"So where are you going this summer?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I have to be out of the country on July 23rd, so I'll be in Beijing then, but before that, maybe Chengdu, Xian, Qingdao? We'll see."

"Well that's fine then. When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow."

I really don't know which direction the influences work in this case, but being a real-life traveller and being a gamer are exceedingly similar in how you deal with planning.

We're all familiar with those sessions that are based on the plan. Figuring out how the group is going to sneak into the castle, beat the crap out of the gangsters, rescue the princess from the genocide weapon or whatever is a grand tradition in the world of gaming. And when I say "a grand tradition," I mean "an exercise in frustration."

Of course, that's a bit harsh and extreme and whatever, but how many groups have seen their plans fall apart as soon as they start to implement them? Sometimes it's because the plan was stupid in the eyes of the GM; sometimes it's that adversarial style coming out, or just the idea that "if everything works it's not interesting."

That is exactly what happens when you travel in weird places. You never feel more like a GM is running the universe than when you show up to a bus station to find that the buses you need only run on alternate Thursdays. This kind of runaround is exactly what I expect from a GM. Of course if it was a good GM, there'd be some dramatically important, or at least interesting, event that'd happen because of trying to find the other bus station or whatever. But life is a crappy RPG.

Because of these kinds of events, most shoestring travellers I know have been forced into the "vaguest plans possible" mode. Since it's impossible to tell when a train will arrive anywhere, why make a hotel reservation? It just adds stress when things "don't go according to plan."

Now in gaming, I take the same sort of approach. As a player I tend to get frustrated with the planning stages unless they're being done in character. I tend to think that whatever plan we make will be completely changed by the actual situation on the ground, so wasting time with details beyond "land the helicopter on the roof and find the hostages" seems to be just that, a waste.

As a GM I do the same thing. I've got a vague idea of where the characters might want to get, and what I want to happen, but nothing is set in anything resembling mineral deposits. Read Ian Sokoliwski's Winging It column for more on this kind of thing. I like this because it cuts down on the extraneous niggling problems that players might get frustrated with (like going to the wrong bus station) and lets me keep things interesting. I try to make sure that characters' plans work without a hitch sometimes. Now this is actually a bit of overcompensating on my part. As I said before, real life isn't so accommodating, but fiction is.

What this means for your games though, is that you can end up with a clash of styles. If I'm coming in all loosey-goosey saying "we'll make it up as we go" it might lead to conflict with the tactical kinds of people in the group. I have a couple of law-enforcement officers I game with and playing Delta Green or anything remotely police-procedural with them gets tricky because they want to do things right, while the other players are fine with handwaving and being much more Mulder and Scully than the CSI team. Not that the people who want to do things right are wrong (and my players aren't jerks about it), there's just a difference in styles.

The clash can be even more grating on travellers. It's important to pick your travelling companions wisely. If you don't like having more than the vaguest plans, you might not have a great time with someone who needs schedules to squeeze the most out of every single moment. Or you can do what every gaming group should also be doing: communicate with your companions.

My mom came to China to visit me in January. It was her first time out of North America, and she likes things to work out easily. That doesn't happen in China. For months she'd been asking what the plans were for her trip. Where were we going? What would we see? And for months I explained my travelling style was very relaxed and we'd try to see this this and this, but that might not all happen. It took months but by the time she came she was all over not being rushed from place to place, and seeing what happened when we got somewhere.

Okay, that's all I've got for this month. Next time I'll be talking about the fun of visiting little countries.

J Unrau Hungry J Propaganda www.djs5.com/hjp