There’s an xkcd about this.

No gaming, Ken has surprise inspections at work. No anime, because I am dumb.

Read (comic collection): Rivers of London: Night Witch (Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan, Luis Guerrero): Same art style, alas. Varvara and her Russianness and other Russian expats who might come to the attention of the police.

Read (manga): Blade Girl vol 1 (Narumi Shigematsu): A teenager despondent over the loss of her foot encounters Paralympians and the running blade prostheses and takes up running.

Written (game design): 398:

PCs need to be vulnerable too, though, and unfortunately the GM already
knows all their weaknesses. I’m not sure what to do about that, since I
feel like PCs and NPCs being written up the same way is important.

PCs and NPCs being written the same way suggests that they should have
the same potential outcomes from a fight, which is technically true and
practically false. The heroes almost never lose a fight, and when they
do, it’s by getting beaten unconscious. NPCs usually get knocked out,
but sometimes surrender or run away.Very rarely, everyone stops fighting
to have a standoff or negotiation, or the entire battlefield gets
upended by a larger villain or erupting volcano or whatever. Ideally,
whatever new system we come up with should have these other
possibilities happen more often, especially the PCs surrendering or
fleeing. Losing and then coming back with a better plan is a classic,
right?

Possibly by definition, having weaknesses makes you stronger than
your point value against opponents who aren’t taking advantage of
them (EG, heroes who haven’t figured them out yet), but weaker
against ones who are. This is pretty much what we want for NPCs
that appear once, cause trouble, have their weakness uncovered and
exploited, and slink away again until they come back with a new
plan. PCs who star in every session can then have relatively fewer
weaknesses (making up for it with other complications, probably)
so their performance is more consistent.

It would also be good to have possible long-term consequences,
non-wargame though that is. Wounds, loss of confidence, curses, unstable
powers, broken foci, broken alliances, bad press, etc. Of course
this should apply to both PCs and NPCs, although it probably will affect
PCs more since they appear in every session, while an NPC can go
off-screen for as long as it takes to recover. Unless the PCs hunt them
down while they’re weakened, and player-driven plots are good. But of
course turn about’s fair play.

How do we mechanize these longterm consequences? Is Reputation a
characteristic that adds with Presence? Probably not, since it can vary
so much depending on who you’re talking to, so it should be multiple
items for all the people who have opinions. Possibly on a team sheet,
rather than individual character sheets.