I hope it’s moving and not closing. You have a lot of insight.

My experience running longer-form blades/forged games is maybe similar. Prep feels more necessary to keep the factions stirred up and moving. It becomes more workload to remember the dials you can turn to challenge higher-level crews, especially when (in my case) I’ve often glossed over tier differences in the past or conveniently (or accidentally) forgotten about something that would’ve made it limited effect or so on.

Then they just roll a 6 on their resistance roll and skate by whatever happened. It’s cool but it also makes it harder to fuck with them so the crew hates those NPC factions and wants to engage with them sometimes.

The gig thing… I’m not sure about that one. I’m up against that in my own S&V game. Getting them to spend their money so they need more seems to do the trick. 🙂