I just hit on an idea. In espionage series and movies you usually see flashbacks, when being prepared for an encounter or an obstacle becomes important. Now, in role-playing games, you most often will see players sitting down for hours planning the heist. Usually, all the planning becomes obsolete the first time something goes wrong. So in order to facilitate faster play and less planning, I propose:

New Rule: Flashback

When an preparation for an obstacle or scene becomes important, the player spend a story point and briefly narrate how their character prepared to get around the particular obstacle. The game master may call for an appropriate roll to determine how well that was pulled off. Threats and Despair can be activated to have unexpected things happen. For example, the guard is not at their station (as planned), but instead a security audit is happening.

This rule should go along a new tone: Espionage/Heist

What do you think?

That’s a really neat idea.

Very Blades in the Dark-esque. I like it!

Yes, Blades in the Dark and Leverage use a similar mechanic to that effect. It’s worth applying the same idea to many other systems.

This fits the narrative dice so well, great idea!

If my memory serves me correctly there was a mechanic is Edge of the Empire where you could spend a Destiny point to modify the plot so that you had remembered a specific item. This is quite probably the better method, possibly in addition to the narrative dice.

Leverage is I think one of the best games for flashback scenes, the mechanic works beautifully once the players get their heads around it.

I like this! Thanks for the idea!

It’s probably something I would call for a Story Point for, it’s an enhancement of the “change the narrative” use. But I really like this because it has a purpose and a reason.

I think if you make it a core mechanic, like for a heist game, then you can do it without spending story points. But only if it something that would have come up in preparation. If you want to change something you could not have known in preparation you still have to spend a story point.