"You arrive before the Baron," said Thad. "You have saved his daughter yet he has long been your enemy in the Royal Court. He is impassive at the moment, perhaps he is uncertain how to deal with you in this private audience."

"Does he have lots of guards here to ambush us?" asked Dave.

"No," said Thad, "just one bodyguard standing behind him and his loyal seneschal at his side. He might be extending an olive branch."

"Good!" said Vicky. "I will dispel the Baron's protective wards and then seal off the room to the outside."

"I draw my death blade to strike the Baron!" said Dave, rolling dice.

Bill looks up from his notes. "I'll deal with the others and signal our allies in the castle to make their move."

"Okay...are you sure you want to do this?" asked Thad. "There are going to be serious consequences for killing a baron."

"We have a plan...more or less," said Dave.

One anxiety of most GMs is that their players will do something so unexpected that they will be unable to handle it. Despite common opinion players are fairly predictable, sure their tactics might be clever from time to time yet their strategies are fairly consistent. Easily 95% of the time a GM can handle whatever the players decide to do in a game. GMs anxious about the unexpected are letting something that occurs less than 5% of the time impact their entire process. That's not effective - don't do it!

If you are anxious about players doing the unexpected, do the following exercise.

1. Get two people to pretend to be players.
2. Read to them the following: "Your PCs are captains in the city guard. Your city is about to fall to an enemy army. Your commander orders them to fall back from the walls to get the Queen to safety."
3. Tell your two players to come up with a course of action for their PCs.
4. Explain how you would handle that plan, which should include what opposition they would face as well as an interesting complication you could throw into the mix.
5. Repeat #3 and #4 several times.

You will be able to come up with an approach for every plan, no matter how crazy, they come up with. There's nothing your players are going to do that you can't handle, so you shouldn't stress about it. Truly. Try right now to come up with some absolutely crazy player action to a past or future game you have or intend to run. How would you respond to it? You're not going to be able to stump yourself.

Yes, I admit GMs aren't going to come up with the perfect response to a player action in the middle of a game. Your goal is to come up with something in realm of reasonable, which is a vast realm. When GMs mess up in these situations, it's not because they couldn't come up with a reasonable response, it's because their anxiety blinded them to a reasonable approach. I'm speaking from experience here. I've made big mistakes as a GM, always because I couldn't let go of expectations and overreacted to the situation.

What follows is a simple process GMs can use to adjudicate any situation:

Step One: Resolve. If you are confident that you can reasonably adjudicate the action/plan of your players then do it. If you aren't sure, then go to Step Two.

Step Two: Clarify. Ask your players: "what do you hope to accomplish with this action/plan?" This will help your players check their logic by explaining their reasoning, which will help you better understand what they are trying to accomplish. You might be able to Resolve the action/plan with a better understanding of their thinking. If you are still uncertain, go to Step Three.

Step Three: Detail and Delay. You're uncertain how to handle the situation so ask your players: "why don't you break down your plan?" This forces the players to explain their plan in greater detail, during which they will probably reveal to you factors you hadn't considered. This process also delays the adjudication giving you more time to consider your response. You might be able to Resolve the action/plan now that you have an even better understanding of their plan. If you are still uncertain, go to Step Four.

Step Four: Decide. You can't put off making a decision on how to adjudicate the situation any longer. You need to answer the following questions: What is the range of reasonable outcomes to the pending action/plan? What are the key obstacles? Is there anything interesting I can add to the to mix to make things more dramatic?

You aren't looking for the perfect answer to these questions, just an answer that's good enough for the moment. Once you have answers, you should be able to Resolve the action/plan.

Here are a few final considerations.

Defer to your players' logic if it is in the realm of reasonable; once again, this is a vast realm. The counterpoint here is that often "unexpected" is the same as "stupid". If you are certain the action/plan is "stupid" and you've asked for clarification that reinforces that it's "stupid" then adjudicate it as such, yet just make sure your expectations and reasoning aren't blinding you to the possibilities of a plan that is in the realm of reasonable.

Reward what you want to encourage. If you want your players thinking and strategizing then reward them when they do that. Sometimes if my players come up with a great well-considered plan for doing X then I might say they automatically succeed with X. That provides an incentive for strategizing. If you run your players through the ringer whether they plan or not, then you are encouraging them not to plan.

Everything is about NPCs. If the players kill the Baron then any consequences flow from NPCs. If your players do X then ask yourself how certain NPCs might react to that. Don't be too linear when it comes to NPC reactions. NPCs should be like real people - complicated. Try to put yourself in the mind of the NPCs you believe are most likely to react and build your consequences from there.

There we go - consequences.