Just thought of a silly little BitD hack.
In Blades, other factions are always moving in the background, making plans and executing them. These are represented by John Harper's favorite kind of circle, the Clock, a segmented circle that represents progress.
Traditionally, between sessions the gm rolls some dice for each faction and ends up potentially advancing clocks that come into play next session.
For me, this always felt odd. Because while there is chaos in the city, dumb luck can feel bad narratively, and while it's valuable prep, the outcomes feel like the kind of thing players would be invested in.
So what if we take the dice out of play? Usually the gm in blades rolls dice and ticks 0, 1 or 2 ticks per faction. However, a gm may subtract ticks, advance or freeze clocks based on the outcome of a session.
So what if they did that second part first and then passed the agendas to the players and said "hey, we have x ticks to distribute this session, where should they go?" Sure, the characters wouldn't be deciding this in game, but it means that players get to tell the gm what they want and what they are nervous about. Players who love playing to lose can engage in some self sabotage, or if the group wants a less hectic session they can carefully make sure the board state doesn't change just yet.
You can also hook this into the core loop: maybe you know the factions, but don't know the agenda unless you learned it in the fiction or spent time researching. Now you could tick that clock, but you have no idea what will happen when it rolls over.
Maybe you trade off adding ticks, player, gm, player, gm, so that the group gets slight control, but not complete dictation. Maybe they can earn more shots at choosing what ticks they add if they are a particularly influential or large gang.
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