Play-Thru: Leverage - The Quickstart Job

Margaret Weis Productions has announced Leverage: The Roleplaying Game, and with that has released the Quickstart Job. As would be expected, Leverage is powered by the Cortex System. The back of the book bears a logo that says "Cortex Plus." Given the many differences between the Cortex we already know and what is in this quickstart, it's appropriate to have at least a slightly different name. I've had a chance to run the Quickstart Job twice, with mostly different groups. My roleplaying group has been chosen as a playtest group for the game and had this in hand before release. It may be helpful to read my post about Cortex before continuing on. Also, anything I say could be different in the final release of the game, as it's still in development. This is really just what's in the quickstart.

Before I get into the game itself, I should probably talk about Leverage, the property on which this game is based. Leverage is a show set in our modern day. It's basically Ocean's Eleven meets Robin Hood. Nathan Ford is a former insurance investigator who hit rock bottom when his employer let his son die by refusing to cover the boy for a medical treatment that could have kept him alive. Given a chance to get even with his former employer, he wound up working with a team of criminals, each experts in their field: Parker, the really crazy (and completely adorable) master thief, Eliot, the "retrieval specialist" and resident muscle, Hardison the expert hacker, and Sophie the grifter (and occasional love interest for Nate). Over the course of working together, the group finds purpose in helping people get back at companies that are able to bypass the law with their power and money. The concept is, only thieves have a chance against such corruption.

The moment I saw the show, I was thinking roleplaying game. In the second season, they nudged me along by actually calling out the roles of each character: Nate was the Mastermind, Sophie was the Grifter, Parker was the Thief, Eliot was the Hitter, and Hardison was the Hacker. The more I thought about this as a roleplaying game though, the more trepidation I had about the whole concept of a heist/caper RPG. In my opinion, I've never truly seen the concept done right. Either you end up playing a modern dungeon crawl (don't split the party) or you have players twiddling their thumbs waiting for each specialist to do their job. In the best play circumstances, the GM's prep job is ridiculously cumbersome. The Leverage RPG seems as if it will find a sweet spot for me.

Gone from Cortex are skills. The character sheets have the traditional attributes in place, but instead of skills, there are stats for each role: Mastermind, Grifter, Hitter, Hacker, and Thief. Like skills of old, they're rated in die types, so the core mechanic of Cortex is basically intact, Attribute + Role Die. Instead of a difficulty number, the Guide (GM) rolls dice to generate a more fluid difficulty. On a glance I thought I'd just do away with the dice and have the Guide take the average roll, but that's where the new stuff kicks in, and Cortex becomes a roll-keep system.

Remember Traits from Cortex? They're slightly different now. They're a little like Aspects from Fate, really (small wonder since Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks are on the development team). If a trait is helping you, you get to roll an additional d8. If a trait is hindering you, you roll a d4 and take a Plot Point. This leads me to another divergence.

Whenever you roll more than two dice, you still only keep the best two. This is now how you spend Plot Points. You spend them to keep more of the dice you rolled rather than to add dice to roll.

Whenever a player rolls a "1" on any of their dice, regardless of which dice they keep, it triggers a Complication. These are situational issues that come up, which give the Guide dice to add to his rolls whenever appropriate to the task at hand. For instance, if Nate causes a scene to give Parker some time, and the player rolls a 1, the team now has to deal with HEIGHTENED SECURITY d6, whenever it would apply. If HEIGHTENED SECURITY gets triggered again (with a roll of 1), it could be stepped up to a d8 and so on. The good news is 1) the Guide has to abide by roll-keep as well and 2) whenever a player rolls a 1, they receive a plot point.

The players have access to similar ammunition in Assets. They can spend a plot point at any time to create an Asset like SOPHIE DISTRACTED THE GUARDS d6 for a scene. If the Asset is purchased after the Guide rolls a 1, the Asset lasts for the rest of the story.

Needless to say, the Plot Points fly in all directions.

There is one combat encounter in the Quickstart Job (with a potential for two). I love the way it's handled. Basically, the player has an Endurance based on the character's Vitality. The bad guys get 2 plus one for each bad guy. So if a character has a 6 Endurance, and he's fighting three bad guys (5 Endurance), it seems like a pretty close match. Basically the player and Guide have a series of opposed rolls. Whoever wins takes an endurance from the opponent. Two get taken with an Extraordinary Success (win by five or more). Description of what's happening occurs between rolls. When someone's out of Endurance, they're Taken Out. It should be noted, too, that the outnumbering side gets additional dice for their numbers. So if three guys are rated at d8, the Guide would roll d6+3d8 to oppose the PC. If this is a Hitter the mooks are fighting, they're likely going up against 2d10 plus any Traits, Talents, or Assets that apply. In one of my plays, Eliot grabbed a WINE BOTTLE d6 and a FULL GLASS OF WINE d6 going into a fight.

I mentioned Talents. These are similar to Feats or Edges in other games. They let you break some rules or give you special perks, essentially. Eliot has one where, if the Guide rolls a one, he can spend a Plot Point to remove a die the Guide rolls for the rest of the encounter. Basically, he's Taken Out one of the bad guys.

The Quickstart Job is setup at the beginning of the con itself. There's "boxed text" of Nate and Hardison explaining the job, then the team is already on the scene. You of course play as the cast of the show. On both plays, my groups finished in two hours, counting rules explanation. The Quickstart Job doesn't mention the rules which I'm guessing will be included for job planning and other roleplaying opportunities. Feedback was nearly universally positive, and everyone wanted to see more. Even here in the desert, I can hardly wait for Summer.

Who is this for?

If you're a fan of Leverage, you need to check this out. Indie or Hippy gamers should totally check this out. It's Cortex laced with Fate and Dogs in the Vineyard. If you're frustrated with heists and capers in your modern games, there's something here for you.

Who should stay away?

If you prefer tactical play over narrative, this might not be your cup of tea. If you're not happy if there's no big combat in a game, you'll probably not enjoy this. If you hate the show and movies like Ocean's Eleven, 10-foot pole rule (also, we probably shouldn't hang out).

Honestly, I can't really see any group getting nothing out of this game. It had everyone at my table's wheels turning. It's inspired at least one campaign in a different genre already. What are you waiting for? Grab the Quickstart Job, and "let's go steal a holding company."

Cortex is Not a Savage Worlds Clone

Last year, I decided I would run a regular game that wasn't Savage Worlds in 2010. Sounds simple enough (why would an experienced GM need to make that kind of resolution?), but it is in fact a tough thing. You see, I've tried it before. I've read other games, run one-shots. But for multiple reasons, I've always fallen back to Savage Worlds--at least since 2005. One reason is my group, especially my wife, is really into Savage Worlds. The system's comfortable to us and Savage Worlds is really versatile. Also, with my busy life its tough to gain a familiarity with a system like the one I have with Savage Worlds. But for my sanity as a "system guy," I have to do it. So I publicly declared I would (see, I did it again--damn!).

On my search, I decided I wanted to look at modern games. I looked at White Wolf's World of Darkness and decided it was too much fluffy reading to find both the rules and the point of the game. I thought about adding the core rules in with Second Sight, but I got frustrated in trying to find the mechanics plainly explained--did I mention I was spoiled by Savage Worlds? I thought about going with something like Hunter, then I realized I'd be going through over 300 pages of Second Sight-like reading, plus a re-read of the World of Darkness corebook (200+ pages), and thought better of it. Don't get me wrong. I like White Wolf. I think their products are cool. But I just don't have the time and patience to act as a GM, at least the way I'd want to, with their rules. But Hunter did intrigue me, so I at least had a lead.

Enter the Supernatural RPG from Margaret Weis Productions--sort of. I should go back a bit. Last year at Origins I grabbed a copy of the Cortex rulebook--because I was intrigued that it came with a PDF download code--and promptly tossed it on my RPG shelf when I got home. I even downloaded the PDF and promptly tossed it on my RPG thumb drive (nearly eight gigs of gaming goodness). A couple weeks ago, I opened the book for what was basically the first time (I did open it that one time to get the PDF code, ya know). It seemed pretty interesting, but I wanted something all-in-one. Then, enter the Supernatural RPG--really.

Another aside: I should mention there's a special relationship between those who love the Cortex System (which powers Supernatural) and those who love Savage Worlds. The basic belief is that one copied the other. On the surface, I can see where this comes from, and since Savage Worlds came first, I get it. There are some similarities, too: Cortex uses die types for Attributes and Skills just like Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds has Edges and Hindrances, and Cortex has Assets and Complications (they even both use "minor" and "major" descriptors, at least for the negative Hindrances and Complications--at least in the Serenity iteration of Cortex). Savage Worlds has bennies; Cortex has Plot Points (a name that will initially confuse the hell out of a Savage--it did me, at least). When the Serenity RPG came out, I bought it immediately (sort of--it sold out so fast I ended up with a second printing). Then I flipped through it and saw the die types and major and minor Complications. Then I went to the Pinnacle forums and saw them compared. My group ended up running a Savage Firefly game in lieu of Serenity, and the Serenity book sat on my shelf.

I can't say whether there was any copying going on or not. I've been told they are just close because of their core mechanic. Cortex's came from Sovereign Stone, and Savage Worlds' came from the Great Rail Wars (and before that Deadlands). I have been told Cortex's designer, Jamie Chambers, was a Deadlands fan. But to be honest none of this matters. The pen and paper RPG business is too small and too incestuous to pretend it matters. What matters is the results--good game or no?

Back to Supernatural (for real, this time). I picked it up because I thought I was cheating. I could pretend I was using a new system, but it was so much like Savage Worlds (I'd heard), it would be nothing to learn it and run it. Also, Supernatural was a self-contained, monster hunting game of just 180 pages. To run Hunter, I'd be going through 500+ pages of material. If I wanted to explain the setting, I could just have my players watch the show--we have DVDs of Cute Boys Hunt Monsters (my wife's name for the show) in my house. So I read the intro and game basics chapters of Supernatural and skipped character creation in favor of the play rules--I was all set to start comparing them to Savage Worlds. What a surprise I would find.

First off, the Complications (and the Assets, for that matter) weren't using "minor" and "major" like Savage Worlds' Hindrances. They were using die types instead. And in many cases they'll be rolled. Huh? That's different. It's a full roll up system, rather than Savage Worlds' roll and keep. There are Life Points (a really cool hit point system) instead of the tiered Wound system. Combat rounds are three seconds, not six. And Cortex didn't get any mechanics from miniatures games like Savage Worlds (the minis thing is a sticking point for me--I generally don't like using them), so you can just skip minis if you please. The biggest difference I found is in the way bonuses and penalties are assigned. Savage Worlds has bonuses and penalties to roll results. Cortex adjusts the die type up and down in steps (which reminds me of a rules-light version of Earthdawn's Step mechanic). There's also adjustable difficulty numbers. So die steps are applied to character conditions, and difficulty levels are assigned to environmental conditions.

The bottom line is Cortex is very different than Savage Worlds. And I like it. I've settled on it for my non-Savage regular game this year. Is it better? I don't know. I haven't played it yet. I'm running Supernatural next month at SAGA's Tucson RPG Guild meeting. I'm not running Supernatural at home though. Why, you say?

I found out that the Cortex System has done a ton of evolving. Serenity could be called Cortex 1.0, Battlestar Galactica could be dubbed 2.0. Supernatural and the Cortex book could be referred to as 2.5. This came up when I joined the Cortex forums. I was then contacted by Cam Banks, current Guy In Charge of Cortex. Cam comped me a PDF of the Big Damn Heroes Handbook (thanks, Cam!). This book is an add-on to the Serenity RPG and brings that game's system up to 2.5 with optional rules. It also goes a bit further with some new, indie-inspired mechanics for Cortex. I put it to my Facebook and Twitter friends I was torn between Serenity and Supernatural. Between some comments there and discussions with my wife, I've decided to go with Serenity, but thanks to my buddy, Berin "Unclebear" Kinsman, I may end up introducing aspects of Supernatural into the 'Verse.

I'll post more on my experience with Cortex as it comes up.