Leverage By the Numbers - Oz

Last week, I reworked Numbers from By the Numbers, bringing her from the Shadowrun setting into one of my own creation.  Numbers was the easy one to work with; her background came to the fore during the story and her role didn't really change despite the translation; she's the hacker of the group, and the new system, the Leverage RPG, has that as an explicit role.

The rest of the cast of By the Numbers will take work.  The Mecha Academy setting doesn't have magic or cybernetics, meaning the rest of the crew will have fundamental changes made to them.  Yet, the goal is to keep to their personalities, not their abilities.  Having learned my lesson the first time I created characters for the game, I'll just focus on one character, Oswald, the mage.

Leverage By the Numbers

I've worked on a character from By the Numbers, writing up Numbers for Shadowrun.  The main problem with the story is that I'm playing in someone else's intellectual property.  The characters, though, are mine.  If I can translate them into a new setting, I have a more or less original work.  Heists occur in all genres; Ocean's 11 is a good example.  Move the heist to a different time and setting, like a fantasy world or the far future.  Liberating heirlooms from a dragon's horde is still a heist, as is stealing data from a privately owned space station.  The trappings are different, but the key is how the characters overcome their challenges.

To this end, I'm going to try to create Numbers using the Leverage RPG.  I've delved into the game before, getting ready to write Unruly.  Having learned my lesson the first time, I'll just create Numbers, though the rest of the cast will chime in.

Before starting, though, I do need a setting.  I want to move away from the mash up of cyberpunk and epic fantasy that is Shadowrun while still staying in the realm of science fiction.  The Mecha Academy setting is there ready for expansion.  What that means is no magic (sorry Oz), no elves (sorry Treehugger), and no trolls (sorry Charles).  Cybernetics aren't a thing in the Mecha Academy setting, more for prosthetics than willing replacement.  The setting's gone through that phase.  WIth all that out in the open, let's go steal, er, make us a Numbers!

The Unruly Girls meet Leverage

I may have mentioned before that my approach to writing is atypical.  Sure, there isn't a One True Path into writing, but my entry was via tabletop role-playing games.  One way of making sure a character was viable was to create that character using an appropriate RPG.  Steven Savage over at Seventh Sanctum discusses character creation as part of his Way with Worlds series, and has suggested several ways to create a character and included the same thing, via an RPG.  The idea is viable.