I was reading an AP report elsewhere, and saw this kind of problem:

You're in a genre which favors Action (ex: plulp, supers) over Shrewd Tactics (ex: blackops, dungeon crawls). A few (but not all) of your players really like making in-depth plans, focused on making the objective as easy to get as possible, with as few complications as possible. As a result: the characters' actions look more like undercover operatives than Genre Heroes.

If we were talking about pulp, then instead of Two Fisted Al' punching out Doctor Zebra on the top of his Zepplin, they secret fill the zepplin with a half-knockout-gas half-hydrogen mixture, and secretly sabotage the blimp, so that it begins to ignite once it's midair but no one is awake to notice. The players coordinate this from another country, so as not to arouse suspicion. (There are lots of other versions of this, but they generally seem to have Too Much Firepower, lots of planning, and lots of insurance.)

The thing is: the latter one is basically an action-free assasination (unless we mess with it), and it doesn't feel pulp at all.

So, what should we do if we want the game to still feel pulp? You can simply tell the tactician guy he's having the Wrong Kind of Fun, but might be kinda sucky, and a lot of these types have a hard time "switching off" their instinct to try their hardest to win. Or we can fiat that their plan fails, no matter what they roll: super-lame. Or we can make up some kind of complication that basically nerfs their attempt. ("My minions are immune to knockout gas! I escaped!"). Understandable yet still kinda lame, because it's still telling the tactician that his tactical stuff will be trashed, no matter how well thought out.

Any better suggestions?

Not knowing the first thing about these matters, I'd say play a game in which twofistedness, and only it, is hardwired into the rules, e.g. supposedly Spirit of the C. This might irritate tacticians, leading them either to shifting their tactics from in-game scheming into gaming the system, or making them realize that pulp just isn't for them. I'm one of the lattter, myself.

I'd have the players buy into the concept first, after a thorough explanation of what I was lookng for. Without player buy in, they aren't going to have any fun.

-clash

The game could be all reactive situations, rather than things they can analyze and plan around.  Rent "Big Trouble in Little China" for inspiration.

The reactive thing could be an idea; as the game bogs down in more planning, keep throwing in more advanced + non-silly versions of "ninjas attack now", until gameplay feels more like the genre. Maybe.

Do folks know gamers who are like what I'm talking about - the kind of player who has trouble letting go of doing anything other than trying their hardest via the rules/scenario to achieve their objective (while being IC and following the rules)? (I'm kinda the opposite, frankly.)

Yeah, me. But I think I have a good sense of where the balance lies between "fun scenario with interesting action" and "bumbling straight in without planning".

Enforcing genre is difficult. System can sure help--e.g. if you use one of those really high-level-of-abstraction hippy thingies with rules that are designed to shape the story, you have no problem. The player can plan all he likes, and he'll get maybe a small bonus on Part 1 of his plan, which if successful might get a followon bonus to Part 2. (I'm thinking of resolution mechanics something like Sorcerer or TSoY.) Meanwhile, realistically, the enemy is proactively planning and scheming as well, so a failure on any of those rolls means they hit first (ninja attack!) or locate and counteract the gas mixture, etc.

Even without a mechanical system I do think that a player who expects to have all sorts of time and resources to carry out these sorts of plans, and doesn't allow for the enemy to do likewise, is being unreasonable.

Another idea, though one I'd be apprehensive about using, would be to just go ahead and let the player win all the time, if that's what he enjoys so be it. Now you "just" need to improvise ahead of him to keep the story moving.

QuoteDo folks know gamers who are like what I'm talking about

*Raises Hand*
The thing is, I think you are wrong and the players you see as a problem are right. They act rationally and take the world they play in seriously. They care!

Apart from that, the only bearable excuse of "pulping" would be to enforce a harsh time limit, and be a fiend of a scene framer. Reacting with awesome to everything the players do is also a nice route. YOU are Power, YOU are the DM. If it´s pulp, then let the players be Pulp heros. Make a ultra cool cut scene sequence from the planning of the remote asassination, with A-Team music in the background, and mad laughter and raised Martini glasses at the explosion!
Don´t wait for pulp to happen, take what happens and make it pulpy!



Or you take one of these story games, there are so many.
I even must say: Take Wusu. This could totally work with wushu.

On the flip side the more moving parts they have the more that can go wrong. Instead of filling the balloon with sleeping gas the goon that they hired to do this job makes a botch on his identify chemicals roll, and fills it with hydrogen. In the real world UPS delivers packages late, to the wrong address and breaks shit.

When you deal through proxies and minions, especially in a pulp setting shit sometimes goes wrong. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes indifferently, sometimes for the better. You take your own chances when hiring out.

Or conversely they are masterminds who always win. SO everyone else gets sick of that noise, and starts looking for them. Suddenly everyone they hire is being gunned down, horribly tortured, or worse. No one will work with them, after all they can only protect a few people at a time.

It's all in how you want to deal with this.

The first step has to be to talk to the players. Don't mess around behind the curtain - tell them straight that you want to see direct action. If your players don't know this, they cannot work with you together - they'll permanently try to do their thing, while you try to force them into another direction. That isn't only agonic, it is something that probably won't work out.

On the supportive side, system can definitively help. If there's a serious gap between mooks and Heros(TM), proxies aren't a great help. Roll open and see how they mess up the PCs plans, forcing them to make their hands dirty themselves if they want any serious success chance.
If your players are interested into victory and use tactics only as means instead of an activity that is fun of itself, you might also consider to reward direct and thrilling actions. Are there any gum points that allow to re-roll and such stuff? They're great for this. They give a definitive edge in the session itself, but you don't have to deal with XP gaps between the PCs.
Generally, a "PCs never die, only get captured/unconscious/whatever"-clause can also help: As the stakes are lower players are more willing to risk and gamble. Of course such a lowering of stakes has also its downsides, so you have to consider if the gains of such a change are worth the trade-offs in your case.

While I agree that talking to your players and saying "I'd like direct action and a pulpy feel" is good advice, I'd also follow it up by asking them "What would you like?"

Now if they say "We would also like direct action and a pulpy feel!" then you have an interesting opening the first time they start doing detailed, safe plans.

No, not an opening to say "Don't do that, guys!  You promised!"

Rather, you have an opening to assume that they aren't breaking their promise, they're just operating on assumptions you haven't quite twigged to.  Ask them "So, do we want this plan to succeed?"

I've played with many pulpy groups, and I've asked this question, and the answer I got was usually some variant on "Oh, of course not!", but the variant itself is often telling.  There's a big difference between "Oh, no, we'll totally mess this perfect plan up when we go to actually implement it, and end up just battering our way through as normal" and "Oh no, the villains will totally have anticipated this plan, and we'll be walking into a trap."

But I agree with Sett ... the planning isn't any sort of problem, as long as people are roughly on the same page about what the plans should mean to the game.

Quote from: DevPI was reading an AP report elsewhere, and saw this kind of problem:

You're in a genre which favors Action (ex: plulp, supers) over Shrewd Tactics (ex: blackops, dungeon crawls). A few (but not all) of your players really like making in-depth plans, focused on making the objective as easy to get as possible, with as few complications as possible. As a result: the characters' actions look more like undercover operatives than Genre Heroes.

If we were talking about pulp, then instead of Two Fisted Al' punching out Doctor Zebra on the top of his Zepplin, they secret fill the zepplin with a half-knockout-gas half-hydrogen mixture, and secretly sabotage the blimp, so that it begins to ignite once it's midair but no one is awake to notice. The players coordinate this from another country, so as not to arouse suspicion. (There are lots of other versions of this, but they generally seem to have Too Much Firepower, lots of planning, and lots of insurance.)

The thing is: the latter one is basically an action-free assasination (unless we mess with it), and it doesn't feel pulp at all.

So, what should we do if we want the game to still feel pulp? You can simply tell the tactician guy he's having the Wrong Kind of Fun, but might be kinda sucky, and a lot of these types have a hard time "switching off" their instinct to try their hardest to win. Or we can fiat that their plan fails, no matter what they roll: super-lame. Or we can make up some kind of complication that basically nerfs their attempt. ("My minions are immune to knockout gas! I escaped!"). Understandable yet still kinda lame, because it's still telling the tactician that his tactical stuff will be trashed, no matter how well thought out.

Any better suggestions?

Like Settembrini said, change the rules so that "smart play" is the same as the kind of play you want to see.

Don't want villains to be killed from the other side of the world?  Then make a "I'll Believe It When I See The Body" rule: any villain who dies offsceen is almost guaranteed not to die.  "Doctor X?  That's impossible!  We sunk his private cruise liner as it was crossing the Atlantic!"  The important part is telling the players that this is how it is, so tactical play results in them running up to him and punching him in the face.

You know, this is stuff I think I knew, in the back of my head and all. I think I was just trying to think my way out of the direct approach, i.e. overtly telling someone that I'm afraid of their tactician brain overrunning the other parts of the game, and asking them to reign it in. There are fair and politic and kind of ways of saying this, of course, but it still is what it is.

What other genres / styles of games do you find don't mix well with overly tactical play?