In our last session the Gunlugger wanted the gang advance. The question was "umm, where will they come from?" His backstory is that he had been part of the Chopper's gang until she threw him out. The setting has been a very insular one with a relatively small population and no free agent toughs, with the only heavies in the Chopper's gang.
He was going to backpedal and take something else, but I wanted him to get what he wanted, and was interested in what that would do to his relationship with the Chopper. Early in the session I had made the vaguest mention of another gang threatening to encroach on the Chopper's territory. I staged a scene between their leader and the Gunlugger that quickly escalated from insults to stabbing to shooting, and now the PC had a gang. (From first appearance to death, my NPC Roarke lasted about ten minutes. Talk about crosshairs.)
I'm left wondering how other advances might strain the plausibility of the fiction. I doubt it would happen, but next session all three PCs could take the wealth advance. Three hardholds! Umm, you can take that cave, and you can have the trailer, and you reinforce the mudfishers shacks?
How have other people dealt with advances that materially change the setting in a way that's only tenuously connected with the preceding fiction?