Then you can spend plot points to help out. Your distinction might either help directly or make the situation more complicated- both give you more dice. Your asset might come in handy, there’s an extra die too. Your specialty might apply, getting you an extra die. Then you see if there’s anything you can add in the form of more dice. Hacking into a secure system? Intelligence and Hacker. If you’re beating up someone, you’re probably rolling Strength and Hitter. How do these things help you pull off a job? The basic mechanic is that you roll an appropriate Ability and Role.
Your rap sheet, which lists your past adventures, explained below.Talents, which are like feats in D&D that let you break the rules in different ways.Often, these will stick around for either a scene or an entire job, and can be something like “length of lead pipe” or “helpful janitor” that you can consistently call on. Assets, which are both signature items or anything else working in your favor.A good example of this is Nate Ford’s “Drunk” distinction, where it can be used to make his life more complicated if he’s been drinking too much (a player can invoke it to add a d4 to a roll but gain a plot point in the process) or help him (if he were Grifting and pretending to be drunk.) If you’ve played FATE, these are the closest to Aspects, where they are parts of your character that can potentially help you in some situations and make your life more complicated in others. Distinctions, which are statements about your character.Specialties that help when you use one of your roles for a specific thing, like “close quarters fighting – hitter” gives you an extra die when being a Hitter in close quarters.Your highest one is your primary role, so if you Hitter is d10, you are the group’s Hitter. The five core roles (Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Mastermind, Thief), from d4 to d12.Ability scores like Strength and Willpower, rated from d4 to d12.After that, you have your character and your crew, and you’re ready to dive into your first job.Ĭharacters are broken down into the following traits: The GM’s role in this is primarily to facilitate and assist, so no planning is necessary on his part. Depending on how those scenes go, other stats are filled out, and by the end of it, the other players will help you fill out your “distinctions” that reflect your personality and how everyone else sees you. After working out who is playing which of the five primary roles in a crew, and filling out some secondary stats, you play in a quick, improvised session where essentially each player gets a chance in the spotlight to show what they can do.
In case you don’t want to play the crew from the TV show (all of whose character sheets are provided), you can create your crew by running through the section called The Recruitment Job. Instead, the designers went several layers beyond what was needed to put together a licensed RPG, and instead created an extremely well put together system that not only captures the show perfectly but also gives a ton of tools for players and GMs to create your heists. Now, it would have been easy to put together a game where there’s a bunch of useful skills, you roll some dice, add the number to the skill, and go on. You assemble your crew of a grifter, hacker, hitter, mastermind, and thief and pull off one job in an evening to help the helpless and provide… leverage.
It turns out I wasn’t the only one watching Leverage for RPG research- the Leverage RPG has just been released from Margaret Weis Productions to bring the same sort of stories to your RPG table. Each episode is one complete heist- like watching Ocean’s Eleven in an hour (and with only five people.)
For those who don’t know, Leverage is a show about five highly skilled con-artists and thieves who have decided to help those who have been wronged and have no place left to go. While researching powers for PC, I took notes from a number of sources, and one that bubbled to the top was the TV show Leverage. Long time readers will remember the 4th Power Project, my attempt to merge d20 Modern with D&D 4e.