Timed Actions, Combat, and Puttin' Her to Bed
Timed Actions and combat are, in my opinion, awesome. They really sound like they will convey the feel of the series. They both operate in vague units of time called Beats. The time a Beat is measured in is as long as the action taken during that Beat takes to accomplish. It'll make more sense in an example.
Timed Actions are those actions taken when a PC is under the gun and only has a few moments to do it in. I'll take an example from The Quickstart Job so here's your fair warning. I'm going to make it as plotless as possible so that if you ever play the module this shouldn't spoil anything for you.
The team has coaxed the target out of his office for a few moments giving Parker (the hottie thief) a small window inside which she's going to try and get into a safe. I hesitate to call this a spoiler because if you've ever watched the show you can rightly assume that Parker is going to try and get into a safe on any given day. Anyhow, getting into this safe is a three step process; Getting past the motion sensor, getting past the laser crosswire, and cracking the lock. It's going to take her three Beats to get this job done.
The number of Beats she'll actually have to do the job in the session will largely depend on factors that will be determined through play. For our purposes we're going to give her exactly the number she needs...three. For each step in the process Parker is going to roll her Agility + Thief + any other benefits she might get vs. the GM's d8 + d8 (again, I'm guessing there are steps from which the system derives these numbers but they didn't reveal those in this Job). If Parker succeeds then the action only takes 1 Beat. If she scores an Extraordinary Success (a success in which she out-rolls the GM by 5 or more) she finds a shortcut and the action didn't take any Beats at all. A failure will actually cost her 2 Beats, cutting her time short.
If it's obvious that Parker isn't going to have enough time to get into the safe the rest of the crew can attempt to buy her some time. Distracting the target is going to be the most obvious way of buying time. The crewmember will roll against the NPC, with a success Parker gets an extra Beat to try and get into the safe. With an Extraordinary Success she'll get two extra beats. If the crewmember fails then no extra Beats are gained and the failing crewmember can't make any more attempts to buy time. If she runs out of time then other options open up. They won't be total victory and may involve getting caught, but that is outside of the realm of this review. In this regard I think Beats do really well to mechanize that countdown clock, adding tension to the scene. It's kinda like Leverage that way.
Combat works in a very similar fashion. Fighting in this game is very "cinematic" and there is no real tactical element to it whatsoever. At the start of each fight the players involved determine the Endurance for their PC. Again they didn't provide the mechanics and just gave the final number, also NPCs are figured differently. It all seems arbitrary in the module but I'm sure the full rules will provide context. For now we know that Eliot's Endurance is 6 and the group of NPCs come to Endurance of 5. The target and his three guards all count as one for the purpose of this fight. It's an abstraction of how difficult overall it will be for Eliot to overcome.
Combat, like Timed Actions, takes place in Beats. For each Beat all participants in the fight describe their Fight Action. Then they roll their Strength (or maybe Agility if the argument can be made) + Hitter + other factors. Highest roll wins the Beat. Extraordinary Successes count as two Beats. When one side has won as many Beats as their opponent has Endurance then the opponent is Taken Down. When Taken Down a character is incapacitated in some way and, in the case of PCs, unable to participate with the rest of the Job. There is a way out, however.
Giving, crying uncle, general pansiness. You can quit the fight. Doing so lets you walk away and gives you a Plot Point. The tradeoff is that you get a Complication and your friends get to make fun of you.
You can also gain a second wind by spend a Plot Point (I'm not sure I can bring myself to call them PPs). This will add one to your Endurance.
Now comes time for the Flashbacks. In the series they will reveal to the viewer (and usually the target) one thing that each crewmember did prior to the Job to help set them up for success. In the game this manifests in each player adding to the story one thing that their character did prior to the Job to help set them up for success. This is the part where the players are given some narrative control. Each player will make a roll and if they succeed Nate gains bonuses to his Wrap Up roll which will determine just how successful they were in taking care of the target.
Overall I think this game is going to have tons of potential for fun. If the overall rules are as they are depicted in the demo then I think it will make for a great episodic or one-shot games. It's probably designed to follow the show in that regard. If a GM was really intent on making a deeper, more serialized campaign out of it I don't think it will be that hard, but that's only a guess. I think that this game has really nailed the feel of the show, at least on paper. I can't wait to try this out on my friends.
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