Notes & Clarifications
Ratings
Although it's noted in several places in both the Hacker's Guide and the Leverage RPG, the following bears repeating:
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A d12 rating will tend to dominate exchanges where it's being rolled; it represents an aspect of the situation that outshines or overwhelms other considerations.
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Traits with d10 and d8 ratings represent a high degree of competence or difficulty, either aspects of the situation that are solid and dependable, or else things that need to be worried about.
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A d6 rating is (to quote the Leverage RPG) "kind of ho-hum and dull". It's moderately unlikely to wind up adding to the final total of a roll, but also moderately unlikely to generate the 1's that cause opportunities or setbacks. It's not wrong to think of a d6 rating as marking something that isn't particularly interesting to the story.
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The d4 rating is the counter-intuitive case. Although it can simply indicate a low level of skill or danger, because it's the most likely rating to generate 1's, it also indicates "this is interesting to the plot, and can be the source of unusual shenanigans".
Actions
("Notice" action)
("Face" action)
("Fight" action)
("Remove complication" action)
Miscellaneous
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Pushes go to the player: In the original Leverage RPG rules, ties when rolling go to the fixer (dealer), i.e. you have to exceed the result of the fixer's roll to win. As I found it noted in a number of different sources, no artist worth his salt will play at a casino where ties ("pushes") go to the house, so in the Driftwood RPG, players only have to equal the dealer's result when rolling to succeed.
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Dealer always rolls first: In the original Leverage RPG rules, depending on the type of action being undertaken, sometimes the dealer rolls first to set the stakes, and sometimes the player rolls first. In the Driftwood RPG, the dealer always sets the stakes, even if it might feel a little forced (e.g., if my artist is ambushing a gang of horse thieves, why are the horse thieves rolling before me?). My general thought is that making the dealer always set the initial stakes gives the players an advantage, in that they can evaluate the results of the dealer's roll, and decide to spend edge on their own roll if appropriate.
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Vocabulary change around assets and complications: When reading the Leverage RPG and Hacker's Guide rules, I kept getting caught on the fact that although assets and complications play similar-but-opposite roles in the game, the mechanics around their creation and evolution are very different; I also thought the way the word opportunity is used was a little confusing. To clean it up (in my head, anyway), I split out "assets" into their own thing, and then used two related words ("opportunity" for when the dealer rolls a 1, and "setback" for when the player rolls a 1) to describe increasing and decreasing complications. At some point I started grouping assets and complications together as "conditions", e.g. "traits that tend to change rapidly during play".