Leadfoot Gettaway - an RPG for two players and one fast car

Leadfoot Gettaway is not just a two-page RPG, it's also a game straddles the line between a role playing game and an adventure board game. To be fair, that's a super thin line and I don't know of an adventure board game that doesn't have one foot in role playing. However, it's still a good trick for a game fits on a double-sided sheet of paper.

Part of the Indie Mixtape Megamix, Leadfoot Gettaway plays out a particularly tough job  in the life of a Driver. You know, the role that's pretty much defined the career of Jason Statham. Although, the genre has been around for a whole longer than that. Still, it lets you describe the game to someone in one sentence.

It's designed for two players. Obviously, someone gets to be the driver. They get to stat out the driver. Or, really, they get to stat out the car. The sweet ride gets four stats, ranging from one to four dice. The stat that stands out is Style, which adds gadgets to your car.

 

The other player is the passenger, which really means the game master. In addition to playing all of the NPC's, they use a regular deck of cards to randomly generate the road the driver is going on.

Without going into enough detail to tell you how to actually play the game without getting it, each card provide some sort of challenge to the driver. Red cards are cool stuff while black cards are tough challenges.

Something that amuses me is that while Leadfoot Gettaway is a ridiculously focused game, so focused that it could pass for a board game without much trouble, you can still really play with the setting. You could have it be set in the 70s with old school muscle cars or really hit the style and make it science fiction like Knight Rider or Speed Racer. Heck, you could make the sweet ride a horse and have it be a western.

Despite the simplicity and tight focus, there do feel like there are some meaningful gaps in the rule. For instance, other than losing gadgets or benefit tokens, there doesn't seem to be a damage system. In theory, eventually the driver will always make it.

Despite the super tight focus and some rules issues, I can immediately think of people I'd like to play Leadfoot Gettaway with. It didn't leave me in awe but the fact that I want to try it out says something.