This weekend gave me the opportunity to run my second session of the Leverage role-paying game, titled "The Cult Job".
The story re-united Cleo Huntington (Kali's thief) with Ed Mason (Richard's mastermind) and John Cotton (Adam's grifter). A new member of the underground railroad joined them: a hacker called Joel Hogarth (Jon Lee).
Hogarth used to create media and social manipulation for major marketing companies, but quit after finding it too soulless; he joined the railroad while looking for a new direction and moral purpose in life. Jon portrays his character as quite a tech-savvy hipster, which may make Jon quite keen to join Richard in a future episode of Leverage that I am currently planning - about the scandalous effect of IT corporations on the San Francisco renters' market.
Hogarth used to create media and social manipulation for major marketing companies, but quit after finding it too soulless; he joined the railroad while looking for a new direction and moral purpose in life. Jon portrays his character as quite a tech-savvy hipster, which may make Jon quite keen to join Richard in a future episode of Leverage that I am currently planning - about the scandalous effect of IT corporations on the San Francisco renters' market.
"The Cult Job" on the other hand, brought the crew to the outskirts of a small town in Texas called Palestine. Their client was an eighteen year-old girl called Temperance Gilead. She had been born and raised in a secluded community of Branch Davidians. After running away from home and a marriage that her cult-leader father had arranged for her, she discovered that she had no birth record or social security number, and could not prove her US citizenship. Her parents were refusing to confirm her birth status. In other words, she was a victim of identification abuse, whereby parents withhold proof of citizenship from offspring who are of age to leave home, depriving them of a means to live independently and coercing them to return.
The underground railroad had given Temperance a place to live in one of their Texas safe-houses. A retired member of the railroad - a former school teacher - was looking after her and helping to fill the gaps in her education. In the meantime, the crew had a specific goal - to steal a young woman's identity back for her.
Their target was far from ordinary. The community that Temperance's father led was secluded from society. They had previously been living apart in tents and trailers, but "David Gilead" had come into a lot of money within the last five years, enabling the Davidians to upgrade to proper buildings with water and power. Joel and Ed did a little digging, and soon established that a former Wall Street shark called Chad Warren had experienced a personal meltdown after the recession and been recruited into the cult, donating his vast earnings. They were also mortified to learn that Warren - in his late forties - was the man to whom Temperance had been promised in marriage, because of a "vision" that her father had in a dream.
David Gilead himself had several children via a number of different "spiritual wives" in the community. He had become the cult's prophet after spending years as their most successful recruiter. He had been very skilled at identifying vulnerable people and bringing them into the fold. Temperance's mother June, Joel learned, was one such person; she had been a drug addict and had lost a son to child services before David Gilead found her, got her clean and in the process got control over her. Temperance had told the crew that her mother had doubts in private about the cult leader, but never had the courage to stand against him.
-
The team did a lot of checks on the Branch Davidians while forming their plans, and they even learned of an active ATF investigation into one of the cult members. A man called Jason Hall was suspected of buying assault weapons for the group. That activity is not illegal in Texas, but he was also attending gun shows in the area and buying sufficient gun parts to create "franken-guns". The ATF believed that he was selling those weapons to gang members for additional funding. Arming felons would certainly be a problem, and the ATF were on high alert after the Twin Peaks shoot-out involving biker gangs near Waco.
Joel successfully hacked the ATF and got access to their file on the Branch Davidian investigation. However, Joel is played by Jon, and his dice hate him. He had difficulty rolling dice at any time in the game without getting a 1, and he incurred a serious complication while hacking the ATF. The agency discovered that they had been hacked, and believed that the Branch Davidians were responsible. This caused them to accelerate their investigation into the cult.
Jon rolled a lot of complications during the game, but every time he did, he received a Story Point. By the end of the game, he had a stack of 4 to spend, which is a lot of power in a game of Leverage. Jon has already said that Leverage may be his new favorite game, because it means that he actually gets compensated for his lousy dice luck. I can almost imagine Jon whispering to his luckless dice "Strike me down, and I'll become more powerful than you could possibly imagine!"
-
The underground railroad had given Temperance a place to live in one of their Texas safe-houses. A retired member of the railroad - a former school teacher - was looking after her and helping to fill the gaps in her education. In the meantime, the crew had a specific goal - to steal a young woman's identity back for her.
Their target was far from ordinary. The community that Temperance's father led was secluded from society. They had previously been living apart in tents and trailers, but "David Gilead" had come into a lot of money within the last five years, enabling the Davidians to upgrade to proper buildings with water and power. Joel and Ed did a little digging, and soon established that a former Wall Street shark called Chad Warren had experienced a personal meltdown after the recession and been recruited into the cult, donating his vast earnings. They were also mortified to learn that Warren - in his late forties - was the man to whom Temperance had been promised in marriage, because of a "vision" that her father had in a dream.
David Gilead himself had several children via a number of different "spiritual wives" in the community. He had become the cult's prophet after spending years as their most successful recruiter. He had been very skilled at identifying vulnerable people and bringing them into the fold. Temperance's mother June, Joel learned, was one such person; she had been a drug addict and had lost a son to child services before David Gilead found her, got her clean and in the process got control over her. Temperance had told the crew that her mother had doubts in private about the cult leader, but never had the courage to stand against him.
-
The team did a lot of checks on the Branch Davidians while forming their plans, and they even learned of an active ATF investigation into one of the cult members. A man called Jason Hall was suspected of buying assault weapons for the group. That activity is not illegal in Texas, but he was also attending gun shows in the area and buying sufficient gun parts to create "franken-guns". The ATF believed that he was selling those weapons to gang members for additional funding. Arming felons would certainly be a problem, and the ATF were on high alert after the Twin Peaks shoot-out involving biker gangs near Waco.
Joel successfully hacked the ATF and got access to their file on the Branch Davidian investigation. However, Joel is played by Jon, and his dice hate him. He had difficulty rolling dice at any time in the game without getting a 1, and he incurred a serious complication while hacking the ATF. The agency discovered that they had been hacked, and believed that the Branch Davidians were responsible. This caused them to accelerate their investigation into the cult.
Jon rolled a lot of complications during the game, but every time he did, he received a Story Point. By the end of the game, he had a stack of 4 to spend, which is a lot of power in a game of Leverage. Jon has already said that Leverage may be his new favorite game, because it means that he actually gets compensated for his lousy dice luck. I can almost imagine Jon whispering to his luckless dice "Strike me down, and I'll become more powerful than you could possibly imagine!"
-
The crew formed a plan to get some of the team into the Branch Davidians' compound, not by approaching them, but by tricking one of the cult's recruiters into thinking that they were prime candidates for converts. John Cotton had an idea of the crew posing as a failing televangelist and a married couple who act as his film crew. The televangelist would put on a terrible performance near the churches in Palestine, Texas, and the couple would voice their doubts about him within earshot of the cult's recruiter, convincing him that they were "in the market" for a new saviour.
Being a slick grifter in a sharp suit, John Cotton naturally took the role of the televangelist, while Joel and Cleo filmed him, making no efforts to conceal their disapproval of his terrible performance.
John Cotton: "Uh... ladies and gentlemen, I am today here to talk to you about Gawd... to speak with you on a level... about the Devil!"
Joel Hogarth: "Ugh, this is terrible. Can you believe this? He's really lost his way!"
Cleo Huntington: "To think how much I used to believe in him! All those years I spent devoting time to him - now he just seems like a false prophet."
John Cotton: "As you may know... throughout the ages, servants of God have been able to handle snakes without fear of being harmed! Well, I went out into the wilds today, and I found this... death adder. So, I will just reach into this glass box..."
Cleo Huntington: "Oh no - he's doing the snake thing again... give me strength!"
Joel Hogarth: "Did we remember to take that thing to the vet?"
Joel Hogarth: "Did we remember to take that thing to the vet?"
John Cotton: "Aaaah! See? The snake has bitten me and yet I have not died!"
Joel Hogarth: "This is just painful to watch; he's really doesn't know what he's doing anymore."
Cleo Huntington: "There must be a better way! Lord, send us a sign!"
Cult recruiter: "Excuse me; I couldn't help overhearing..."
-
So Joel and Cleo were taken back to the Branch Davidian compound and introduced to the cult's leader. David Gilead was quite a clever and controlling mark, so he had a few aces up his sleeve. He knew that the authorities were investigating him, and had already identified an undercover FBI agent in his community. He was giving this agent false information and preventing him from finding anything significant; he was even keeping the agent from accessing a completely mundane storehouse, just to create a decoy.
When he met Joel and Cleo, he saw an opportunity. Here was a married couple with an interest in his group and television equipment. Rather than being secretive, he invited them to film his group, figuring that media coverage would prevent the FBI from making any aggressive moves against him. He was confident that he had enough control over his community that they would give Joel and Cleo a good impression.
-
Meanwhile, Ed Mason and John Cotton decided to infiltrate the ATF encampment that was nearby, out of sight of the Branch Davidians' compound. John had been keeping some fake FBI badges and windbreakers for just such an occasion, and so "Agent Pond" and "Agent Williams" rolled up to investigate. At the same time, Joel was listening into the FBI's communication with their inside man.
Inside the camp, Ed and John encountered some very militaristic and gung-ho ATF agents, itching for a excuse to take on the Branch Davidians, and one highly-stressed FBI negotiator - the liaison to the undercover agent - trying to convince them to look for a non-violent approach. Joel's earlier fumble was working against a peaceful solution; most of the ATF agents were now convinced that the joint-operation was under cyber-attack from the cult and they needed to act fast.
Ed and John backed the negotiator's play, and this is where Adam rolled a complication. The negotiator, Agent Price, took Adam's character aside and said "So, you must be John Cotton, then!" Earlier, John had tried to use his FBI contacts to learn more about the Branch Davidians, and news of his interest had clearly been conveyed to Agent Price. However, the negotiator thought that John Cotton was present to represent the CIA, and he was not going to blow his cover, because John and Ed were the only other people backing his play. Nonetheless, John now had no choice but to support Agent Price's decisions.
-
Meanwhile, Joel and Cleo were finding the Branch Davidians difficult to infiltrate, due to the group's paranoia. They agreed to stay the night in a small house for guests, and Cleo attended a dinner for some of the women of the community. She met Temperance's subdued mother. She also met Kendall, a woman whose husband had left her because of her infertility; she was currently enjoying high status among the women as a prospective "spiritual wife" for David Gilead, who was promising to "pray with her" to cure her infertility. Cleo also met another woman who was, with quiet anger, avoiding such advances; the cult leader had told the husbands of his group to observe celibacy, while he "fathered God's children". This sounds crazy, but I modelled Gilead's behaviour on things that David Koresh did as leader of the Waco chapter.
Cleo did manage to slip away at one point, late at night. She broke into the storehouse (easily - she picked the lock with her eyes closed just to make it more interesting) and realised it was a decoy. Still, eluding the cult members was difficult; at times, Kendall seemed to be following her with a flashlight and a Stepford smile.
Joel used his computers to put footage from the community on the internet overnight, in the hope that this would deter the ATF from taking any violent action. It worked, but Jon rolled a 1 in the process, causing a complication: the following morning, a couple of television news outlets had vans and cameras set up near the entrance to the compound, thinking that a wacky cult was opening its doors to public interest. Now the crew had to contend with the media watching. Jon's dice are the gift that keeps on giving.
-
The crew managed to turn their fortunes around on that new day, probably in no small part because Jon started to spend from his small arsenal of Story Points.
Cleo tailed Jason Hall into the community's chapel, but then he disappeared. Moments later, Joel saw Jason Hall leaving David Gilead's home with the cult leader, on the way to the morning sermon. Realising that a hidden link existed between the chapel and the home, Joel decided that he would have a snoop inside the house, while everyone else was gathered in church. He found a key under a plant pot with a note for Kendall; it was clearly intended so that she could let herself into David Gilead's home so that they could "pray" together.
Inside the cult leader's study, Joel quickly found a secret doorway, and a safe behind a painting. This posed an ironic problem. The crew's hacker was in the study, while their safecracker was stuck in the chapel, surrounded by people. Fortunately they improvised; Joel stuck his earpiece onto the safe so that Cleo could listen and give guidance. While other church-goers were kneeling in muttered prayers, Cleo was whispering "Right a bit... now slowly turn it to the left..."
Jon got his first lucky roll of the game and I rolled a 1, so Joel got to find pretty much everything he needed in the safe, including a photograph album containing proof of Temperance Gilead's parentage and the cult leader's laptop. Joel also found the secret route from the chapel to the house; it went underground to a bunker, where Gilead and Hall had been keeping a large supply of guns. The bunker was intended to be a place of last resort in the event of a Waco-style siege.
-
The crew then formed a solid idea for destroying the mark. Joel had been recording the undercover agent's transmissions to the FBI, and filming footage of David Gilead talking. Using the editing suite on his Mac Book, he synched the audio with the footage and tuned the agent's voice to sound like the cult leader's. He then left the composite playing on Gilead's laptop in his study.
In the ATF encampment, John Cotton and Ed Mason approached Agent Price. John tipped off the FBI agent that the storehouse was a decoy. "We re-tasked an X-ray satellite to photograph the storehouse on its way back to Cuba," he said. "It's empty, but how we know this is classified, so don't tell the ATF where we got this." Ed Mason then got Agent Price to arrange for a FBI helicoptor to do a fly-over of the Branch Davidian compound. When asked why, John Cotton explained that the helicoptor would be picking up and delivering David Gilead to the FBI without a single drop of blood being spilt. The negotiator was stunned; "I heard stories..." he said, "about Honduras... but I didn't think you could do things like this..."
In the chapel, Cleo tried to slip away from the congregation, but Kendall followed her. However, this was a trick - Cleo used Kendall's suspicions to lure her into discovering the secret passage, and she followed it to David Gilead's house. There, she entered the study and found a recording of her leader, ostensibly ratting out his cult members to the FBI!
What happened next was too fast for the mark to handle. Kendall ran out of his home in hysterics, holding the laptop above her head for everyone to see, just as the entire community was emerging from the chapel. The crowd turned to outrage and spontaneously began to chase down their leader, who ran from them. Just at that moment, a helicoptor with big "FBI" markings swooped down with an agent on a rope ladder to rescue Gilead. Acting on panicked instinct, the cult leader took the agent's hand and was whisked away... up high into the sky, where the television crews were able to film his escape.
This apparent betrayal immediately shattered Gilead's cult following, but most of his followers had committed no crimes, so no violence occurred and no arrests were made at the scene. The FBI did not even have a strong case against the cult leader, but now he had little choice but to provide evidence against Jason Hall, who otherwise might come after him.
The crew meanwhile, simply left without being captured in any footage. They were able to provide Temperance Gilead with proof of her identity, and even ultimately re-unite her with her mother.
-
In the game's wrap-up, the crew soundly crushed the mark. Jon rolled a lot of dice and was able to count most of them to get his result; David Gilead had strong dice (two d12s), but did not really stand a chance.
The wrap-up mechanic in Leverage is quite cool, because the main antagonist can get to roll a lot of dice, depending not just on his own abilities, but also on how many of his allies and resources can help. The better the crew does at eliminating the mark's advantages during the game, the weaker he is in the finale.
What made this game interesting was that the players found a way to eliminate most of David Gilead's advantages because of the way that they tricked him, not because they ground down his allies. The mark had a lot of things working for him, but those things were supposed to be threats to the crew because of the Branch Davidians' paranoia and nosiness. Since Kali and Jon set him up by using the community's suspicions to bait them and letting them draw their own conclusions, David Gilead could not call on their dice in the wrap-up contest. The finale was the kind of psychological Judo that can make a crew really dangerous.
-
I think that the game went well. However, I think that I learned a few lessons that keep in mind for any future games, for my benefit and also for the players:
1) Don't let the planning stage of the story go on too long, At the start, the players get a lot of information about the game, and they can spend a long time mulling over their options. However, they should be reminded not to wait too long before putting a plan into action. Inevitably, they are going to learn even more from people they meet and clues that they find during play, so - while they should think about their approach - no plan is set in stone.
2) Encourage the players to avoid being wedded to one idea for a solution. They were initially thinking of ways to set up Jason Hall or David Gilead so that the FBI or ATF to arrest them, but they ultimately realised that the ATF were too gung-ho to really be part of the solution.
Some of the research that went into this game can be found under the following links:
Identification abuse of a young girl in Texas
Biker shoot-out near Waco, Texas
Some material about David Koresh and his cult following
John Oliver on militarisation of the police
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Cult recruiter: "Excuse me; I couldn't help overhearing..."
-
So Joel and Cleo were taken back to the Branch Davidian compound and introduced to the cult's leader. David Gilead was quite a clever and controlling mark, so he had a few aces up his sleeve. He knew that the authorities were investigating him, and had already identified an undercover FBI agent in his community. He was giving this agent false information and preventing him from finding anything significant; he was even keeping the agent from accessing a completely mundane storehouse, just to create a decoy.
When he met Joel and Cleo, he saw an opportunity. Here was a married couple with an interest in his group and television equipment. Rather than being secretive, he invited them to film his group, figuring that media coverage would prevent the FBI from making any aggressive moves against him. He was confident that he had enough control over his community that they would give Joel and Cleo a good impression.
-
Meanwhile, Ed Mason and John Cotton decided to infiltrate the ATF encampment that was nearby, out of sight of the Branch Davidians' compound. John had been keeping some fake FBI badges and windbreakers for just such an occasion, and so "Agent Pond" and "Agent Williams" rolled up to investigate. At the same time, Joel was listening into the FBI's communication with their inside man.
Inside the camp, Ed and John encountered some very militaristic and gung-ho ATF agents, itching for a excuse to take on the Branch Davidians, and one highly-stressed FBI negotiator - the liaison to the undercover agent - trying to convince them to look for a non-violent approach. Joel's earlier fumble was working against a peaceful solution; most of the ATF agents were now convinced that the joint-operation was under cyber-attack from the cult and they needed to act fast.
Ed and John backed the negotiator's play, and this is where Adam rolled a complication. The negotiator, Agent Price, took Adam's character aside and said "So, you must be John Cotton, then!" Earlier, John had tried to use his FBI contacts to learn more about the Branch Davidians, and news of his interest had clearly been conveyed to Agent Price. However, the negotiator thought that John Cotton was present to represent the CIA, and he was not going to blow his cover, because John and Ed were the only other people backing his play. Nonetheless, John now had no choice but to support Agent Price's decisions.
-
Meanwhile, Joel and Cleo were finding the Branch Davidians difficult to infiltrate, due to the group's paranoia. They agreed to stay the night in a small house for guests, and Cleo attended a dinner for some of the women of the community. She met Temperance's subdued mother. She also met Kendall, a woman whose husband had left her because of her infertility; she was currently enjoying high status among the women as a prospective "spiritual wife" for David Gilead, who was promising to "pray with her" to cure her infertility. Cleo also met another woman who was, with quiet anger, avoiding such advances; the cult leader had told the husbands of his group to observe celibacy, while he "fathered God's children". This sounds crazy, but I modelled Gilead's behaviour on things that David Koresh did as leader of the Waco chapter.
Cleo did manage to slip away at one point, late at night. She broke into the storehouse (easily - she picked the lock with her eyes closed just to make it more interesting) and realised it was a decoy. Still, eluding the cult members was difficult; at times, Kendall seemed to be following her with a flashlight and a Stepford smile.
Joel used his computers to put footage from the community on the internet overnight, in the hope that this would deter the ATF from taking any violent action. It worked, but Jon rolled a 1 in the process, causing a complication: the following morning, a couple of television news outlets had vans and cameras set up near the entrance to the compound, thinking that a wacky cult was opening its doors to public interest. Now the crew had to contend with the media watching. Jon's dice are the gift that keeps on giving.
-
The crew managed to turn their fortunes around on that new day, probably in no small part because Jon started to spend from his small arsenal of Story Points.
Cleo tailed Jason Hall into the community's chapel, but then he disappeared. Moments later, Joel saw Jason Hall leaving David Gilead's home with the cult leader, on the way to the morning sermon. Realising that a hidden link existed between the chapel and the home, Joel decided that he would have a snoop inside the house, while everyone else was gathered in church. He found a key under a plant pot with a note for Kendall; it was clearly intended so that she could let herself into David Gilead's home so that they could "pray" together.
Inside the cult leader's study, Joel quickly found a secret doorway, and a safe behind a painting. This posed an ironic problem. The crew's hacker was in the study, while their safecracker was stuck in the chapel, surrounded by people. Fortunately they improvised; Joel stuck his earpiece onto the safe so that Cleo could listen and give guidance. While other church-goers were kneeling in muttered prayers, Cleo was whispering "Right a bit... now slowly turn it to the left..."
Jon got his first lucky roll of the game and I rolled a 1, so Joel got to find pretty much everything he needed in the safe, including a photograph album containing proof of Temperance Gilead's parentage and the cult leader's laptop. Joel also found the secret route from the chapel to the house; it went underground to a bunker, where Gilead and Hall had been keeping a large supply of guns. The bunker was intended to be a place of last resort in the event of a Waco-style siege.
-
The crew then formed a solid idea for destroying the mark. Joel had been recording the undercover agent's transmissions to the FBI, and filming footage of David Gilead talking. Using the editing suite on his Mac Book, he synched the audio with the footage and tuned the agent's voice to sound like the cult leader's. He then left the composite playing on Gilead's laptop in his study.
In the ATF encampment, John Cotton and Ed Mason approached Agent Price. John tipped off the FBI agent that the storehouse was a decoy. "We re-tasked an X-ray satellite to photograph the storehouse on its way back to Cuba," he said. "It's empty, but how we know this is classified, so don't tell the ATF where we got this." Ed Mason then got Agent Price to arrange for a FBI helicoptor to do a fly-over of the Branch Davidian compound. When asked why, John Cotton explained that the helicoptor would be picking up and delivering David Gilead to the FBI without a single drop of blood being spilt. The negotiator was stunned; "I heard stories..." he said, "about Honduras... but I didn't think you could do things like this..."
In the chapel, Cleo tried to slip away from the congregation, but Kendall followed her. However, this was a trick - Cleo used Kendall's suspicions to lure her into discovering the secret passage, and she followed it to David Gilead's house. There, she entered the study and found a recording of her leader, ostensibly ratting out his cult members to the FBI!
What happened next was too fast for the mark to handle. Kendall ran out of his home in hysterics, holding the laptop above her head for everyone to see, just as the entire community was emerging from the chapel. The crowd turned to outrage and spontaneously began to chase down their leader, who ran from them. Just at that moment, a helicoptor with big "FBI" markings swooped down with an agent on a rope ladder to rescue Gilead. Acting on panicked instinct, the cult leader took the agent's hand and was whisked away... up high into the sky, where the television crews were able to film his escape.
This apparent betrayal immediately shattered Gilead's cult following, but most of his followers had committed no crimes, so no violence occurred and no arrests were made at the scene. The FBI did not even have a strong case against the cult leader, but now he had little choice but to provide evidence against Jason Hall, who otherwise might come after him.
The crew meanwhile, simply left without being captured in any footage. They were able to provide Temperance Gilead with proof of her identity, and even ultimately re-unite her with her mother.
-
In the game's wrap-up, the crew soundly crushed the mark. Jon rolled a lot of dice and was able to count most of them to get his result; David Gilead had strong dice (two d12s), but did not really stand a chance.
The wrap-up mechanic in Leverage is quite cool, because the main antagonist can get to roll a lot of dice, depending not just on his own abilities, but also on how many of his allies and resources can help. The better the crew does at eliminating the mark's advantages during the game, the weaker he is in the finale.
What made this game interesting was that the players found a way to eliminate most of David Gilead's advantages because of the way that they tricked him, not because they ground down his allies. The mark had a lot of things working for him, but those things were supposed to be threats to the crew because of the Branch Davidians' paranoia and nosiness. Since Kali and Jon set him up by using the community's suspicions to bait them and letting them draw their own conclusions, David Gilead could not call on their dice in the wrap-up contest. The finale was the kind of psychological Judo that can make a crew really dangerous.
-
I think that the game went well. However, I think that I learned a few lessons that keep in mind for any future games, for my benefit and also for the players:
1) Don't let the planning stage of the story go on too long, At the start, the players get a lot of information about the game, and they can spend a long time mulling over their options. However, they should be reminded not to wait too long before putting a plan into action. Inevitably, they are going to learn even more from people they meet and clues that they find during play, so - while they should think about their approach - no plan is set in stone.
2) Encourage the players to avoid being wedded to one idea for a solution. They were initially thinking of ways to set up Jason Hall or David Gilead so that the FBI or ATF to arrest them, but they ultimately realised that the ATF were too gung-ho to really be part of the solution.
Some of the research that went into this game can be found under the following links:
Identification abuse of a young girl in Texas
Biker shoot-out near Waco, Texas
Some material about David Koresh and his cult following
John Oliver on militarisation of the police
Nothing to see here. Move along.
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