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I'm a huge fan of the TV show Leverage and the heist/caper genre in general so when I (belatedly) discovered The Quickstart Job it didn't me long to snap it up and take it out for a spin.
Our regular play group are all experienced gamers, with literally decades of experience under our belts. As for familiarity with the TV show, I've seen every episode at least twice; two of the players have seen every episode, two of them had just been introduced to the series prior to playing (via The Two Live Crew Job and The Beantown Bailout Job) and one knew of the series but had never seen it. Sounds like a good cross mix to play a licensed game. So we dug out the dice box and some poker chips and sat down to play.
As for who played who; I was the Guide (I'm been almost exclusively an ST for my 25 years gaming), “Sophie" and "Hardison" were played by the other two players well versed in the series, "Elliot" and "Parker" by the two newcomers to Leverage and "Nate" by the player who had never seen the series.
Initial Impressions
A first read through indicated that the game system itself was relatively free form, not tied to maps and charts and minis and the like. That's a huge selling point for me after games where you have to break out the battlemaps and minis in order to do combat. The provided Job was very basic, consisting of what would be one “scene” in the series and the wrap-up. The handling of it was a bit railroad-y as well but I expect that from a demo with limited scope. For what it was though, it was clean and well presented and easy to grasp the concepts.
The presentation is nice and crisp and easy to read with a few photos of the actors, primarily on their character sheets. Nothing new, but not distracting either. Other than that one headshot of Hardison on page 2. That was horrible.
System
The modified Cortex-L system presented in The Quickstart job is a very simple system which appeals to me and my players but may not be for everyone. There's no massive skill list, there's no piles of modifiers, no charts. As with the regular Cortex system, each of the 6 attributes is rated by die type but instead of skills there are Roles. Each Role is named after the part the character plays on the team (Hitter, Thief, Hacker, Grifter, and Mastermind) and seemingly encompasses everything the character needs to fulfill that role. These Roles are rated like the attributes, and each character does have a rating in each role. The basic die pool for performing a task is Attribute + Role. You can get extra dice into the pool from Assets (see below); Traits (good or bad personality traits like “Cocky” or “Gorgeous”) and Talents (special abilities) and you roll and keep the best two.
One of the main things that sets this apart from other games is that the difficulty is not static, but is an opposed roll from the Guide. Not only does this make things far from certain on any roll (I had at least one roll that would have been certain in another game end in failure and some quick thinking to come up with a plan "B"), it also brings in to play the Asset/Complication part of the game which really helps to capture the feel of Leverage. Assets are modifiers the player calls in by spending Plot Points (which have a longer duration if the Guide has rolled a “1”) and Complications are modifiers the Guide gets when the players roll a “1”. Although the Quickstart Job provides examples at each stage for both Assets and Complications, I can see how a lot of the success or failure for this mechanic would rely on the people involved being creative.
Running the Con
The Quickstart Job definitely limits the players’ choices as to what they do and how they do it. The game starts off In Media Res with the crew already on the job. With only the limited rules primer provided there’s no real way for the game to spin off in different directions. It’s a demo though and I expect that sort of thing. At each stage of the job (there are 5 scenes all together), the Guide is told what rolls to ask for and what his opposition pool is. Sample Assets and Complications are given as well. Though my players didn’t need them, it’s nice to have a list to guide other players with.
One of the issues with a limited skillset reared up here though. Parker has to make 3 rolls to get into an office and crack a safe, but they all use the same pool of Agility + Theif. Hopefully the main game will have examples of using different Attribute+ Role combinations.
Scattered through the scenes are a few sidebars on extra rules, namely Timed Actions and Fight Actions. For a caper-type game Timed Actions are extremely important and Leverage handled it smoothly. There seems to be a real emphasis on ease of play over complicated rules, which again is something I’m all for. Timed Actions get X number of beats to get past Y obstacles and in the sample “X” was based on what distractions the rest of the crew did. There’s also a mechanic for buying time for the person working against the clock which worked quite well (in our game it made the difference between Parker getting away clean or not).
Fight Actions use a similar system, and in the Quickstart the fight(s) are between Eliot and some mooks and uses a similar Beat system (Endurance for fights). There’s no initiative, each side basically describes what they do and then roll, highest total takes away some of the other side’s endurance. You go until one side is Taken Out or Gives. It’s quick, dirty and is meant to allow for the hand to hand fights the show has. I’m curious as to how the actual rules address more lethal fights and firearms. As it stands Fighting serves the same purpose as Thief or Hacking…it makes your character have the spotlight for their abilities. Eliot is so Bad Ass (a Talent) that he can do another action when he rolls his Hitter, in our game it was the tried and true “Grab the gun, eject the clip, and toss it aside”.
The final scene the “Wrap-Up” is where each character gets a flashback to describe something they did that leads to the big reveal/gotcha moment. In the series this is the part where all the little things click into place. Where we see Sophie place the button cam and Hardison cancelling flight tickets and Parker replacing the mark’s briefcase and Eliot running interference on the goons while Nate explains exactly what happened and why the mark’s in so much trouble. In practice, this area needs far more expanding than there was space for in the demo. We found that those who knew the show nailed this but those who didn’t needed far more help and prodding.
Everything was nicely laid out for when I needed it but it certainly is beneficial to have the Guide read the entire thing through a few times, especially if you want to try to cut back and forth between scenes instead of doing one scene, then another, then another.
End Result
At the end, my wife said “That felt like an episode”, which is what a licensed game should strive for. There are a lot of games out that try to shoehorn Licenses into an existing system instead of adapting the system to fit the license. I think MWP is on the right track here. I can watch episodes and see how the mechanics of the game would allow me to translate that episode without having to say “huh? How would we do that?” The ebb and flow of Assets and Complications does seem to demand a fairly free style Guide though. I’m not sure how well it would work with more structured GM types. It looks to cater to the sort of group that’s happy with the base outline for a session and can than run with that where ever it goes.
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