Very often, people praise Blades for “popularizing” the concept of “downtime actions” and “flashback” in TTRPG.
In the last decade, I’ve played more and more larps using “nordic” mechanics like “Workshops” or “black boxes”, especially when playing these “small but very immersive events” with 20-30 players, long pre-gen character and a complex intricate plot.
Out of curiosity, I wondered whether there was a clear filiation between these LARP techniques and “Blades in the Dark”
To give concrete example, in these kind of larp there is a “before game” play, which includes some workshops to enter slowly in the ambience, and other to do role-play between characters. Some even do have ellipse, where you can have other workshop to explain what your character has done during the ellipse. Another common stuff is a “black box room” which allows you to play scene occurring at another time/space than the main event, For example to clarify a deal made in the past, or the relationship between two ex lovers.
With my limited experience in FiTD games, I see a lot of similarities between these techniques. but I have no idea on their history and how they end-up used in larp and then in “Blades”. (I assume they’ve been around for longer, pretty sure it was already a thing in improv theatre which would be an ancestor of RPG)
From what I read around, the first RPG to have flashbacks and something like downtime was Leverage. The downtime part was not as prominent, but with the parts about closing the hooks from the beginning of the heist, I think it is very close. Whole game was rooted in some tv series about criminals breaking the law. So I think these rather come from other media that depict heists
