Transcript February 2nd - Committee Meetings Get You Killed (OSR Decision Paralysis Fixes)

Original Video: https://youtu.be/a3TtkSYi_zY

Transcript is lightly edited. Expect typos and worse ;)

This one comes straight from a viewer suggestion, and I'm actually glad it did, because decision paralysis is one of those table problems that can quietly kill a good RPG session. If you've ever sat there with a party staring at three doors, an intersection, a staircase, and a weird statue and nobody wants to pick one, well, yeah, that's the thing, right? That's the indecision. 

And today I'm talking player to player. How to stop freezing, start moving and still play smart, especially in old school games where time is a resource and the whole we all just think about it is how you get jumped by wandering monsters and other assorted miscreants. So now being careful is good. I'm not saying it isn't. Caution keeps you alive, but decision paralysis. That indecision is where the table gets stuck in a loop. You find yourself asking for info you cannot realistically get. Maybe you keep inventing new plans instead of choosing one. Or you keep waiting for the DM to confirm that it's safe. I got news for you. It probably isn't going to. You're stuck trying to find a perfect option or solution that simply doesn't exist, and paralysis has a real cost. Torches. Burns. Spells tick away. Noise travels. Wandering monsters happen. The dungeon doesn't pause because the party is having a committee meeting.

I'm sorry. Here's why this happens. Most of the time, this indecision comes from one of a few places. Fear of consequences, right? Old school play has teeth. Some choices bite. That is literally part of the game. That's what you're in for. Then there's trying to solve it in your head instead of in the game world. People start playing mental chess or checkers instead of exploring. And then there's waiting for permission. Players want the DM to validate the plan. In old school play, Like I said before, you generally don't get that. Too many choices. Too many options. Every hallway becomes a debate, and debate becomes, it becomes the game. 

So how do you fix that from the players side? Here's what works at real tables. Default to action, not discussion. And what do I mean by that? If the party is stuck, somebody has to be willing to say, alright, we're making a move. And not recklessly not Leroy Jenkins. No. Deliberately. If you want a simple mental rule. Movement creates information. You don't get certainty by thinking harder. You get it by probing the situation. So ask yourself, what's the smallest safe action we can take right now? What can we do that's reversible if it starts going wrong? You don't need a perfect plan. You do need the next move. So stop trying to pick the best plan and instead pick. It's actually good enough because most of the time you're chasing perfect. If you've got two or three decent options, arguing for ten minutes doesn't make choosing easier. It does burn time. It raises your party's risk, but doesn't make the decision making any easier. So use the good enough test. Does the decision keep us alive or move us towards the goal? Is the cost one that you're willing to pay? If yes, Have at it. 

Make scouting a procedure, not an argument. A lot of paralysis is. We don't know what's behind that door. So don't debate the door. Scout the door. Old school tables live and die on cheap info. Listen at the door. Check for drafts, smells, sounds. Look for tracks. Examine the lock. Examine the hinges. Probe the floor with a pole. Use a mirror. Check the ceiling. Line the cure to what if it's trapped? It's not a debate, it's literally a procedure. 

And if you want to be the player who saves the session, be the one who says, um, you know what? Before we argue and the DM rolls for a random encounter, let's gather a little info first. Assigned roles. So decisions don't require a committee if someone is steering the ship. Sorry, if everyone is steering the ship, then no one is steering the ship. Old school groups used roles for a reason. They kept the game moving forward. Now, what are some common roles? Caller or leader? It's not a dictator. It's he is a tiebreaker or she mapper. We've discussed that before. Now, if you're using a vdt, maybe mapping isn't an issue, but mapper scout generally a thief, maybe a halfling, maybe your elf quartermaster in charge of making sure there's enough light, managing the party's encumbrance, distributing the treasure. Who's the rear guard? So this reduces friction immediately because when there's a split, the table doesn't need to relitigate leadership every five minutes. Use a simple sixty second rule. When the table bogs down, somebody says, all right, 60 seconds And then we pick. Not to be rude, not to rush things along, maybe a little bit, but to prevent the session from becoming a debate club. See, in the fiction of the world that you're playing in, it's simply honest. Time is passing. The dungeon is alive 

Decide by risk category, not exact outcomes, because you don't know what the exact outcome is going to be. Paralysis comes from trying to predict the exact result. if we open it, the gas. Or maybe it's ghouls or goblins or a pit trap you can't know, so don't play that game. Think in three general buckets low risk, medium risk and high risk and then act accordingly. Low risk. Do it medium risk. Take some precautions and then likely do it. High risk. Only if it's absolutely necessary or if you can shift the odds in your favor. 

Keep the full moves in your pocket. That's another one, right? If you personally freeze, give yourself a cheat code. What do I mean when you're stuck? Default to one of the following and keep the game moving. Uh, I don't know what to do. Alright, you know what? I'll scout the next ten feet or I'll listen at the door. I checked the floor in front of the doorway. I look for tracks and notice there's a pattern to these things. Right? They create information without committing you to. What a huge decision. Force the plan into one sentence. If you can't say the plan in one sentence, it's not a plan. It may be brainstorming, but it's not a plan. For example, we wedge the door, listen, and fall back if we hear movement or conversation. That's a plan. You can execute that also. You know what you need to do. You need to accept that sometimes you'll be wrong. Keep things moving anyway, because that's the real fix. 

Old school play isn't about never making a mistake. It's about adapting after the mistake. It's about buying information because information saves hit points and you don't buy information necessarily. With gold. Sometimes it's with time. And asking the GM questions. If you pick the wrong hallway, fine. Back out. Change tactics. Learn the party that never chooses anything gets punished harder than the party that chooses imperfectly. 

Now let's remember the little thing I refer to as the the dungeon clock, right? It's always ticking. It doesn't stop. Tick tock. The dungeon clock. So what about a quick example? I'll throw this at you. The party reaches a T intersection, right? You can go left. You can go right. And then everybody starts arguing. And here's the smart play. Move! Stop! We're burning! Torch time. What is torch time mean? It means that we're burning time down to another random encounter. Check. So quick, Scout, I listen left. You listen right. If one sounds active, we take the quiet one. If both are quiet, we pick the right corridor and move. That's not perfect. Okay, but that is forward motion. So again, I want to thank the viewer who suggested this topic because decision paralysis It's common. It's fixable, and it's mostly fixed by players taking ownership of momentum. 

Now this is also a collab with D'Angelo. Catch his channel linked below. We are experimenting with doing collabs on Mondays now. If you've got a table trick that breaks paralysis, whether it's caller rules or timers or marching order, discipline, whatever it is, anything. Drop it in the comments. I want to hear what actually works at your tables. Current tables. Real tables. And if you want more practical on how to play it at the table videos, you know what to do, right? Subscribe. I'll keep you focused on what helps you run and play better. Thank you and God bless.