I just want to give kudos to John Harper for the idea of creating Long-Term Project as a freely adaptable rule to allow players to break the rules or create new rules and introduce new ideas/concepts to their game. It’s one of the most inspired aspects of Blades in the Dark.
Apocalypse World has a lot of excellent content in the book about putting the power in the MCs hand to make new moves as needed. The Warren takes this a step further by with the Innovate Move which puts the power of creating new Moves in the players hand. I’ve run the Warren multiple times and have seen great examples of Innovate being used creatively for great effect on the story.
The BitD Long-Term Project takes this one step further still putting changing nearly any aspect of the game into the player’s hands. This really takes the “play to see what happens” mindset to another level where the game rules and core aspects of the setting can shift and grow along with the story.
As a GM of many games that lack such a mechanic, I’ve also come to value their existence as a way for players to rather organically/naturally remind me what they want more of – should I ever run astray. Have to agree- LTPs are one of my favorite parts of the game.
Its great because im sure every single GM who has been doing it for even a little while can say that at one time or another, a player says something along the lines of, “I want to be able to do this thing” Or “i want to make a special item”.
Its only natural in a game that encourages as much creativity and wants to create the feeling of agency in a player.