In nearly every work, you have a
Plot. Frequently, a plan will guide the plot. Often an
Evil Plan, hatched by the villain. Some plans are complex, with so many unforeseen events acting in concert, making it a
Gambit Roulette. Other characters try to stick with
A Simple Plan, which always gets more complicated. If the character doesn't plan ahead, it's an
Indy Ploy. If you can’t figure out what subtrope a character's plan belongs to, just
Pot Hole it here.
This is a subindex to the
Gambit Index.
Gambit Index covers everything about
The Plan, such as who plans and who foils the plan, how the plan is revealed, and what is done after it works. This index covers only the plans themselves, and is divided into two categories— Types of Plans; how the scheme will work, and Specific Plans; what the scheme will accomplish. If it would fit in both, it goes in Specific Plans.
Types of Plans
Specific Goals
Examples
- Blue (or Green, in the English version) in Pokémon Special pulls off at least one of these per story arc, some more complicated than others. And some that are just plain ass pulls.
- The aptly named episode, Gambit of Blake Seven in which Big Bad Servalan's Starscream, Travis goes to the criminal planet of Freedom City to find the technician Docholli knowing that his nemesis, Roj Blake is also seeking Docholli because he knows the location of Federation headquarters. Travis becomes Docholli's bodyguard so that when Blake arrives, Travis can kill him. Servalan also wants to kill Docholli to prevent him from revealing his information to anyone so she pays Krantor, the lecherous ruler of Freedom City to kill Travis and Docholli, knowing that Krantor will try to torture Docholli to find out what secret he carries and that the location of Federation headquarters is of no use to him. When Krantor sends Servalan Docholli's corpse, it will be obvious that he's extorted the secret of Star One's location. Therefore to shut him up, the Federation will kill Krantor and burn Freedom City to the ground. She also makes a deal with Travis for Docholli's life. Either way Docholli and Krantor die and Freedom City is destroyed. Watching her try to explain this plan to her dimwitted Dragon, Jareair is quite amusing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tk6f4JjYf4
- Magnificent Bastard Cyric from Forgotten Realms. This guy has so many different plans going on that even HE doesn't know about all of them sometimes. The guy is a little Axe Crazy. One of his greatest Xanatos Gambits involved pretending to hold the Idiot Ball for years, only to convince the other greater gods that he was useless in his position as Greater Evil God and attempt to strip him of his power. All this ended with Cyric destroying the love of his two greatest enemies, (sort of) regaining his sanity, and pissing off the entire pantheon of other gods, with them being able to do NOTHING AT ALL to stop him.
- This harkens back to his FIRST plan where he killed a goddess of illusion with the help of a lesser god, but got off scot free because he knew exactly what the Over God would say. The other gods exact punishment, but Cyric also gets them to remove the punishment through even more trickery and lies. He also binds an Eldritch Abomination to him at the same time. The same one that bit off Tyr's hand, you know, Tyr, the Big Good of the Forgotten Realms? Yeah, and because the Over God says so, Tyr can't do a thing to stop Cyric and his many many plots. Cyric goes on to weave even more plans ending ultimately with Tyr's death, Helm's death, Mystra's death, and the death of many other powerful gods and the complete destabilization of magic itself. He does end up in chains for causing the deaths of those gods, but he is the god lies and trickery... does anyone really think those chains will hold him for long? Especially since we don't even know if that isn't yet ANOTHER gambit of Cyric's. He could be walking freely about the Realms, using his power as God of Illusion to create a clone to take his place in the chains.
- Falling astray of a vast mesh of Xanatos Gambits, and thus getting manipulated in a million directions at once until you finally just give up, is a common occupational hazard amongst Shadowrunners.
- One Shadowrun adventure module has this fate befalling a friggin' dragon, previously the indisputable master of the technique. It's also worth remembering that Shadowrun is, along with Paranoia, one of the few tabletop RPGs where it's perfectly acceptable to turn on the rest of the party.
- Special note goes to Dunkelzahn's Heroic Sacrifice to prevent the Horrors from invading the Earth. As anyone who played Earthdawn will point out, the Horrors managed to drive a few gods mad back in the Fourth World. So it's even odds whether Big D's plan is going to succeed or not.
- Sabrina Thompson of Survivor: One World managed two gambits with one move. Considered a threat to win the million against Kim, no less by Kim, she pulled off the Scheherazade Gambit by threatening her with a Genghis Gambit. In essence, if she put Sabrina on the jury, Kim would be made to look like she was piggybacking on the sure thing (Alicia) and almost certainly suffer a Humiliation Conga (especially with Troyzan up there). There were no major incidents, and Sabrina ended up with the silver.
