Leverage The Roleplaying Game

by Cam Banks, Rob Donoghue, Clark Valentine

GET READY TO GET EVEN! The rich and powerful, they take what they want. You steal it back from them. You were bad guys, but there are worse people out there. The weak and the helpless need you. You provide... leverage. Leverage is one of the hottest hours on television, a fast-paced drama series about a crew of grifters, con artists, and thieves who use their skills to avenge the innocent. Starring Academy Award®-winning actor Timothy Hutton and co-created by John Rogers (Transformers, DC Comic's Blue Beetle, and IDW's Dungeons & Dragons comic series), Leverage recently wrapped a third season on the TNT Network. Using the critically-acclaimed Cortex System as its foundation, the LEVERAGE Roleplaying Game includes all the rules you need to create your own team of rogues, plan a job, and get it done... even if it means going to Plan B. Designed by Cam Banks, Rob Donoghue, and Clark Valentine for Margaret Weis Productions, and featuring an introduction by executive producer John Rogers.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Games

204 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

I am an expatriate New Zealander who fell in love with an American and moved to the USA in 1996. We are now married and have two boys. I've fulfilled my lifelong dream to become a game designer and writer and after 22 years I've moved back to New Zealand with my family. I work for Fandom Tabletop as a creative director, leading the charge on new projects powered by the Cortex system that I have spent much of my career developing as a tabletop roleplaying game toolkit.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The game is interesting. Between this and Smallville, I think that the Cortex Plus system is really developing into something good.

There's some good advice in the book for both the GM setting up a caper, and for the players running one. While the book itself only deals with situations where the players are "good guy" con artists like those in the Leverage TV show, it would be easy to create set ups for less altruistic capers ala Ocean's Eleven or The Sting.

I'd like to play this game some time, although it will probably be a while due to the number of other games I also want to play.

[Morgan McGuire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a fan of the TV show. The roleplaying game of Leverage is challenging; I found it extremely difficult to GM because of the necessary tight pacing and (intentional) ambiguity of the rules, and it is hard to play because you have to think on your feet with the cleverness of both a screenwriter and a fictional thief.

Regardless, the rulebook for the game is fantastic. It serves as a terse, yet illuminating manual on TV screenwriting, narrative construction, and thriller/mystery writing. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in writing for stage or screen, or thriller novels. Character development, story beats, plot twists, and even humor are all laid bare in ways that deepen my appreciation of a show that was previously a guilty pleasure.

I hope to be able to incorporate the narrative ideas into future video game projects, and maybe some day run a successful campaign of the Leverage game itself.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rules sound very fun, now to get a crew together for game. Easier say than done.

[Sarah O'Brien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leverage has a great premise-- who wouldn't find planning and executing a heist to be fun?-- but the system is quite rough and makes play a little difficult.

[Brian Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really solid piece of work. It takes the Cortex system (which I'd last seen in Smallville) is a much simpler, cleaner direction, and plays up the mechanical elements that came from FATE in terms of generating story elements, to produce a game that certainly reads like it would generate Leverage episodes. The outlines of basic Cons, how they work, and how you might use them in play, as well as the repeated advice to players on how to design a crew to do the things from the show, all point to a really good design. I look forward to playing with it.

[Loki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looks like a lot of fun, can't wait to try it out.