Here's a problem:
Your character, Joe, is a decent fighter but far from great. He's walking through Darkside at night (never a good idea) intending to make a rendezvous with someone who has valuable information. Suddenly he realizes that he's been surrounded by a Kavi gang that is apparently intent on robbing him and quite possibly leaving him for dead. There are too many for Joe to realistically take them all down at once.
What does Joe do?
Don't know? Wrong answer. The Kavis close in, chitin knives and frayed but serviceable lengths of ship's line swinging in their paws...
When you're role-playing, you'll often be faced with problems of one kind or another. If you freeze up, thus doing nothing at all, or do the first thing that comes to mind, you'll probably only get yourself in deeper trouble. You need to be able to think of good answers on the fly.
There are three steps to problem solving:
Identifying the Problem
Some problems may seem obvious-- "I'm surrounded by a gang of Kavis who want to kill me dead!"-- but other problems may not-- "People want the Abu Dhabi tapestry my aunt left me!" And even if a problem is obvious, there may be ramifications that affect how you should solve the problem. So when identifying a problem, answer these questions:
Joe wants to get through this alive. He wants to be on time to meet his rendezvous. He wants to avoid losing his money.
Sometimes it isn't possible to get everything you want out of a situation; in this case, you need to figure out what things you want the most, and what you're willing to give up to get those things.
We'll call this list of wants, Joe's "Goals".
The Kavis are in Joe's way. And they are threatening his life if he doesn't cooperate with them, possibly even if he does. You don't necessarily know this yet, but you can make a pretty good guess.
Enumerating the reasons Joe can't get what he wants is a pretty good way to start defining the characteristics of the "Obstacles" in his way. Even if defining them is in the form "You can't do X because Y will happen", you will be able to eliminate those forms of solutions from the range of solutions you must consider to achieve your Goals.
Joe has his own fighting skills and some moderate acrobatics, being a thief; he's also got his weapons. We'll say that he has a good chitin dagger. Looking around, he'll see that the street might boast some broken crates, empty; since this is Darkside, it's probably fairly narrow and in between buildings that are rather ramshackle, either stone, adobe, or wood. It's dirt-paved, rather than cobblestones.
No one is within sight but he could try to duck into a building through a door or a window, which might yield more tools or people to help or hinder him.
This is the flip side of finding obstacles; you're identifying the resources you have or can bring to bear quickly, and thus you're getting a feel for what you can have Joe do in order to solve his problem.
There are many different ways to solve problems; indeed, part of role-playing your character is how you choose to solve his or her problems. Thieves will prefer sneaky solutions, fighters will prefer brute force, and so forth. But before you can role-play your solution, you have to come up with a good answer to the problem!
The following is not going to be a complete list of ways to solve problems. It's just meant to get you thinking "outside the box".
Straight to the point: Joe takes out his dagger and hacks into the gang of Kavis. Maybe he'll scare them off, but at least they won't get his money without paying dearly for the privilege.
The risks are obvious: what if Joe can't beat them? He might die. He might win but be so badly hurt that he can't make it to the rendezvous. When pursuing a "superior force" solution, be sure you really do have superior force, or else have the grace not to look surprised if you take your fair share of hurting.
Running is not such a bad idea-- Joe doesn't have anything to prove. Sure, they surround him, but maybe he can break through their lines and get away. If they chase him, then it'll be their ability to pursue him, versus his ability to get around in a thiefly sort of way.
It's possible that he might not be able to break through, though not as great a risk as trying to take them on all at once. Also, some obstacles are not easily avoided. Weigh the risks.
Still, Joe will certainly bear this in mind. If he picks the right spot to break through...
Any gang of Kavis will have leaders; if Joe can identify and get the drop on that one, he might be able to persuade them to let him go with a minimum of fuss. If not, he can kill the leader and then have a shot at escaping, hoping that they will be too demoralized to pursue.
There are two risks: first, Joe has to find the weak point, and second, he has to take advantage of it. It's a gutsy move, but maybe he can scare the Kavis so they won't bother him again, and gain some major bragging privileges. Safe isn't very dramatic, after all.
Joe can try to fool the Kavis in some way: perhaps he can use a smoke bomb to cloud the scene so that they can't follow him, or he could shout, "Look out, there's a guard!" or he might try to convince the Kavis that richer pickings than him have just gone by. Suppose that there's a stack of crates nearby-- if Joe can run in such a way that he can push them all over and into the path of the Kavis.
Either way, if he can get their attention off of him and preferably onto taking care of other problems, then he's halfway home. The environment is usually full of things that can be used to change the rules of the problem. Where it isn't, you'll have to be smarter.
The Kavis want money; if Joe's willing to sacrifice some, maybe he can buy time and make a get away, by dipping into his purse for shekels and flinging them around. They may prefer a sure thing to trying to take him down to see if he has more.
Alternately, maybe Joe can talk the Kavis into believing that he can lead them to a lot more money. Maybe he can even make them part of his latest scheme-- thus turning the entire situation to his advantage.
If it doesn't work, Joe has lost valuable time and maybe resources, but going out on a limb can, again, be a lot more dramatic and fun for role-playing than taking the safe and sane approach.
This is not exactly a well defined category of tactics, but it's a very interesting rule to apply: "turn your opponent's force against himself." It's derived from aikido where instead of directly opposing someone, you use his momentum against him, making him fall instead of you.
If Joe stops to think about what the Kavis are thinking, he might figure out that individually they're no match for him, so the problem has risks for them too. He can try to bluff-- play some kind of trick with "hand faster than the eye" sleight of hand to make it look like he's really good with knives, and too much for them to handle. Or he might try bluffing, "Maybe you all can take me, but a bunch of you are going to die; do you feel lucky, punk?" He might even feign foaming at the mouth and pretending to be crazed, in the hope that they might decide he's too much trouble.
Turning the problem upside down is another ill-defined category of tactics; it may not always be obvious if it can be applied, but it can generate some fun "outside the box" thinking. Alexander's solution to the Gordian knot is a classical example of turning the problem upside down; the problem isn't to undo the knot, it's to get at what's inside the knot.
Maybe Joe can call the guards, if there are any around, or friends who might be nearby and able to help. If he runs, even if they might be able to keep up with him, maybe he can go somewhere he can get help. As an extreme long shot, he might even be able to coerce some of the Kavis into helping him, either by offering them a lot of money to betray their leader and work for him, or by having done some of them a favor in the past.
Whatever the case, sometimes it's best to retire from a problem and line up additional forces and tools, rather than try to tackle it with inadequate means. Just make sure you do have a plan to get help, rather than just avoiding the problem and having it come back to haunt you later.
Implementing Your Plan
Let's suppose Joe has decided that he's going to try running away. Now he needs to carry out his plan, and that means that he needs to take his actions one step at a time.
He needs to pick out a good direction to run, and whether he's going to try to push through the Kavis, or engage them and bring one or two down so he can get through without getting stabbed.
If there are any additional factors he wants to toss in, like using smoke bombs or toppling crates over onto the Kavis, he needs to be ready to do that, and pick an order in which he wants to do things. It's not possible for him to simultaneously throw a smoke bomb, attack a Kavi, and push crates over, or at the least, he'll receive a serious penalty to his rolls for success (assuming that the GM is using dice to determine success or failure).
So, Joe decides his plan is going to be as follows: first he'll dig out a smoke bomb and throw it in the direction he plans to run, toward the crates. Then he'll run, push the crates over, and after that, he'll try to double around the buildings and lose any Kavi pursuers, then get back to heading for his rendezvous.
Good plan. Only, a plan rarely survives contact with the enemy.
Joe throws the smoke bomb. This goes well, the Kavis are surprised, and he manages to push his way through. However, as he's thrown the crates over and is on his way out, he bumps into a GM surprise:
The GM has decided that there were some guards making their rounds, and if he'd stayed where he was, they would have showed up to help him out. Now that he's bumped into them though, he has them to deal with before he can be clear of the situation. "Stop, citizen!" one of them barks. "What's your hurry?"
Thinking fast, Joe realizes that they have no reason to believe he's guilty of any wrongdoings. So he tells them, "Officers! There's a gang of Kavis menacing innocent people! Down that way!" and runs the other way.
The guards are of course, suspicious-- but since he's on his way out, not obviously carrying anything valuable, and there is in fact a commotion where he came from, the GM rules that they are more likely to go check out the gang rather than try to stop Joe.
Joe stops a moment around the corner and pants for breath. A close one, but he's survived. He looks about, sees no further trouble, and saunters on to his rendezvous.
Back to Role-Play: Section 10.7.4