Luckily, this confusion is recognised and dealt with by the rules and the text. After all, thieves are often punching people, and stealing information by hacking is a kind of thievery, and Batman fights with his intelligence as much as his martial arts. Grifter here means “face”, and the others are fairly straightforward – although expansive to the point of confusion. What’s new is instead of a skill list to pair up with the attributes, we have five Roles, one niche for each character on the show: Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, Mastermind and Thief. Also back in rotation are the standard six Cortex abilities: Agility, Alertness, Intelligence, Strength, Vitality and Willpower. Once again, the Cortex system is back, and simple and elegant: roll at least two multisided dice, add the two highest rolls, beat whatever number the GM rolled.
Now let’s talk about how the job gets done. So there’s the challenge, and the pay-off. Except of course, for all those problems I mentioned about the heist genre. When you add banter and a few pop-culture references and a fantastic sense of fun, Leverage is one of the best properties for an RPG to come along in years.
#Leverage roleplaying game tv
The heist genre and TV adventure shows have always gone well together, and both also work well for roleplaying: they both feature an unchanging group of niche-protected specialists working just outside the law to defeat a new bad guy each week. Which makes sense as it is designed to emulate TNT’s fantastic new show Leverage, which covers just such things, and does so in style. Leverage is about the clever and awesomely skilled (and hardly ever angsty) good guys running a kick-ass play, and the bad guys getting hosed along the way. To wit: Smallville’s mechanics are all about modelling a setting where all conflicts are emotional, and the line between protagonist and antagonist is clouded and shifting. Leverage isn’t quite so outré, but it is equally clever, and takes on a style so dramatically opposed to that of Smallville they make a lovely double act at the extremes of the art of genre emulation. Then came Smallville and blew everything out of the water, using Cortex in a way that broke new ground and set a new standard, as I reported in my previous review. Previously, MWP have come out with faithful but derivative RPGs for such popular shows as Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and Supernatural, all utilising their in-house system of Cortex in a very traditional manner. This is the number two of the one-two punch from Margaret Weis Productions, the first being Smallville. Stepping up to this challenge and not swayed by the odds against them is Leverage: The Roleplaying Game. Trying to do it in a roleplaying game has always been tricky, not least because in an RPG the author is also the audience, so good luck trying to outsmart yourself. Pulling off this kind of balletic manoeuvring of fact and fiction, pacing and punch is a delicate art that does not come easy. Indeed – like the mystery genre with which it shares the same style – if you’re on the ball enough, you figured it out yourself, just in time. Yet because you get to see how it is done, you get all the triumph and none of the resentment. The author dances back and forth with the audience, giving them a little, promising them everything but keeping the important things in shadow until the big finale, the great astonishment as all the wheels fall into place and you, like the bad guys have been fooled and amazed. THIS RPG PRODUCT LINE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.The heist story is a magic act of the greatest kind. Publisher’s Note: This is the combined volume of the previously released LEVERAGE: GRIFTERS AND MASTERMINDS and LEVERAGE: HITTERS, HACKERS AND THIEVES. It’s the ultimate resource for both players and Fixers, including more cons, new twists, a host of cover identities, criminal masterminds, cutting edge technology, high-powered weapons, fighting styles, and expanded rules for overcoming security measures and handling tech-heavy jobs.ĭesigned by Cam Banks, Bill Bodden, Maurice Broaddus, David Hill, Jimmy McMichael, Aaron Pavao, Andrew Peregrine and Elizabeth Sampatįoreword by Mark “Jim Sterling” Sheppard. This long-awaited sourcebook for the LEVERAGE Roleplaying Game includes expanded rules for staging heists, planning capers, breaking in, busting heads, bypassing firewalls, and putting one over on the Mark. Book/Comics/Graphic Novel Recommendation.Brooks on The Nostalgia of Molten Plastic.Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
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