So I bought the Leverage roleplaying game book. Of course I did. I adore Leverage, I like roleplaying, and I have been in love with bossing people around to play out stories since my first sibling was vaguely mobile. It turned out to be extremely awesome, with what amounts to a manual on how to create plot, and also a character sheet for Wil Wheaton's guest star role as "Chaos".

Then I mentioned that I had the game at the shame in today-

Oh, right, shame in. Shame in is when a bunch of friends who need to TCB get together to have brunch, gather at someone's house and then get down to work, all of us hunched over laptops or piles of articles. The idea is that being in the presence of productive people will produce sufficient shame as a motivating factor. In practice, I flake out at about dinner time, but then everyone gets to feel superior to me, so that's okay. I'm helping!

I got a good chunk of dissertation done today, which was awesome and then -

Mentioned that I had bought the Leverage roleplaying game. People seemed interested, and someone, can't recall who, oh yes, it was me, suggested that we could maybe give the setup a go after dinner.

Leverage is a quirky caper/heist/con show with a pseudo-realistic real world setting about bad guys who are the best good guys in tough situations - when the law can't handle it, lawbreakers can. Justice will be done, even slantwise! The crew on the show comprises Nate Ford (the Mastermind), Sophie Devereaux (the Grifter), Parker (the Thief), Elliot Spencer (the Hitter), and my ideal husband Alec Hardison (the Hacker).

The crew in our game would be playing the same roles, plus the Fixer (GM/Storyteller/Dungeon Master/etc) - who would be me. There were four of us playing, so I figured I'd make the two leftover roles NPCs with more auxiliary stuff to do.

Then the real fun began.

ME: Okay, so these are your character sheets, which we'll fill out now. Who wants to be the Hacker?
CLAIRE: Like Tosh[iko Sato, a sadly deceased character from Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood], right?
ME: Yep, more or less!
CLAIRE: I wanna be Tosh!
ME: Okay, so you're the Hacker. Think about your character background - age, ethnicity, gender, personality traits, how they got into this life, and so on.
CLAIRE: *nodding thoughtfully*
MARY: I'd like to be the Grifter, if no one else wants it.
ME: Nope, it's yours! Belinda, Hitter, Thief, or Mastermind?
BELINDA: Hitter! Can I be kind of farcical?
ME: As long as it works with the crew, sure! You mean like drunken boxing?
BELINDA: *gets the giggles* Or SAURON.
ME: Hee!

Everyone busily scribbled for a bit while I talked about what attributes to prioritise according to their primary and secondary roles in the team and sketched out the beginnings of the two NPC main roles.

ME: Okay, Claire, what have you got? Tell us about your character.
CLAIRE: *blankly* She's Tosh.
ME: ... wait. You actually want to play Toshiko Sato?
CLAIRE: Yes!
ME: Er, okay, a character named that who's a hacker, sure, we can work with that. What's her distinctive trait?
CLAIRE: *confidently* She's immortal.
ME: Um.
CLAIRE: That's how she survived Torchwood!

We eventually worked out that Claire would be playing a Tosh with amnesia (interesting character trait! lots of plot potential!) who had somehow slipped into a life of crime with her hacker skills but had, and this was very important, absolutely no memory of being a formerly dead woman who protected the world from aliens.

ME: Okay! Awesome, that's going to be a lot of fun. Belinda, how about you?
BELINDA: I'm Sauron.
ME: ...
MARY: *peering over her shoulder* In character background, she's written "Ruler of Black Lands, blown up by Mount Doom."
BELINDA: My alias is Annatar! Because that's what I was known as among the Elves.
ME: No! No, you cannot be the actual Sauron! We'll come back to this, okay?
BELINDA: *crazed giggling*

Internets, I was weary. I was losing hope. I was, frankly, suspecting conspiracy. So when I asked Mary about her Grifter character, I was expecting, "I'm Robin the Boy Wonder (pre-Crisis Jason Todd version)!"

MARY: I'm Todd MacIntyre, alias Christopher Green. I formerly had a career as a real estate agent and a lucrative stock portfolio, but I want to prove that I have a social conscience - although, really, more than anything else, I need the challenge. I've got an aptitude for languages, I'm an obsessive planner, and I'm ruthless to the point of being heartless.
ME: ... wow.
MARY: *apologetically* I used to play D&D.
ME: And that's why you're my favourite.

After some discussion, we worked out the kinks. The crew comprises the Mastermind Tina Bacon-Smith (my first NPC), the Grifter Todd MacIntyre, the Hacker Toshiko Sato, and Stephanie, a Hitter with delusions of grandiose heroism with some trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality who likes to be called Sauron and has a collection of foam faux-medieval weaponry. Oh, and Kyle Chung, my other NPC, an ex-circus performer Thief.

Well, SOMEONE had to be Robin.

But Karen, you ask, why were you suspecting conspiracy? Surely these were normal - and hilarious - takes on roleplaying by inexperienced gamers?

Well, Internets, the truth is that the guilty mind tends to suspicion. I had been engaging in some conspiracy of my own. Earlier in the day I had secretly recruited Claire in my efforts to enact crimes against Belinda.

After everyone left, I got the following text message:

Article left unnoticed in the mark's car at 2245 hours.

"Copy that," I replied, and went to type up this post.

What were we talking about?

Why, that's another story.