Something like a competing gang doing the same score is the sort of dynamic situation I talk about. it happened once in our game, and we really were not expecting that so it was a nice surprise.
if the "dynamic situation" means something else ongoing, as in, a rival faction showing up to compete with PCs for the score/actively sabotage them, that is also something that the game expects, I think?
Faction relationship rules are kind of that? Factions that have -3 with you will go out of their way to screw you, and showing up for your score is one of the most obvious way they can do that.
The same goes for PC's personal enemies.
I really don't understand why my framing of "If the PCs did nothing, what would happen?" is misplaced. That is a question about the fictional situation, and I feel we can answer that regardless of the specific game we are playing.
I think what you say about GM soft moves and important NPCs taking initiative closely related to this. I feel this is not something that happens a lot in the game I've been playing in. Most developments in situation are due complications or success of PC actions. But good to know the mechanical avenue by which the sort of dynamism which I speak of could be inserted.
I've followed this conversation, and the quotes above are the ones that strike me as especially salient.We're not just talking past each other, we're talking about different things entirely. My sense is that the lens through which you're looking at Blades in the Dark play is not the correct one.
My knowledge of BitD/FitD/S&V etc is indirect and partial. But @Manbearcat, I think you are posting about processes of play with a particular focus on GMing techniques. Whereas I think @Crimson Longinus is asking about colour.
Here is my version of the situation/score that @Crimson Longinus has mentioned:
A noblewoman has an absurdly valuable necklace kept in a vault in her manor. Security at the manor is provided by (inter alia) guard dogs and Bluecoats. From the Bluecoats' perspective, the necklace is a form of savings/insurance/surety - as long as they know where it is, and that it is safe, they can always call upon it (or its owner) if they need extra finance. This is why they are protecting it.
In addition, and unbeknownst to either the noblewoman or the Bluecoats, the necklace in its vault serves as a supernatural anchor or focus for some ritual (or the like) that is being performed by some other more esoteric faction. Most of the noblewoman's servants/workers/underlings are members of this faction: thus, from her point of view she thinks of them as her "people"; but from their point of view she is their dupe and they are using her to pursue their esoteric goal. This is why these seemingly ordinary, low status, uninteresting people (i) are actually more dangerous than they appear, and (ii) will stop at nothing to protect the necklace.
Now I am not sure how much BitD permits/encourages the GM to prep "fronts" or something of that nature - but with fingers crossed that I'm not going completely astray in relation to the game procedures, I'm going to posit that, when play of the score just described starts, the players know the first paragraph - this is the info they've collected in the set-up phase - but they don't know the second paragraph, as this is an idea the GM has come up with as a basis for narrating twists and so on in the event that things happen that demand the situation be complicated. The GM is ready to "actively reveal" this prep in play, but is looking to do so in the context of making the PCs' lives more complicated than they expected and hoped for.
So the PCs turn up to steal this necklace, and active play of the score begins. The situation I've described has (I think) plenty of dynamism or "charged-ness" in @Manbearcat's sense: there are factions and powerful people with a big stake in what happens if the PCs steal the necklace (the noblewoman; the Bluecoats; the cultists). Even if the PCs fail to actually acquire the necklace, they can piss people off by poisoning guard dogs, destabilising the relationship between the noblewoman and the Bluecoats (she no longer thinks that their protection is reliable; they want to move their insurance policy to somewhere else), and interfering with esoteric cultish matters.
But as I understand it, this is not what @Crimson Longinus is talking about, in terms of "dynamic situations" in the score. I take it that Crimson Longinus is drawing a contrast between (say):
(i) When you get to the top of the wall, you can see a group of dogs in the courtyard below - they're big and obviously vicious ("static"), vs
(ii) When you get to the top of the wall, you can see a group of dogs with their handler - and a Bluecoat too! The handler is saying something to the Bluecoat, and though you can't hear what, it's not making the Bluecoat happy ("dynamic"), or even vs
(iii) When you get to the top of the wall, you see the bodies of what were obviously, until quite recently, guard dogs - .but now they're dead, and laid out to mark a pentagon with the sixth, and biggest, dog, lying in the centre with its viscera extracted and artfully arranged ("dynamic", and a GM move that doesn't give the players the immediate obstacle of the dogs, but announces future badness that some other weird thing is going on here).
(ii) When you get to the top of the wall, you can see a group of dogs with their handler - and a Bluecoat too! The handler is saying something to the Bluecoat, and though you can't hear what, it's not making the Bluecoat happy ("dynamic"), or even vs
(iii) When you get to the top of the wall, you see the bodies of what were obviously, until quite recently, guard dogs - .but now they're dead, and laid out to mark a pentagon with the sixth, and biggest, dog, lying in the centre with its viscera extracted and artfully arranged ("dynamic", and a GM move that doesn't give the players the immediate obstacle of the dogs, but announces future badness that some other weird thing is going on here).
Or
(i) When you inspect the vault using your supernal vision, you notice to your surprise that is is warded by invisible sigils of the ten dark stars ("static"), vs
(ii) As you approach the room with the vault, you can see a serving cart with pastries on it sitting in the corridor, and hear chanting coming from the room itself ("dynamic" - the cultists, worried about the threat to the necklace, have brought forward their ritual plans).
(ii) As you approach the room with the vault, you can see a serving cart with pastries on it sitting in the corridor, and hear chanting coming from the room itself ("dynamic" - the cultists, worried about the threat to the necklace, have brought forward their ritual plans).
Assuming that I've understood @Crimson Longinus correctly, then I think the answer would be YES, BitD can include "dynamic" as well as "static" elements in the way moments within a score are framed. But this will be done using the techniques the game provides for. Eg I don't think I'm fully across Devil's Bargains, but to me it seems like the ritually slaughtered and laid-out dogs could be the result of something like a Devils' Bargain on a check to cross the courtyard without being seen/mauled - the dogs are established as the obstacle and being mauled by them is the stakes; the player makes their check and doesn't do as well as they hoped, so goes for the Devil's Bargain; and the upshot of that bargain is that the dogs don't get them (because the dogs are dead) but some other powerful group is clearly pursuing its own agenda, ruthlessly and effectively, in this same place at this same time (announce future badness).
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