important ones for today. So each gets a heading of its own. A small heading. A sub-heading.

Plans

A plan’s a list of intended future actions. It’s a list of things you’re gonna do. Pure and simple.

My plan for today, for instance, is this: after I finish s$&%ing out this draft, I intend to eat some lunch, then solicit some quotes from dice manufacturers, then drop my bike off at the bike shop in town for repairs, and then I intend to cook dinner for Tiny and I.

See? Just a list of things I intend to do. Simple, right? It is. But this s$&% gets complicated fast. And the fiendish outsider is in the details.

Goals

A goal’s something you want. It’s something you want to make happen.

I want my bike fixed, for instance. And I want to not die of starvation. And I want to support myself. So my bike’s got to go to the shop, this draft has got to get written, and I’ve got to eat. So does Tiny.

But here’s where complications come in. Because there are lots of kinds of goals. And because goals ain’t all created equal. And because people have lots of goals running at once. And because goals nest inside each other like a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey.

It’s called turducken. Look it up.

The thing is, goals — defining goals, understanding goals, and sharing goals — goals are everything when it comes to ST&T. And when someone sucks at ST&T, most of the suckage comes from not really getting goals.

So, let’s make sure you get goals.

Yes, I’m breaking out the sub-subheadings.

Big Goals, Little Goals, What Begins with Goals?

First, understand that some goals are easy to achieve. They don’t take much time, effort, energy, or investment. They’re simple. My goal to not die by eating lunch? That’s simple. I’ve got food in the fridge. It’ll take ten minutes to prep and ten minutes to eat.

But other goals are big and complicated. It takes a lot to achieve them. A lot of time or energy or effort or investment. Or all the above. Survival, for example, is a long-term goal. I’ve got to put in effort every day to keep living. And I’ll be pursuing that goal for the rest of my life. By definition.

Usually, we call the simple goals short-term goals and the complex goals long-term goals. And I’m going to keep calling them that even if the difference isn’t in the timescale. Long-term goals are big, meaningful goals. They have substantial payoffs. But they also require a lot of investment. And because they’re so big and complicated and hard to achieve…

It’s Goals All the Way Down

Because long-term goals are so big and complicated and hard to accomplish, we usually break them down into simpler, smaller, short-term goals. At least, we do if we’re smart. Those goals are like the individual items on a checklist.

For instance, I want to lose 20 pounds by the end of autumn. That’s a long-term goal. I need to put in a lot of hard work to make that happen. So I broke down that big goal into a bunch of smaller, short-term goals. Like exercising six days each week. Which includes three days of bike riding. Which I can’t do because my bike is broken. Hence my current, simple, short-term goal is to get my bike fixed.

See how this s$&% works?

Pretty much every short-term goal you pursue is part of a long-term goal. Whether you know it or not. And goals ain’t just nested inside each other. They’re interconnected too. Writing articles? That’s how I make money to buy food so I can live. But it’s also how I build my business so I can publish my amazing RPG system someday. Getting dice manufacturing quotes? That’s so I can sell Tension Dice. Why? To make money, sure, but also it’s part of a long-term business strategy that’ll lead to — you guessed it — publishing and supporting an actual RPG.

To Be or To Do

So, you’ve got short-term goals and long-term goals. And most short-term goals are part of long-term goals. And most goals are interconnected. That’s pretty clear, right? Well, let me muddy s&%$ up a little more.

Most people think about goals in terms of achieving specific things. At least, that’s what life coaches and productivity gurus tell them to do. Let’s call goals about accomplishing specific ends Goals of Doing, okay?

Why? Because I’m going to break the rules — and simplify some s$&% here — by mentioning another kind of goal. Even though most people don’t call these goals, it’s useful to treat them like goals for this ST&T s$&%. And they’re called Goals of Being.

Goals of Being are about who you want to be. What do you want to see when you look in the mirror. A vision of yourself you want to fulfill. Or live up to.

I want to publish an RPG system, right? That’s a Goal of Doing. I also want to be physically healthy. I want to look in the mirror and see a healthy dude. That’s a Goal of Being. Which, of course, I’ve broken down into habits and short-term goals like eating well and losing twenty pounds.

But let’s make this s$&% relevant to pretend elf games with an example. Say you’re a paladin. The king hired you to deal with some brigands who are harassing travelers. Your goal’s to end the bandit threat. That’s a Goal of Doing, right?

But you’re also a paladin. You took a bunch of oaths. You’ve got a moral code. You strive to be a good person. That’s a Goal of Being. A vision of yourself you want to fulfill. Or live up to. Or not fail.

And, like all RPG characters, you want to survive and you want to hit 20th-level too.

Remember when I said a lot of ST&T problems arise because of this goal s$&%? Well, there’s a perfect example right there. Most players couldn’t enumerate their goals like I just did. They’d stop at end the bandit threat. And they’d probably misstate it as kill the bandits. Hell, the most correct goal for the paladin’s probably end the bandit threat and bring them to justice.

But that’s a story for the sequel.

That’s Goals. Goals are things you want to do or people you want to be. They come in simple, short-term and complex, long-term flavors. And complex, long-term goals are best broken down into a series of simple, short-term goals. Got it?

Strategies

With your now expert amateur-level understanding of Goals, it’ll be easy for you to grok what a Strategy is. A Strategy is a Plan you devise to accomplish a goal. Usually, a long-term goal. Short-term goals rarely require a lot of Strategic Thinking.

But a Strategy’s not just a Plan. It’s a specific kind of Plan. It’s a Plan based on assumptions and predictions. A Plan based on the future you think is likely to happen. When you devise a Strategy, you ain’t just listing actions that’ll lead to your goal, you’re also guessing how the future’s going to play out.

My Plan for today? That ain’t a Strategy. Why not? First, because the various things I’m gonna do aren’t all about accomplishing a Goal. I’ve got several Goals in play. I’m actually running a few different Strategies. I mean, I could complicate this s$&% by pointing out that a Grand Strategy is a Plan for accomplishing all your Goals, but… let’s keep this s$&% simple.

Second, my Plan’s not a good Strategy because it doesn’t address likely future events. My bike, for example, needs a simple repair. The bike shop’s usually able to take care of that s$&% immediately. Or within an hour. I know that because I’ve done business with the shop before. My intention is to leave the bike there and pick it up whenever it’s done. Just fit it in. A true Strategy would recognize I could likely have my bike back tonight, but it’s going to f$&% with my dinner plans depending on how it plays out.

This s$&%’s just small potatoes though. It doesn’t really matter whether I get my bike back tomorrow or the next day or whether I bring it home tonight. I’m just saying, a true Strategy isn’t just a Plan devised to accomplish a Goal, it incorporates predictions and assumptions about future events.

Predictions and assumptions being very different from blind guesses, by the way. But I’ll come back to that.

Tactics

A Strategy’s a list of actions you intend to take in the future to bring about a Goal, right? So what are Tactics? Tactics are the actions you actually take when you finally get to the future. What’s that mean? Tactics are the in-the-moment actions you take — the decisions you make — based on what’s happening to you. The moment it’s happening.

Strategies are Plans. Based on predictions. Tactics are Choices. Based on the here-and-now. And Tactical Decisions are about seizing opportunities or mitigating disasters.

Back to the boring-a$& bike shop example. Let’s say I bring my bike in tonight and they tell me it’ll be fixed in thirty minutes. Originally, my Strategy was to drop my bike off today and pick it up tomorrow or the day after. But reality has presented me the chance to have it back immediately. To seize that opportunity, though, I have to change my plans. I’ll have to make dinner late. Or I’ll have to drive back to town after dinner. Which I wasn’t planning on.

That’s a Tactical Decision. Actual reality has offered me an opportunity to accomplish my goal differently. Or more efficiently. The opportunity’s got a cost, though. I have to weigh the cost and decide whether to seize the opportunity. And figure out how best to do it.

Now, let’s say I get to the bike shop and there’s a sign on the door. It’s closed for a week. The owner’s out of town. So now, I can’t accomplish my goal. Not how I planned to. I’ve got to take a different action. I could drive to the bike shop in the next town, but that’ll make dinner really late. Which might mean calling Tiny and telling her to eat dinner on the way home from work. The point is reality screwed up my plan and I’ve got to come up with a different course of action.

And it might be the best course of action is to retreat and devise a new strategy.

The actions you take when reality actually materializes? That’s Tactics. Or rather, those are Tactical Decisions.

Strategy and Tactics and Pretend Elves

Hopefully, you’ve grasped the difference between Strategies and Tactics. And hopefully, you understand Goals. Really understand Goals. I ain’t lying when I say they’re the most important part. Next time, we’re going to add Teamwork to the mix. And then we’re going to talk about how Teams formulate Strategic Plans and make Tactical Decisions. Practical s$&%.

But before we move on, let’s look at a few little conceptual issues.

Why Strategize At All?

Reality never plays out how you think it’s going to. You know that. Everyone does. So why bother with Strategic Plans at all? Why not rely on good, in-the-moment Tactical Decision Making? As long as you know your Goals, one’s as good as the other. Right?

The short answer is “no.” The long answer is also “no,” but with a string of curse words.

Strategic Plans are valuable even if s$&% is not likely to go according to plan. First, because you can’t accomplish complex, long-term Goals in the moment. By definition. Accomplishing long-term goals is all about setting priorities and allocating resources. Without forward-thinking, you won’t have the resources you need to do what you have to do at any given moment or to capitalize on opportunities that arise

Consider this as a practical example: most people who don’t plan their days out — at least a little — people who live from moment to moment or just from one to-do list item to the next? Those people rarely have enough time to do the stuff on their to-do lists. And because they always feel like they’re playing catch-up, they don’t feel like they’ve got the flexibility to seize good opportunities as they arise.

But Strategizing’s real power is that it forces you to spend time analyzing your goals, prioritizing them, and gathering resources. This means you’re keyed into what you want to accomplish and what you’ve got on hand to accomplish it with. So, when opportunities arise, you’re way more likely to make good Tactical Decisions because you’re so in tune with your goals and resources. You’re also clued into what capitalizing on opportunities or mitigating disasters is going to cost you. Every Tactical Decision is a cost-benefit analysis. And Strategizing keeps you in tune with the relative values of the costs and benefits of all your decisions.

Back to my dumb-a$& bike and workday example, I Planned my day based on my Goals and my Strategies for achieving them. If I just figured on getting my bike fixed whenever, I’d be a lot less equipped to handle either the bike being ready in a half-hour or the shop being closed. Because I know my health Goal is a high priority — higher than most of my other Goals — having my bike available tomorrow morning is really valuable. And since I know I’ve got extra free time after dinner, I know I can capitalize on that with relatively little cost.

If I’d checked the weather for tomorrow — I did, I do that when I’m planning my exercise routines — if I’d seen it was going to rain tomorrow, I wouldn’t bother picking my bike up tonight. Or maybe I would. Because picking up the bike in the rain is a pain.

That’s the power of Strategy. Whether your predictions are good or bad, a Strategy equips you to deal with what does happen. It empowers you to make more efficient Tactical Decisions. And to make them more quickly and with less stress. Because you know your Goals, you know your priorities, you have a pool of available resources, and you can quickly and easily do the cost-benefit analysis of the choices you make.

Overstrategizing

It’s possible to take this Strategy s$&% too far. And pretend elf gamers love taking this s$&% too far. Because they love taking every good thing too far. For every TTRPG group that totally ignores Strategic Planning, there’s a group that Strategizes themselves to death. Usually literally.

Strategies are based on assumptions and predictions. They’re conclusions often drawn from incomplete information. They are not wild guesses or conjectures.

If you’re going up against a dragon, it’s a good idea to think about how to deal with its breath weapon, right? It’s a dragon. It’s got a breath weapon. And if you know where it lives, you can probably guess its color. This means you can guess what’s coming out of its spew hole. And you can be ready for that. That’s good Strategic Planning.

If you’re going up against a totally unknown livestock-eating beast — if you’ve got zero information beyond “a monster’s been eating sheep” — then the idea that it might have a breath weapon? That’s not a conclusion, that’s a wild f$&%ing guess. It’s based only on the fact that breath weapons exist.

The thing is, every element of your Strategic Plan’s got a cost. Even if you don’t see it. Preparing for a non-existent breath weapon? That could cost you a lot of cash on useless potions of resistance. Or it could lead you to spreading your team out at the start of the fight, making you vulnerable or denying you the benefits of small-area buff spells. But even if you just keep an eye out for breath weapons and have a contingency like “scatter” in your plan, that’s a thing you’ve got to keep in your head.

And heads don’t have a lot of space.

The more complicated the plan, the more likely it is someone’s going to forget a key element at a crucial moment. And the more likely you’re going to bring a lot of overspecialized resources that can’t be used. And the less flexibility you’ll leave yourself for Tactical Decisions.

Players overplan the s$&% out of things. Which I’ll address more in the sequel to this article. But it’s because they think guesses are as good as assumptions. And they think the more contingencies they’re ready for, the more likely they are to succeed. Which is provably false.

Moreover, when players overplan, they shoot down lots of really good ideas because they can imagine the flaw in every plan. That is, someone might propose a solid Strategy for approaching an unknown monster’s lair only to have someone else say, “what if it’s a dragon in there; we’ll be sitting ducks with that approach.” And that s$&% leads to hours and hours of not coming up with a Plan and then getting frustrated and then going in with no Plan and then dying.

Strategic Teams and Tactical Players

Finally, while this ain’t true of all team sports vis a vis ST&T, generally in TTRPGs, teams create Strategies and players implement Tactics. Basically, in TTRPGs, the party does the Strategic Planning as a team. But when they’re in the thick of things — especially combat things — each player makes their own character’s Tactical Decisions. And that usually works out for the best. In TTRPGs. Not necessarily in general.

But that’s a story for next time. When I explain Teamwork and then give you a practical, step-by-step means by which Teams can devise Strategic Plans.