Larp is about making meaningful decisions: your character is presented with a challenge and you have to decide how to act. During a war game like our June Premiere event, Dogs of War, you’ll be given the chance to make choices that will decide the Battle of Requiem. However, most of us are not experienced military tacticians, and even those who consider themselves adept at strategy games might not know what to expect from a game like Dogs of War. So how are you supposed to make a meaningful decision in a war game?
The Problem: Don’t Take Too Long
Gen. George Patton said, “A good plan, executed violently now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” He was addressing a common problem, not only in warfare, but anytime a person might need to make a choice: decision paralysis. When in a high-stress situation, people usually don’t have all the information they need to make a perfect decision, and the risk of them making a wrong decision leads to them taking too long and not making a decision at all. In modern military forces, this is why we have a professional officer corp: while anyone with military experience knows a 22 year-old Lieutenant is probably ignorant to the point of being dangerous, they still get to give the orders. Why does this work? Because the young officer has been trained (and will continue to be trained by their troops) to be the one who makes a decision in a crisis. Early on, they’re given simple situations to command, and as they progress, they learn to be decisive in more complex ones.
However, this is a larp, and our players don’t typically have years of experience or training in these situations. So what tool can they use to make sure they make quick and effective decisions?
The OODA Loop
The OODA Loop is a relatively modern doctrine that can be used easily in larp to make effective decisions in a crisis situation (like you can expect to encounter during Dogs of War). It was developed in the 1970s by a fighter pilot who used the acronym OODA (Observe - Orient - Decide - Act) as a model for military decision-making. It’s extremely effective in any sort of competition that’s not completely turn-based (and as such, is often applied in competitive situations such as business or politics). The basic idea is that instead of making the most optimal decision in a given situation, you want to make a quick but effective decision and get “inside” your opponent’s loop. As you make decisions and execute them, you change the situation, so your opponent’s “optimal” decision is now based on outdated information.
The OODA Loop consists of four steps, repeated endlessly in a cycle:
Observe - Take in new information. In terms of larp, this might be a piece of intelligence, the appearance of new NPC enemies, or just noticing something new.
Orient - It’s one thing to have new information, it’s another thing to understand it. This step places the new information in the context of everything you already know about the situation.
Decide - Once you have an understanding, make a decision. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but if you’ve oriented yourself properly, you already know the options and risks involved. Don’t dwell on them, make a choice.
Act - Once you make a decision, execute it. Acting upon your choice changes the situation, and generates new information that both you and your opponent will have to address… by observing the new situation, and starting the OODA loop over.
Using the OODA Loop In Larp
Once you stop trying to make the perfect decision, and instead focus on quick, effective decisions, you’ll realize this is a good path toward success. Throughout Dogs of War, we’re going to be offering you the chance to gather intelligence… through spying, research, and role-play. You might want to gather as much information as you can before you make a decision, but that’s how you’ll fall behind: we’ll keep coming at you with new information that will change your understanding, and if you don’t make a decision and act, then you’ll fall behind. Conversely, if you come up with a decent plan right away - and execute it - you’ll probably be successful.
For example, at 0100 on Saturday morning, a research team might decode a message that reads, “The commanders will be meeting at the tent near the latrine tonight” (an observation). However, there are at least six latrines in the play area, all spread out amongst the different campsites. You know you want to capture an enemy commander (an orientation), but how do you do it? As you take 20 minutes to figure out what to do, the research team decodes a second message, “The meeting will occur at the campsite closest to the morgue at 0130.” However, that campsite is nearly a mile from the A-Frame… there’s almost no chance for you to get a team there anymore.
Compare this to a group focused on agile decision-making: once they realized that there were six latrines, they quickly got a dozen people together and started sending people in pairs to each one (a decision). Now, when the team decodes the message, they have a dozen people closer to the objective: a single runner can probably alert them all with time to spare (an action).
So What Does This Mean For Dogs of War
We want you to experience what it means to be making decisions during the stress of a wartime situation. You should be doing a lot, even if it doesn’t seem to do much, because it’s constantly putting you in a better position for when it does pay off. As we get closer to the event, we’ll make sure you have a design document that helps set the context for your decision-making: what the stakes are, what happens if specific things go wrong, and what you can accomplish if you achieve certain objectives. As you get a piece of information, use the OODA Loop to quickly make a decision. Not only will you likely be more successful, but you and those around you will have a fun time winning this war.