Forethought Required

Basically this means it is never safe to make general preparations and charge in to situations where many different types of threats may present themselves. No general strategies alone will suffice. Specific preparations for specific threats, or else. Threats may have a few preparation options, but preparation options that handle multiple threats are rare. This can be as extreme as chess and checkers, where player must think many moves ahead to avoid checkmate (irreparable loss of game). Tic-Tac-Toe is a minimal example where a player thinking only one move ahead will always lose to the player that plans every move to the last (not accounting for dumb luck by the first player, a 1 in 51 chance). But this is not limited to strategy games, any game genre can do this to the player. A few RPG games with permadeath can have hundreds of deadly threats that each need a solution at hand before the player proceeds.

If the player can simply play the level again, undo actions, or revert to a previous save, and there is nothing in the game to deter 'do overs', then this tag does not apply. Required forethought is not readily compatible with trial and error gaming.

Chess and checkers games that allow undo of moves, or can revert to an earlier save without penalty, are not requiredforethought.