Strategy

Strategy means, roughly, "an overarching plan" - To have a strategy, one must have a goal, and recognize what steps are necessary to take in order to achieve the goal. The strategist then comes up with a number of tactics for handling these steps.

D10
In D10 games, Strategy Rolls are made using Academics and Intelligence, and adding a bonus of +2 for having the merit "Small Unit Tactics" as well as a bonus of +1 for having a specialty in "Strategy", and potentially any circumstantial bonuses.

When to roll
Strategy should be rolled for at the beginning of any scene where the characters involved are going to try to execute a plan of some sort.

What the roll does
The roll encourages the GM to reveal information that the players may have overlooked and to work with them on their strategy - the GM is ultimately the person who is making the story that the players play their characters in, so any advice divulged from the GM is pretty much golden advice.

There are two kinds of strategy rolls, long-term strategy rolls and an Operation Roll.

Long-Term Strategy rolls
A long-term strategy roll is a base-line strategy for a very long-term goal. Such a roll cannot just be made from scratch - it requires a compiling of available resources, available allies, opposition numbers, situation reports, general intelligence and a lot of logistics work. Many of these are entirely separate actions, and once they are done, a strategist can work up a Long-term strategy.

Benefit
The long-term strategy will without a doubt need to be revised many times, but it will provide bonuses to later Operation Rolls if it was done well. A Long-term roll is always an extended strategy roll, it gains an equipment bonus based on what information (as mentioned above) is available, and can be assisted with.

10 successes
This result equals just having a long-term strategy, which is enough to gain a +2 bonus to any operation roll that fits into the long-term strategy.

12 successes
This result equals a plan with better room for improvisation. It yields a +3 bonus.

15 successes
This result equals a plan with contingencies. It yields a +4 bonus.

20 successes
A master plan that has accounted for everything possible to account for - while still no guarantee that things will pan out, your bases are covered. +5 bonus.

Operation Rolls
An operation roll is a strategy roll made for a more short-term goal. The roll may NOT be extended, but it may be assisted. It gains an equipment bonus if it fits into an existing Long-Term Strategy that the character rolling is privy to.

Benefit
The Operation Roll yields a number of successes, and that number is how many free uses of Small Unit Tactics that the strategist can decide on, provided there will be someone in the decided situation who has small unit tactics and was privy to the strategy.

If the Operation involves one half of the team climbing a building, and there is one member of that half of the team who has small unit tactics, and that person was privy to the strategy, then the strategist can, before the plan is executed, decide to grant a that person a free use of their small unit tactics for that particular part of the plan - provided that the strategist had at least 1 success on their operation roll.