SD.Net mafia game?

[irishmick79]

Any interest?

It might be a good idea to set it in either a ficticious major city, or a prominent city associated with a lot of mob activity like New York. Players can pretty much be any type of criminal/authority figure you'd find in such an environment. The basic idea would be for mobsters to take control of illegal activity in their own neighborhoods, develop white collar schemes, and generally build up their power so they either cut out a large swath of NY or get promoted up the chain in one of the 5 families. As law enforcement, you could work cases, become a judge, or run for public office.

If we wanted to do a ficticious city, we could write up a basic city code of laws, draw up a map of neighborhoods at the street level, and then let players develop their concepts accordingly. It might be nice to do it this way, because players can then come and go as they please, and be as dedicated as they please.

[irishmick79]

Or, it might be even more interesting if we set it in a place similar to Beruit or Islamabad. Some place where there's a bit more lawlessness, and players can try to take over the city if they want to.

[Raj Ahten]

Or, it might be even more interesting if we set it in a place similar to Beruit or Islamabad. Some place where there's a bit more lawlessness, and players can try to take over the city if they want to.

Mexico City could work quite well. Hell right now Mexico is having a real war on drugs with major shoot outs and assassinations all the time. Unfortunately I’d probably be unable to participate in such a game heavily; though I might be able to do something. Currently my job is taking up almost all of my time.

Edit:
Though if this ends up happening I could always run out of town contractors that ocasionally get hired, instead of a full time faction.

[The Romulan Republic]

Likewise, interested but limited on time. I haven't even posted yet in the STGOD I'm already signed up for.

[irishmick79]

Or, it might be even more interesting if we set it in a place similar to Beruit or Islamabad. Some place where there's a bit more lawlessness, and players can try to take over the city if they want to.

Mexico City could work quite well. Hell right now Mexico is having a real war on drugs with major shoot outs and assassinations all the time. Unfortunately I’d probably be unable to participate in such a game heavily; though I might be able to do something. Currently my job is taking up almost all of my time.

Edit:
Though if this ends up happening I could always run out of town contractors that ocasionally get hired, instead of a full time faction.

That's a good choice. Latin America would be a fun way to go. How about Cartagena, Colombia? You have a major rebel faction in FARC always lurking, it's a major port city so you have ready access to the Caribbean and beyond.

Yeah, I was thinking that time constraints would be an issue. It seems to me that a mafia themed game could lend itself well to a system where a player could be as active or inactive as they need to be. Hell, when a player is inactive they can easily be considered to be on the lam.

[Shroom Man 777]

Make an insane fictional setting and I'm game.

FUCK, make the setting the SDN World! We can have Shepistani gun-runners and drug lords from Frequesue and Velaria, PeZookian interpol officers and Shroomanian mafiosi and Crimson Mafias and Asstarian slaver rings and all sorts of shit!

It'll be awesome!

[Raj Ahten]

Putting it on SD.net world could be pretty cool. Then there might even be the ocasional tie in.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

An SD.net World mafia subgame would be quite bitching, to be honest. If we can get this thing off the ground, it may be worth the extra time and effort.

[The Romulan Republic]

I would play if I could be some sort of mysterious character who just sometimes shows up when their's trouble and then slinks back into the shadows. I don't think I can be a crime lord with an empire to maintain, or anything that involves time commitments.

[Shroom Man 777]

We can have a re-enactment of HEAT with Shroomgroes and shit!

And Karic could be a recurring character! And those Astarian slavers. We can set it in the 1980s, or the 90s, so we can still have the Border States and have slavers who aren't infected with shroombola.

[Karmic Knight]

We can have a re-enactment of HEAT with Shroomgroes and shit!

And Karic could be a recurring character! And those Astarian slavers. We can set it in the 1980s, or the 90s, so we can still have the Border States and have slavers who aren't infected with shroombola.

If we play the eighties or nineties, would we see Karic as an actual corrupt leader?

[Shroom Man 777]

Good point... if this is before the whole events of our game, then chronologically Karic hasn't turned himself into Nicholas Cage yet...

He could still be John Travolta, or something.

[DarthShady]

Good point... if this is before the whole events of our game, then chronologically Karic hasn't turned himself into Nicholas Cage yet...

He could still be John Travolta, or something.

He would probably be rising to power somewhere in the border states, or maybe already ruling Sjenska.

[Starglider]

Mafia ('werewolf' if you like fantasy settings) is great fun. A LOTR forum I used to lurk on had some cool variants, such as duelling wizards werewolf, and some absolutely hilarious games, such as the wereducks and werepenguins ones. We tend to play Mafia in real life at new years eve parties here too, usually with the doctor and inspector but no other special characters (we found out the doctor tends to break the game if you let them heal themselves...).

But anyway, I'm up for a game, but don't expect me to keep up with all the maneuverings if it starts generating hundreds of posts per day.

[Raj Ahten]

so where in Sd.net world would we want this game to happen? Sticking to one city or geographic area might be best, even if some of the syndicates are international in nature.

[Karmic Knight]

so where in Sd.net world would we want this game to happen? Sticking to one city or geographic area might be best, even if some of the syndicates are international in nature.

If we do it in about 2012-2010 we should do it in that Arabian city that is being heavily invested in.

Anytime other time I think we should operation out of a few cities: San Dorado, A Major Border State port, or the Border States as a whole, and a Valarian port city/country.

[Setzer]

I think it would be most fun with international criminal groups. We can have the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Triads, and a whole bunch of people in tacky jewelry with their pants around their knees.

Let's see, what activities will we have? Prostitution, the drug trade, robbing cargo shipments, arms smuggling, casinos, trade unions, assassination, what else?

The question is, what do we do with activities that are legal in one nation and illegal in another?

[Siege]

If we're going with this 2010 approach, I'd definitely like to be playing as (an element of) the La Palma mafia from San Dorado. Pseudo-Italian gangsters from an LA/Miami analog, what's not to like? A group like that would have it's greedy paws in virtually everything: In San Dorado, nearly anything's legal, from hard drug trafficking to prostitution. On the other hand, we'd be crippled by having to buy off AIP and keeping our heads down so as not to get the authorities to crack down on us...

I think in a game like that we ought to focus on a single place or at least geographical area... For example control over the recently-established underworld of the Byzantine city of Arabiapolis.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think we should go with San Dorado. It's an awesome place.

Seriously!

[Norseman]

At some point the survivors in Astaria (such as there are) would presumably be relocated to South Velaria. However given how dirt poor that place is you could see a lot of former BOSS agent forming organised crime syndicates.

[DarthShady]

I think we should go with San Dorado. It's an awesome place.

Seriously!

Yes. Block Wars!

[irishmick79]

San Dorado sounds like a pretty interesting setting. Are there any other cities in SD.Net world that deserve consideration? As somebody who hasn't followed the SD.Net world STGOD closely, can somebody give me a quick briefing on what kind of factions and political dynamics one would expect to find in San Dorado?

I guess another question is how micro or macro do we want this to be? I mean, are we talking about posters creating individual characters who are working to promote upwards through the system, and running from there? If so, then we might be wise to go with some sort of standard table-top RPG system to make this work. If it's more of a macro setting where posters are representing entire factions, then maybe we should flesh out some sort of basic game concept for how it should look. Either style could be pretty fun, if you ask me. With a mafia style game, I'm inclined to try and find some basic RPG system for individual characters and work from there.

[Master_Baerne]

I agree that San Dorado is the place to put this, and that we need some sort of rules. The loose format of SDN's World may work (sorta) for a game of thrones and political maneuvers, but for individual characters? Not so much. I suppose we could just use some version of Dungeons and Dragons, as the SRD provides the rules for pretty much everything.

[Siege]

You guys really want to set it in San Dorado? Wow, that'd be awesome . If we set it in current-day SDNWorld, I'll gladly make whatever comes out of this game canon too (uh, provided we don't end up blowing the city to high heaven of course . I wouldn't mind moderating a game set there, should we need a moderator.

San Dorado sounds like a pretty interesting setting. Are there any other cities in SD.Net world that deserve consideration? As somebody who hasn't followed the SD.Net world STGOD closely, can somebody give me a quick briefing on what kind of factions and political dynamics one would expect to find in San Dorado?

San Dorado is run by megacorporations who don't care about public order as much as they care about their bottom line. Most policework has been privatized, corruption on the lower levels of government is pretty rampant, and the streets of San Dorado City can be pretty hectic as a result. From the top of my head the following groups at least are milling about: crime barons like the La Palma mafia (from the northern coast city of La Palma), corrupt private security agencies, megacorporations and their hired goons, heavily armed protest groups from the Sprawls (ranging from anarchists and communists to hippies and libertarians), secret fraternities from the Tanstaafl Raj who control the harddrug trade, criminal syndicates from across the world trying to get their hands on weapons and drugs, crooked police officers, government agencies like the CBI, and of course the Armed Interdiction Police, San Dorado's very own Dredd-style enforcers who come in on armored motorbikes to bust ass when things truly get out of hand.

Basically the city is a blend of 1920's New York and an archetypical megacorp-run city from a random cyberpunk novel, with weather like Singapore's and a government with an increasingly libertarian view of matters like personal responsibility.

[Raj Ahten]

Preferably I'd like to avoid going as far as giving each mobster a level. Shadowrun had a decent system for figuring a syndicates power if I remeber corectly. Baically it broke down crime into different categories such as smuggling, prostitution and so on, each with a rating of 1-10 on how good each syndicates operations were. Then each syndicate had a rating to indicate what their enforcement, cash flow, inteligence/counterinteligence, management and reputation was like. Something similiar might be of use here.