Watching Leverage and thinking about the characters and how they fit into their defined roles in the story. The show is basically the A-Team with less cartoony violence and more female characters. Con artists who play Robin Hood, more or less.

There’s the Mastermind (Nate), the Face (Sophie), the Fighter (Elliot), the Wizard (Hardison) and the Thief (Parker). But the interesting thing is, they’re all competent at each others’ roles. There’s no niche protection for the most part. Parker will don an FBI uniform and talk her way past a situation while Hardison can abseil with the best of them.

In this show, the niche doesn’t define what the character does or can do (like in most RPGs), the niche defines what they normally do NOT do. When Parker has to masquerade as an FBI agent, she does so quite well but is sure to add her own wrinkle to the performance (weird, inappropriate comments and awkward body language). She pulls it off but does it in her own style. And it’s funny and/or cool because the audience isn’t used to seeing her in this light. We expect Sophie to pull this off. It’s not surprising when Elliot disarms some gun-wielding goon.

Niche protection = audience expectation.

This is one of the ways InSpectres brings in humor through the mechanics. The character with a 4 in Contact is assumed to be the spokesperson, but if the player with a socially awkward character comes up with the idea to talk to the client, that player has to make the roll. Success or failure, the result is interesting because it’s outside the character’s niche.

EDIT: “The Stork Job” is Parker’s episode… she has screen time “4″ in Prime Time Adventures parlance.