Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Claizen 04-12-08, 04:01 PM	Hey there, I'm going to be running a game very soon where a major part of the game will be affiliations. The main characters have decided that they will be making a thieves guild (more like a mafia) and the game will be them expanding and building their mafia empire. There is a slight problem though. Most of the games I run involve quite a few encounters, because, lets face it, DnD is a combat oriented game. My problem is that liberal use of random encounters isn't going to work too well in this setting as they will be spending most if not all their time in one particular metropolis and any killing of town guards and the like will result in extensive investigation and eventual jailing or death sentences. I was wondering if anyone could help me formulate some ideas for interesting challenges that they players could face that wouldn't require me to send the army after them for their senseless mass slaughter. Most of the ideas that come to mind for me are pretty cliche, probably because mobster storylines are already very well explored in mainstream art and culture. Some ideas I have include: A Heist: The players must formulate a plan and then sneak into a building with the intent on stealing lots of treasure. They will have to overcome traps as well as a few guards to succeed, blah blah, etc. A Rat: There is a rat in their organization, they need to discover who it is an silence him. Gang wars: Other gangs are going to be a problem, there will be fights over territory and the like, maybe even fights in the street. It is assumed also that the guards will not investigate the deaths of gang members with nearly as much zeal and drive as those of innocents and may even facilitate inter-gang violence. Extortion: The players will have to roleplay specific circumstances when an intimidation role just doesn't do it. They may have to haul a store owner over to the docks during the night, and then dip him into the ocean a few times before he consents to pay up. Mercenary services: Other affiliations may express interest in buying their services. Does anyone else have any good ideas for this? Perhaps someone who has thought about ideas for social encounters longer than I have? The setting itself is homebrew although it will have the standard Greyhawk pantheon. The city they are in is a dockside metropolis. Other affiliations include 5 noble houses, a weapon smithing monopoly, martial arts schools, other gangs, arcane universities, churches, and other such things. The country is a sort of fantasy combination of Han China and standard Medieval European country.
Silverswordmaster 04-12-08, 05:11 PM	Heh, this is a fun one. Alright, if you really want a Gang War, then take something off of 'The Godfather' Video Games, and set it up so that there are three gangs that are jockying for territory with your PC's gang or group. Have them come up with a name for themselfs, so they have a name for their group or 'family'. The rest of the gangs can have their own names as well, and you can pick them yourself or ask somebody for ideas, go to town with that one. With the gang war, you can have all the fun of all Five of the ideas that you have so far, and then get to add a few more to it. Example, Hireing goons to slip into other gangs and get dirt on operations, beat up other gangs Extortion groups to get their territory, Raids on other gangs supply lines, Defence agains raids on their OWN supply lines, recruting more members into the family, running gambleing houses, black market, whatever. Just add more into the 'Mafia' idea and bada bing bada bang, you got it.
Terjon of the Blue Rose 04-12-08, 10:40 PM	I would suggest you look into the DMG2 and its section on running a business in game. Beyond that if your looking for encounters never forget that your players will be part of an extensive organization. Regardless of their rank in it every situation that any member of your mafioso family falls into may call in your team for assistance. For example your ideas have missed the clean-up when someone else's mission goes bad and the jail break. I say start off with your players running jobs themselves at others bequest, very mercenary like. Eventually they start being recognized as pros and start being held in reserve for when others screw up while being given more leeway to run jobs for themself (at this point they may be considered an nuetral force for hire by any existing crime syndicate). Continuing to prove themselves they should eventually reach the level where they are sending others out for small time jobs and only running the real big stuff personally (by now they should be "in" with at least one major family or running their own organization). Victory occurs when they become untouchable kingpins of crime and crush their opposition (both other gangs and uncorrupted police forces) under their heel.
Schizoveen 04-13-08, 07:44 AM	although i enjoyed Terjon's ideas, i still thought of adding my own ideas ;) Building up you own empire of crime from the ground up doesn't just mean doing crime. normally it starts with extorsion and/or blackmarket stuff. You'll probably come accros a few city guards which you'll have to bribe. but city guards aren't stupid either and will start to blackmail you as they want more money in exchange for not arresting you. as your growing other, already existing, thief guilds start to notice you. some of them think they can buy you, let you work for them, others will try to kill the whole guild. this is were corruption withing the guild starts, like a rat which you gave as a example yourself. also stronger emotions come into play as not everyone is build to kill that easily. maybe people wish to leave your guild... do you allow that? what if they talk? family is important as long as it sticks together, weak people are a risk. Mundane problems still exist, but they have the power to do something about it. An older family member got into jail and will be sentinced to death, will you let that happen? will you use your bribery power to get him free or will there be a big action scene of a rescue? now just some random ideas: - robbery went completly wrong. lots of innocent got killed..although guards are bribed, someone needs to pay - maybe use monsters as guards, warriors, teammates, bait, lure or to place the blame on - a deal didn't go through...what to do with massive amount of weapons you were supose to sell - although you found the rat.. a new one appears... maybe someone is dominating them? - the temple of a good god asks for a secret assasination...what's going on within that temple? maybe an evil cleric infiltrated and kept himself secret with undetectible alignment - you've been set up by a different guild - your secret hideout has been located....gotta move...but how do you move all the drugs? anyway.. that's it for now... gotta go back to work. inspirational media: scarface (movie) american gangster (movie) Grand theft auto series (video game) Goodfellas (movie) City of God (movie)
elliott20 04-14-08, 10:46 AM	I think you need to give a bit more info about what phase the organization growth is in. Consider the following phases of development in most mafia movies you can think of, they always follow this formula: 1. creation 2. growth (aka, the big heist) 3. Successful criminal empire 4. trouble over the horizon 5. betrayal/s*** hits the fan 6. destruction while it's not always like this, it tends to follow this formula. You don't need to necessarily let their organization follow this, but you need to give them a bit more background here. Are the PCs creating their own criminal organization? Do they already have their crime organization created? Do they already have theri criminal empire created? Are they part of a bigger family? Who are the other players in the city? To streamline the list I drew up earlier, consider the following three phases 1. creation 2. developed 3. aged dinosaur figure out where they are right now, and go with that. if they're in phase 1, they need to consider the following things: 1. why are they criminals? why do they want to develop a criminal empire? 2. what kinds of things are they gonna do? Just like most businesses, while a lot of business try to cross sectors and become generalists, a lot of smaller startups are specialists. What is their specialty? 3. where do they get their income? 4. how do the local existing authorities (be they legal or criminal) feel about this? You'll find that once you've answered the question about who else is around and what is available to them, the players will probably pick up on the other end and put something together. But here's a tricky part: you shouldn't decide for the players what it is they want to do for their own criminal empires development. True, you can throw crisis at them to solve, but they need to be the ones to figure out how the organization grows. and also, never forget that they are in competition with other organizations. That means if they just sit around and kick back doing nothing, other organizations with more ambitious strides will eventually overtake them.
Claizen 04-14-08, 10:35 PM	Thanks for the replies and the ideas. Lots of good stuff to think about. The players will in fact be starting it from the beginning. The ideas that Elliot20 suggested are good for thought, especially the thoughts about if they have a specialty and what their starting sources of income are. The group has already said that they want their cover to be a restaurant, so that will be some level of base income. However, the problem I'm really having is how to work in encounters that don't leave lots of people dead and a heavy investigation that couldn't end any other way than with the apprehension of the characters. The police themselves will favor non-lethal damage over lethal unless they feel their lives are significantly in danger so this could be a cue to the players that perhaps they should do the same. Inter-gang fights will not necessarily have to be nonlethal and the police could just not care about gang fights that don't involve innocents. As far as ideas for starting up go, I've been watching a bunch of mobster movies, namely Eastern Promises, Sonatine, Brother, and A Better Tomorrow, for ideas on certain things and it seems to me that there will perhaps need to be a lot of other small criminal groups, street gangs and other things for their mob to contend with. I imagine they will have to fight these gangs to acquire enough territory to really expand and a lot of the early game will be acquiring income resources. Such income coming from extortion, drug dealing, smuggling of other illegal goods. They could also open and control brothels, perhaps importing the young and uneducated from nearby countries to "sing at their fine establishment." But really, these are all ideas that the players should be having, the game is definitely going to be run based on the players choices and will change and flow based on their decisions. I won't be able to truly prepare anything specific so much as guess where they will be going and what they will be doing and make lots of stat-lines for people they may run into. My problem is still how to work in encounters that don't lead the police to them. But then I suppose disposing of evidence will also be part of the game. Anyway thanks for all the ideas, does anyone else have anything to add by any chance? Any neat ideas floating around based on criminal activity?
elliott20 04-15-08, 10:52 AM	well, when I say base income, I don't just mean their cover (which is their restaurant) but their real trade. Still that's something the players need to come up with anyway, so don't worry about it too much. (Just make sure you have the business rules handy when they come up) Keep in mind, encounters don't always have to end up with people dead all the time. The traditional D&D convention might promote this somewhat but you certainly don't have to. You have to consider what kind of police force the city has as a different police force will cause different encounters. and I don't mean what kind of class levels and all that (though those are helpful later on), I mean what is the operating philosophy. The first thing to deter them is they have ot remember: the more nefarious and the more publically known they are, the harder it is for them to do business as their high profile status will bring too much unnecessary attention. This is important as it will dictate how the players handle policing forces. Modern policing forces function on one principle. The first man on site doesn't just charge in and try to do the job himself. He's merely there to act as a symbol that the law is here and is going to take action. Usually what he WILL do is call for backup, and THEN do what he needs to do. That way, if he goes down, doesn't matter, others won't be far behind. This is a powerful incentive as killing a cop is not a crime that living cops tend to forget. This means the gangs will want to keep the police body count down, since if the police count got too high, people will start taking this as a legit concern and public awareness will rise to this. All of this, of course, is assuming the police department and the public generally trust each other implicitly. It is entirely possible to go the other route: cops are just gangsters with a badge. This introduces an interesting wrinkle as it raises questions as to how cops will operate. They might operate in essentially in the same principle when in confrontations, but the premise will be different and you will see far less confrontations and far more foulplay from the cop side. it's also interesting to see WHY they are this way. Maybe the police department is horribly underfunded and some cops just don't feel they get paid enough to lay down their lives for the law. Or maybe it's a state-wide corruption case that has infected almost all public figures. (a la Gotham police) In any case though, cop encounters will usually function like this: 1. cop assesses situation from afar. 2. if tenable, cop steps and demands that the criminals surrender. They usually do this without drawing their weapons. Only TV cops ever jump in guns blazing. Real cops understand that they need to give the criminals room to back off in, else they potentially escalate a situation that could've been avoided. 3. if the criminals can talk their way out or surrender, the encounter essentially stops there. other wise, escalate to normal fight scene. 4. after fight scene, if the criminals are the winners, the criminals are going to try to get out of there ASAP as the backup is gonna get here soon.
elliott20 04-15-08, 11:03 AM	maybe another time
dannyboy101 04-17-08, 04:03 AM	:rolleyes: why dont u use somthing from the game hitman that has some stuff u could use:)
Ladj 05-16-08, 02:55 AM	I'd personally recommend havning some encounters involving monsters. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy city adventures and the whole mob idea but it can get a little repetative if that's all you do. How about the party is forced to defend their new aquisitions from mind flayers looking for an easy way into the city's underground business. It could be spun a ton of ways, they could kill the mind flayers and accidently end up heroes in the eyes of city guard which could give them a lot of pull with city officials, they could agree to work with the mind flayers, providing them with cover while they enslave citizens in exchange for the power to defeat the other guilds and families or maybe make an alliance with another family or group of families who feel they're at a disadvantage against the mindflayers since they have no experience dealing with the kind of underground monsters your party has. It doesn't have to be mind flayers but changing the type of enemy they're facing off against will probably make it more interesting.