Leverage RPG: Grifters and Masterminds

by Margaret Weis Productions, Cam Banks, Bill Bodden

Every job needs a plan, and every con needs a player. This sourcebook for the Leverage RPG includes expanded rules for staging heists, planning capers, and putting one over on the mark. The ultimate resource for both players and Game Masters, Grifters and Masterminds features more classic con frameworks, new twists, a host of cover identities, criminal masterminds, and plenty of scenario ideas.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming

112 pages

First published July 10, 2012

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heists are not something that RPGs do well. There's too much dungeon crawling and caution in our bloodstream, too much of an urge to master the rules and build an unstoppable juggernaut of a character. Leverage RPG is an exception-combining an elegantly light system in Cortex Plus with very solid gaming advice to help GMs and players come up with session long capers in classic Leverage style. There a natural affinity between episodic TV shows and episodic RPG sessions, and this games uses that brilliantly.

The book itself is a decent 200 pages, with your usual chapters on character creation, the rules, and creating an adventure. The adventure format is simple and elegant: Introduce a Mark who's screwed over a client somehow. The Mark has some obvious strengths and some hidden weaknesses. Figure out how to negate the Mark's strengths and bring pressure on the problem, and what's stopping the players from doing that right then and there. Rolling a one adds a Complication and gives the players a Plot Point, which are then used to make sure scenes go the players' way, particularly the vital ending scene.

The book itself is very nicely designed, with a breezy conversational tone. Lots of stills from the Leverage show provide some visual jazz. Summaries of Season 1 & 2 episodes described in the same adventure format help make it clear how the adventure design process works. My only quibbles is that there isn't a glossary (although the well laid out index could substitute), and that while the Cortex system is very simple, there are enough nooks and crannies that I really wanted a one page flowchart summarizing *everything* that could happen when the dice are down.

[Brian Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah, Splatbooks, how I've missed you.

OK, not really. But as these things go, this is the second of two solid splatbooks to expand your Leverage RPG. This one is more useful as the body text is about the more complicated of the roles in terms of how they work narratively (being the core activity of the game - if your crew doesn't have Grifters and Masterminds, you're not really playing the game), as well as direct advice for the GM. If you have a choice between this one and _Hitters, Hackers and Thieves_, this is the better choice.