Is there a good article/post on story ideas that work in RPGs versus film/literature

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If they do the planning ahead of time, and it goes off without a hitch, playing out the caper is an anticlimax; it's hard to have any tension.

Which may or may not be a problem, depending on your players. My group likes it when a plan comes together . . . it's a bit like "winning," and the payoff for all the tension in the planning stages. And it's entirely possible for planning to be very, very tense indeed. If you have to carry out a bunch of thefts and black-market deals to procure the necessary gear, send the face character into the lion's den in disguise to acquire some passwords, clean up evidence that you're planning something, maybe even silence an inconveniently nosy NPC, then you have dozens of chances to compromise the plan, no one of which is immediately fatal to the adventure. But then the actual caper can be smooth, proving the heroes are as good as they claim to be.

Again, that does depend on the players. Some people believe that tension is needed in every sub-plot and game session; some people do not. I happen to game with the latter kind of people, so they actually have more fun when all their characters' hard work actually has a picture-perfect result.