Embracing the Chaos: GM Tips for When Players Ruin Your Plans
We’ve all been there. As a game master (GM), you want to control everything and plan for every moment. You build plans, backup plans and backups for your backup plans — and any GM who has run more than one session knows it all falls apart the moment the players enter the equation. Sooner or later, your players ruin your plans.
This post is about embracing the chaos instead of fighting it. I’ll share two stories from my own tables, including a recent Shadowrun session where one clever bit of magic undid an entire evening of prep, plus a few GM tips for rolling with it.
When the Campaign Roadmap Meets Real Players
Years ago I moved to a new town and was thrilled to discover a local group playing Dungeons & Dragons. I’m an experienced GM, but I wasn’t going to run this time. I was the new guy, and taking over someone else’s game group is a bad idea. So I happily rolled up a dwarven fighter — a nice change, since I usually play mages.
Before I go further, I want to be clear that this isn’t a criticism of the host. It’s about expectations, and why he wasn’t having as much fun as he could have been.
The host was new to roleplaying games as a whole. He loved the statistics and the storytelling, and he arrived with a long-term plan: campaign goals, a timeline for how each character would develop, even goals for every session. Seeing that carefully planned roadmap, I knew he’d end up wrestling with a choice between having fun and hitting his targets.
Within the first few sessions the timeline went out the window — mostly because we never made it out of the tavern. The second session derailed things even further, thanks to a mimic fight that was way too tough for low-level characters.
The host had fun at the table, but his clever plans seemed to slip away. I’ve heard there was more than one heated conversation about it afterwards (I’d had to stop attending by then because of schedule conflicts).
The point is that, just like real life, the GM’s plans tend to fall apart. Calling someone a “game master” is almost a misnomer — a GM rarely feels like they’re in total control.
A Shadowrun Story: The Night My Players Sank My Plan
I’ve been running Shadowrun since it came out in 1989 (get off my lawn). There’s one adventure, “The Island,” that I’ve run about five times. I won’t go into details, because I know at least one of my players reads this blog, but I will say this: even with all that experience, a player surprised me with chaos — and it’s not who you’d think.
Meet the Team
My current group has a hacker, a street samurai, a combat medic and a face who also happens to be a mage. Like most GMs, I’d planned a serious, gritty game of underworld crime. Instead, it plays more like a Monty Python sketch with guns. I’ll admit I’m a little disappointed, so I’ve been nudging the group away from “pink mohawk” play and toward a more “black trenchcoat” style.
The combat medic’s player is lovely — and also pure chaos. They’re the one with zero impulse control. Half of every session is other players shouting “No, you can’t do that, it would be a war crime!” or “You do realise that makes you a serial killer?” It’s honestly part of the fun, and I’d be disappointed if they changed how they play. Their character would be a liability on a real job, but this is a roleplaying game. I was prepared for it.
The Plan: Lose All Their Gear
While prepping, I remembered a trick from a previous run of this adventure. I had the players spend ages building a detailed equipment list — everything they wanted to bring — knowing full well they were about to lose it. Watching all that expensive gear end up at the bottom of the ocean gives players a real sense of loss.
The setup is that the team needs to reach the island without the inhabitants knowing. That means a skydive into the ocean in the middle of the night, followed by a swim to shore. Since none of them are skydiving experts, I’d built a whole chart of consequences for failed rolls, ending with lost equipment and a mission they’d have to solve without their gear.
I was fully braced for the combat medic to cause trouble during the water landing. But they weren’t the one who ruined my plan. It was the mage.
When Players Ruin Your Plans With a Water Spirit
As a GM, I love character development. I also know Shadowrun is a complex game where players need time to learn how to play their characters, and deckers and mages have a particularly steep learning curve. So when a player suggests using one of their abilities, I go for it. Nothing teaches a tricky game mechanic better than a player’s own idea for solving a problem — even if it ruins your plans.
So there I was, ready to cause all kinds of trouble, when the mage said: “I’d like to summon a water spirit to make sure nothing goes wrong when we hit the water.”
I knew exactly where this was going. In Shadowrun, a water spirit can have a power called Guard, which protects against accidents. (Goodbye, carefully planned equipment loss.)
I could have kept quiet about that power and waited for the player to discover it on their own. But a GM’s job isn’t to control the game — it’s to make sure everyone has fun. This player has found the magic rules hard going, and fair enough: there’s a lot to learn. Even with my years of experience, 5th edition is very different from the first four, so I’m still learning too.
Pointing out the Guard power, and then admitting afterwards that it had thwarted hours of my prep from the night before, gave that player a real sense of power. They felt like they were mastering the game.
Sure, I’ll have to find other ways to challenge the team. But when players ruin your plans like this, it’s a win for the table. And once you see the GM’s job as making sure everyone has fun rather than being a master planner, the game becomes more fun for the GM too.
GM Tips for When Players Ruin Your Plans
- Don’t plan every moment. Prep the key scenes, characters and stakes, then leave room to improvise — the details will fall apart anyway. Techniques like reverse railroading can help you follow the players’ lead.
- Celebrate it when players ruin your plans. “I ruined the GM’s plan” is worth more to a player than any treasure they could find. Let them know when they’ve outsmarted you.
- Be OK with the chaos, but set expectations. Talk with your group about the tone you’re aiming for so the chaos stays fun for everyone at the table. If someone’s play style really clashes with the group, read that awkward moment when a player is not a good fit.
Your Turn
Have your players ever wrecked a perfectly good plan? Tell us about it in the comments. Looking for more game master tips? Check out our guide to running non-combat scenes in RPGs, or if you’re new to the hobby, start with so you want to start playing Dungeons & Dragons?
