Over Focus / Point Fixation When Planning Campaign
by Stephen Jarjoura

Do you ever wonder why players so often surprise their GM’s with (often) highly effective non-linear problem solving? I mean, the GM spent hours devising a complex political environment and a dungeon filled with monsters and the strong reasons why one leads directly to the other. Then the players sit down and look at the facts as presented and come up with something like, “Let’s just go to the Senator’s house, torture his bodyguard to find out where he’s hiding, and then kill him.” No need to negotiate a complex sociopolitical situation or brave a treacherous dungeon; just cut that Gordian Knot as efficiently as possible.

First, there are ways to horn-shoe the players back into the more convoluted plot the GM had in mind. Those are discussed elsewhere. I just want to explore why the players so quickly find a solution that the GM did not. Second, you’re probably screaming that there are twelve bad assumptions with my example and that would never happen, like that, in your campaign. OK; just think back to a case in which your players bee-lined directly through or around your hazards and left you scrambling for something to throw in their way. Then, pretend that was my example, instead.

My point, is that GM’s often get fixated on a point and lose the bigger picture. It’s like they slowly build up a path of, “First A then B then C … and finally, Z!” But they rarely step back and say, “If the PC’s start at A, is there an easier, faster, better way to get directly to Z?” Instead, GM’s will attempt to complicate matters with more steps, or by creating ‘false bifurcations’, as in “they can choose C or D, but either way, they end up at E.” This over focus or Point Fixation keeps the GM looking at the trees but not lifting his head to examine the forest.

One possible solution should be screamingly obvious by now. Stop and look! If you have to set aside your work for a day or two, then that’s what you have to do. Come back with fresh eyes. Don’t ask yourself “what would I do, if I were a player” because though that is the oft quoted panacea, it rarely works. Not all players have the same strategies, and you know much more about the backstory and the plot than the players do, and you can’t really simulate ignorance to get at their viewpoint, so don’t try. Instead, cast the complex plot you’ve been working on out of your head (for a moment or two!) and simply state, in a single sentence if possible, what the ‘goal’ actually is. Write it out; it helps to look at the words. Then look at your plot and see if the actual, written goal can be achieved through a simpler, more direct means.

For example, the PC’s will be told that a certain senator is corrupt and fomenting dissent within the senate while simultaneously paying barbarian raiders to attack villages at the edge of the empire. He’s trying to create the situation that will allow himself to seize absolute power “for the good of the empire.” Assuming the PC’s have a strong motivation to stop that from happening, what is their actual goal? Is it to keep him from pronouncing himself emperor? Is it to expose his plot? Is it to just remove him as a threat? Because if the actual goal is just to remove the threat, then the fastest way to do that is to remove the man, and the PC’s are (probably) damn good at killing. Skip the long way round, just find him and run him through – problem solved.

If you don’t want that solution, then you have to remove that goal. Come up with a reason why killing him would make things worse, or would lead to extreme sanctions against the PC’s, or would cost the empire much more then his current machinations do. In order to produce a different answer, you need to change the question. And, that’s not done by adding more points on the map for them to pass through or more monsters to the dungeon. In fact, by asking the ‘big question’ and changing the scenario until the question works for what you have planned, then it won’t matter what plan the PC’s come up with. You’ll be able to stay flexible and react to them, because there won’t be a path to keep them on, there will be a giant target they move towards and whatever path they choose to take to that target will be the plot.

Don’t lose the forest for the trees; ask the right questions, and let your players have the creative freedoms to find whatever paths need.