Skip to content
Mar de Oro
  • Start Here
  • How Mar de Oro Plays
  • About
  • ResourcesCommunity Review
GM Guide · Mar de Oro
Restricted · For the GMHome
HubAdventuresCampaignToolsSession PrepResources
Back to GM Tools
GM Tools · 10

Leverage

A concrete thing one side can spend to force a decision.

Tap the plate to zoom. From the Mar de Oro GM Tools Booklet.

What it is

Leverage is not persuasion. It is a specific asset one party holds over another, evidence, an obligation, a witness, a physical position, an unpaid debt, a compromised secret, an ally in the room. A leverage exchange has a shape: hold it, reveal it, spend it, or lose it. Every use changes the fiction.

Leverage keeps social scenes decisive. Instead of a lone roll to "convince the governor," the party spends the customs ledger and the Clann's public backing, and the governor concedes the port inspection, but Albion now knows who leaked the ledger. Something was gained. Something was paid.

Factions build and spend leverage too. Track their reserves the same way you track clocks: what does this faction have on the party, and what will it cost them to use it?

When to use it

  • Before a negotiation, siege, tribunal, or standoff, list what each side actually holds.
  • When a social scene threatens to collapse into a single roll, surface the assets in play.
  • After the party gathers evidence or promises, record it as spendable leverage, not flavour.
  • Between sessions, when factions move, ask what each faction just gained or lost as leverage.

Worked example

The governor's audience, DeSauros
Party's leverage
  • , The customs ledger (evidence, single-use)
  • , A Clann elder in the anteroom (public backing)
  • , Marina's testimony (witness, burns her cover)
  • , A favour owed by the harbourmaster
Governor's leverage
  • , Warrant for a party member on a prior charge
  • , Control of the port stamps the party needs by dawn
  • , An Albion liaison one room away
  • , A private letter from the Duchy of Heller
Resolution

Party spends the ledger and the Clann's backing. Governor concedes the inspection but calls in the warrant, one PC must exit the province by dawn. Marina's testimony stays unspent, in reserve for the tribunal. The favour is untouched.

Pairs with

Hard choices
Leverage is what makes a hard choice feel earned, real assets on both sides of the trade.
Faction moves
A faction move often is spending leverage, track what they burn to make it.
Clue webs
Clues become leverage when the party can name them at a table and someone must respond.
Previous · Tool 09
Pace guide
You've reached Tool 10
Back to the toolkit
Download GM Tools BookletPDF · Restricted

Every tool in the toolkit, plus worked examples, in printable form.

For the Game Master's eyes

Tales of Mar de Oro · Game Master's Guide · Johnny Crown · 7202 Post Sundering

Restricted · For the Game Master

Mar de Oro GM Tools

This is the Game Master tool area for Tales of Mar de Oro: session preparation aids, pacing and consequence helpers, clocks, and reference generators you can use at the table. The tools themselves are system-neutral utilities, and they sit alongside campaign material written for the person behind the screen.

Campaign spoiler warning: the material past this point includes faction secrets, hidden truths, and the sequence of events behind the campaign. Reading it as a player will hollow out surprises the setting depends on.

Spoiler-free GM resources you can open without entering: Mar de Oro GM Tables and new Game Master onboarding.

Return to player material

7202 Post Sundering · Johnny Crown