What does the Political Leader want from the Criminal Organization? Vice Versa?

[nakedonmyfoldin]

To summarize quickly: my campaign is based in a city in which the leader of the city and the foremost criminal organization are codependent. I have a few ideas, but i'd like to get some other thoughts on it.

Current winner: The real king is a Lawful Good Paladin. He is a true crusader who embarks frequently on missions to destroy evil. basically. Since he is frequently busy, like Timmy Turner's parents, he gives control of the city to a horrible babysitter - his trusted advisor.
Actually a high-ranking member of a nightmarish cult, this advisor is poised to bring his god/demon/whatever to earth with all of his awesome power and wealth. The catch? He has no wealth! The good king has emptied the treasury, spending tax money on magical weapons, holy relics, and other things that he likes to have for his crusades. So how does he get wealth? He goes into cahoots with the mafia-like Cloaked Daggers, a longstanding criminal organization that's as much a part of the city as the walls themselves.
This is where I'm less confident in my story. I can't decide what I want the Cloaked Daggers to do. What is their niche? I don't want just another friggin Thieves Guild. I hate Thieves Guilds, they're stupid. So what do they do? Smuggle? Murder? Why?
And finally, if they are so wealthy from (blank) criminal activity, what do they need from the Advisor with the political power? Are they up front with him, or do they actually want him out of the way?
I'm always thankful for any ideas, and always impressed by what the Playgrounders provide.

[Telonius]

In order for there to be a criminal organization, there's usually a reason for the criminals to be organized. Either they're doing so out of convenience or to set up some sort of established "turf" (like your typical thieves' guild), or what they're doing is complicated enough that one person can't do it on their own. Since typical thieves' guild is out, what you're looking for is a more complicated sort of crime.

Some suggestions on that: tax evasion (by the rich and powerful), smuggling and sale of contraband items (drugs, poison, banned weapons, fake or illegally-produced goods), illegal gambling, espionage (national or guild-based), or fraud (think Ocean's Eleven or The Sting; big projects where you need lots of conmen helping out). Some sort of demon-based thing would usually be a good reason to organize, but your vizier is already kind of filling that role. Another option is a group of malcontents who want to overthrow the current order, without much care to what comes afterwards (as long as they're included high up in the New Order's structure). Viva la Revolucion, and all that. Or, taking the opposite position, maybe a bunch of traditionalists who think this new King's been getting way out of hand. They don't want to take much risk themselves, but would be happy to help as long as somebody else (i.e. the vizier) sticks his neck out.

Whatever the group, they would all have a motive to help if the current king has been cracking down on them, and the vizier promises to turn a blind eye.

[ArcturusV]

Well, your city is ruled by a Paladouche, who probably has the prerequisite 10' pole up his rectum. So that suggests that he'd have set down edicts and laws in particular fashions so as to not clash with his own view and codes.

One interesting though I had? Do something most fantasy settings don't really touch on. Have the city have an annual draft among it's population. Those randomly selected are drawn into the King's Guard to be trained and sent off on his crusades as his honor guard/foot soldiers against the forces of Evil. Considering most of them will be the equivalent of 1st level Warriors/Fighters/Adepts or something, it's probably viewed as a death sentence. The Paladin King means well, even uses his treasury to equip them really well. But that 8-10 HP just isn't going to last you all that long when you're fighting the scions of evil and most just never return. Something like a 35% survival rate.

This gives the criminal organization something to do that both serves their pocket book, and the vizier. Either rigging or dodging the Draft. Either thing is something that lone criminals would have a hard time doing. The benefit to the criminals is obvious. It's a source of revenue as they can squeeze people/families dry to make sure that their Son/Daughter isn't given the Death Sentence of joining the crusades. The advantage to the Vizier is more long term. It provides a source of people who are instantly at odds with the Paladin-King (As they had to leave their life behind), which can make for useful allies later on. He does a few "Outreach" programs to the village/hamlet/remote location where the criminals are dumping off these draft dodgers, it provides a power base. Probably not people willing to take up the sword, as they did Run after all. But people who might serve as a source of income, trading with the Vizier personally for the supplies they need, and adding to his warchest for when he seeks to strike out against the Paladin King.

[nakedonmyfoldin]

I like that idea Arcturus, but I might bend it just a wee bit so my PCs don't look at me and say, "Hunger Games? really?"

[Slipperychicken]

If the king is a Paladin, that means he's most likely outlawed all kinds of stuff which people will pay money for. Things like poison, drugs of all kinds, whores, [Evil] spells, evil components like black onyx, unholy texts/religious icons, necromancy, sale of fresh bodies, and the list goes on. There are also services like intimidation, murder, and money laundering.

The criminals make their living by getting these things to paying customers, and the advisor looks the other way in exchange for a piece of the action.

[maxriderules]

If the vizier isn't evil, it could be for the greater good. There are criminals, but mostly if you pay their fees they'll leave you alone, and they crack down on unlicensed thieves. Which I've just realized is a complete rip from Discworld.

[nakedonmyfoldin]

If the king is a Paladin, that means he's most likely outlawed all kinds of stuff which people will pay money for. Things like poison, drugs of all kinds, whores, [Evil] spells, evil components like black onyx, unholy texts/religious icons, necromancy, sale of fresh bodies, and the list goes on. There are also services like intimidation, murder, and money laundering.

The criminals make their living by getting these things to paying customers, and the advisor looks the other way in exchange for a piece of the action.

This is a good thought that never even came to mind. I've been considering the city under the rule of the advisor, but the laws in place will be largely of the paladin's weaving. So the laws are there thanks to the paladin, but thanks to the cooperation between the advisor and the criminals, the laws don't feel like they're there.

[Barstro]

The idea that first comes to my mind is the intrigue that I liked that most people hated about the most hated prequels; controlling both sides of a conflict.

In the thieve's guild / ruler role, it can be as simple as keeping taxes high and controlling the populace.

In a closed system, the free market would have a price for items that is set by the invisible hand of supply vs. demand. I'm not going to look up prices, so let's just say that a bushel of apples costs 5 gp. A farmer might sell those at the gate to a middleman for 4 gp so that the farmer doesn't have to spend his time at a stall selling them. But, if a decent group of thieves are working, there is a risk that bushels will be stolen, so the middleman might not offer 4 gp. In fact, theft might be so high that in order to make a profit, the middleman could only afford to pay 2 gp to the farmer. In essence, thieves are causing 3 gp of waste per bushel.

Enter the city guard! For a mere 1 gp per bushel, they will keep them safe and guarantee no thieves. The farmer thinks this is great because he now gets 3 gp per bushel. The middleman likes it because there is no fluctuating loss. He pays a total of 4 gp per bushel (3 to farmer, one to guard through tax).

But the catch is that the guard added no value. If there were no thieves, there would be no reason to pay for guards. As long as the government allows the thieves to sort of exist, people will pay for guards. For every ten thieves, the government probably needs five guards. This is a lot of extra employed people. The guard looks stronger to outside people, so the locality is less likely to be attacked by an outside force. The otherwise unemployed guard are busy "guarding", so they stay out of trouble. The peasants are the ones who get less for their work, so they need to work harder to keep ends meet and don't have time to "rise up" or whatever it is peasants do. All this at the price of having a thieve's guild that the government can monitor to make sure they don't do anything too crazy.

But, if someone comes in to get rid of the guild, there will be no need for the guard. Those guardsmen that were let go will at best become drunkards. Most likely, they'll become thugs that harass the peasants, and we are back to square one.

Well, that sounds more like a rant on current politics than it does on a fun game. Just go with Slipperychicken's idea.:smallwink:

[DeltaEmil]

Why not simply increase the taxes and have the adviser make the Cloaked Daggers the official tax-collectors? Making the Cloaked Daggers quasi-Sheriffs of Nottingham allows the adviser to shift the blame on them if the populace complains about the increased taxes.

Or turn the Cloaked Daggers into the official state's security service.

[Honest Tiefling]

Maybe the Cloaked Daggers aren't really all that bad? With King Paladin's Crusading, there isn't any gold to I don't know, help with that flood or crop failure. And now the goddess of Wealth and Merchants is pissed. She may not be good aligned, but she won't be exactly banned, either.

The Advisior may have worshiped her earlier, but became devout when she promised him that he would eat more then gruel (Gotta eat like the common folks, says the paladin king) and would have more power, if not totally usurp the real king.

The Cloaked Daggers are spies and other sorts working for the goddess of trade. Their job is to find discontent and report it back, or perhaps even go as far as to take wealth from the unworthy (Perhaps during the reign of the paladin, neutral gods such as she did not get as much worship or offerings?) to solve issues around town. (Such as the payment of the guards, repairing roads, paying the fire brigade...)

He wants power, and the ability to buy something for once rather then living like a pauper. The goddess wants worship and respect.

[Red Fel]

A lot of posters are assuming that the Guy In Charge is somehow corrupt, or complicit in the conduct of the criminal organization, in order for the two to coexist. But consider the intersection between a Lawful Good (or Lawful Neutral) ruler and a Lawful Evil criminal organization.

The first thing any sophisticated criminal syndicate will do is precisely what any sophisticated business will do without external market controls - seek monopoly power. A LE criminal organization will seek to take over, eliminate, or otherwise drive away any other criminal activity. (I think an earlier poster mentioned this.)

Consider the simplest of all organized crime scams: the Protection Racket. Also known as "Oops Insurance," this is the typical scam where the organization charges local business owners or residents a "fee" or "tax" in exchange for ensuring that "nothing unfortunate should happen." Well, what happens if a rival gang comes to town and starts wrecking havoc? The pigeons stop paying, that's what happens! So, naturally, the organization will take over and drive out all rival criminal activity, to ensure its stranglehold.

With all criminal activity coming from a single source, investigations and prosecutions become radically simplified. Whenever a law is broken, more than simple petty theft or mild vandalism, the authorities know exactly where to start. It becomes almost farcical; a crime is committed, the guards go to the kingpin's villa, he disclaims any knowledge, the guards shake his men down, eventually some low-ranking mook on the totem pole is "inspired" to "come clean" about the crime. Life goes on, and the dance repeats.

For the pragmatic ruler, this is in some ways a blessing. A city with rival gangs, with multiple factions engaging in crimes and turf wars, is chaos. But when you have a single criminal entity, policing itself to keep the authorities at bay, crime remains highly manageable, and the suspect list is mercifully low.

There doesn't need to be any complicity between ruler and kingpin. It becomes an almost symbiotic relationship on its own. The organization continues to thrive, and in exchange it polices its own ranks, keeping chaos in town to a minimum and crime at a manageable level. It simply becomes an understood part of society, a shadow government, a separate house of parliament. Welcome to the Syndicate; the Low Court is now in session.

[ArcturusV]

I like that idea Arcturus, but I might bend it just a wee bit so my PCs don't look at me and say, "Hunger Games? really?"

One of these days I'm actually going to have to read that so I can see what all the hoopla is about....

[nakedonmyfoldin]

You're not missing much

[JusticeZero]

when you have a single criminal entity, policing itself to keep the authorities at bay, crime remains highly manageable, and the suspect list is mercifully low.
The main thing that prevents this from happening in real life is because of the ways that those gangs are formed and the way that career advancement happens in them.

First, the formation. It is rare that a city of significant size will have just one criminal syndicate.

You're a half-orc moving into the city of Glaefield, fleeing bad fortune. You wander around Glaefield, and discover that while most people in the city dislike you and won't give you the time of day, let alone a job, if you go to Midtown, there used to be a blacksmith once upon a time who hired a lot of half-orcs in his smithy. He's long since dead, but lots of half-orcs live in Midtown to this day, and you move in next to another half-orc family. They're friendly to you, you get along with them, you have a half-orc butcher and a half-orc baker there and as long as you stay in Midtown, you have friends and people to fall back on. Of course, Midtown is also marked by crushing poverty. So there are some half-orc ladies who can kind've 'pass' selling their charms on the street. You can't find any work, because none of the local half-orcish businesses has enough trade coming from outside of Midtown to do more than keep themself in business. Then one of the younger half-orcs down the street comes to you and says, "Look, I know you're struggling. I'm selling Ooze Powder and Mephit Dust to the rich dandies down the street. It's decent money, and it's a growth industry, and we're all halfies here. Sure, it's a little bit illegal, but how often does the Guard ever come down this way anyhow?" You have just joined the Midtown crime syndicate.

Meanwhile, down in the Harbor View neighborhood, there are a bunch of Warforged, just out of a job because of a new law intended as a non-competition regulation to preserve jobs for the richer human workers. Tempers are high right now because of the labor disputes, and they're all broke. They all cluster in Harbor View, because they used to be working shipping before the humans took it over. There's Warforged cobblers and crafters around. One day, one of them goes around saying, "Hey, these humans will pay good gold for stuff like Ooze Powder and Devil Flower Extract. I need more of us metalboys to spread the sales network before those disgusting pigfaces start coming into our neighborhood." You now have two crime syndicates in town.

You're working your corner in Midtown, but you've been working awhile and you want to move up. But things are quiet. There's nothing much happening. But wait! If one of those metalboys gets chopped up, they'll be MAD. Now this ordinarily would be pretty dumb. Except that you know that the only way you're going to get promoted is on the battlefield. So when you see a Warforged wandering along down the street a ways selling, you grab your crossbow. Twang!

This is what we've waiting for, This is it boys, this is war, The Ganglord is on the line.. Everyone's a dragon slayer, everyone's an Aragorn..

One year later, and you have rocketed up the ranks. You're living high. As for the people in the city, they've been hunkering down under the wave of gang violence, and the lord of the city has had to ratchet up crime prevention in response to public pressure. Back in harbor View, the Warforged gang is still in place - every bit of violence has rallied more troops to their cause, and it's not as if the half-orcs are able to siege your side of town.. so nothing has really changed. Things have mellowed out... for the moment..

..though there's stories about a bunch of uppity halflings settling in the Northside after some crop failures that people are angry about for taking their jobs, and some people have started buying Devil Flower from them...

In short, you will rarely have ONE single crime organization, because of the very nature of how they form and the tactical limits of illegal urban warfare; you will rarely see a permanent state of peace because of the way that you gain rank in the organization, and you will never purge the city of criminal organizations because they fill a role in the community. However, when they aren't feuding, they are both supporting the community and preventing violence.

On the movie "City of Gold" is a documentary track that talks about the gangs in Brazil; in their poor parts of town, they keep crime down, and are involved in the community to the extent that they act as a free health care network for the poor residents - slum residents were being given deliveries of free medicine as needed from the gangs in return for cooperation. They're filling an important role in the community, that exists because of the community's marginal status and which is paid for by a variety of illegal activities which often doesn't succeed in not disrupting the functioning of the neighborhood, even in peacetime.

[Red Fel]

An excellent study of gang warfare. *Snip.*

I agree with your analysis of gang warfare. It's an excellent description.

But suppose instead we assume something a little more... "Family"-oriented. Let's pretend for a moment that a faction of Drow has lived in the city for years (because I need a race that's evil and manipulative for this example, shush, I'm not good at memorizing races). The matriarch of the family lives in a lavish estate in one of the more suburban areas. Her family and close friends live in the adjacent homes in a massive cul-de-sac, approachable from only one direction.

Her family came to this city years ago. They started, as your Half-Orc and Warforged did, in slum areas, on streets and discriminated against. But they weren't satisfied by the whole "take what jobs you can get, even the mildly illegal ones" angle. So they built up. They presented a respectable face, even while doing illegal work. More than that, they developed a special craftsmanship - let's say carpentry. Let's say that this Drow family, and those of their "distant kinsmen" who arrived later from the Underdark - were gifted in crafting truly exquisite homes, down to the last ridge of crown molding. Their services became irreplaceable; they became a key industry in the city.

Also, it helped that building homes was a great way to dispose of bodies.

In time, this matriarch's grandmother built a sizeable home-building empire, so substantial that the city grudgingly acknowledged them as proper citizens. After that, they were everywhere- the marketplace, the fancy parties and events, one or two even graced the ruler's court.

Despite the growth of their "legitimate" face, they remembered their origins. They watched out for their own. They held grudges. And they kept a stranglehold on their businesses. One of which, in addition to architecture, was the "protection rackets" of the slum areas. Another was the trade of illicit goods from the Underdark. Still another was the disposal of "undesirable" persons on their latest building project.

Naturally, to deflect suspicion and to keep their stranglehold, they keep crime - including but not limited to their own - down to a minimum. After all, the warzone of gang warfare you described is the exact opposite of what they want. They want a happy city, full of wealthy, comfortable buyers, who don't ask questions and who don't launch massive investigations.

That's how you do a single-entity syndicate. With an entrenched power determined to keep other parties out.

And remember one more thing. You mentioned that:

The main thing that prevents this from happening in real life is because of the ways that those gangs are formed and the way that career advancement happens in them.

There are no Drow, Half-Orcs or Warforged in real life. Rule Zero is the ultimate trump. If the GM says there's half-orc gang warfare, or a Drow mafia, or a creepy snake cult that creates gangs every other month just to watch them kill each other for kicks and giggles, there is.

[Jack_Simth]

There are no Drow, Half-Orcs or Warforged in real life.No. But there are arbitrary dividing lines that are just as easily visible that have similar effects under similar circumstances.

[Malroth]

its sad that mentioning a military draft brought more mention of Hunger games than Vieitnam

[Bhaakon]

its sad that mentioning a military draft brought more mention of Hunger games than Vieitnam

I'd say it's happy, because it means the last example of the draft in use is fading from living memory. About 2/3rds of the population wasn't even alive in 1973.

[ArcturusV]

Well, depends on how you look at it. People not having a sense of history isn't exactly a good thing either.

Though I wasn't thinking of that book when I suggested it. All I really know about Hunger Games: "People went ape**** over it" "They made a movie". That's about the sum of my knowledge about it. :smallbiggrin:

More On Topic:

What about the "criminal empire" not really being criminals at all? At least not at the deepest levels. What if the criminal empire that has recently arose in the city isn't some naturally occurring phenomenon, but a paramilitary sort of group. Mercenaries hired by the Vizier to overthrow the King at the right moment, infiltrating the city at every level? Maybe they aren't fully under his control. Maybe the leaders of the "criminal organization" are playing three sides. Supposedly working for the Vizier, supposedly working for someone else (Foreign power) and some who realized that basically they are making more money, hand over fist, doing their criminal racket, with less bloodshed then they would fighting for a living so are trying to make an "honest" career criminal out of a cover story?

I kinda like this idea, because it's something that's a fairly stable idea... that can easily boil over and go into a full meltdown whenever the plot requires. Serving three purposes is just asking for trouble, and can make some interesting little quests for heroes. But there's not much call for it to meltdown until either heroes push at it, or your plot demands that one of the sides tries to cash in that chip.

[Treblain]

This might be a little distant from a standard criminal organization, but what if the criminal element illegally creates flesh golems that they sell as cheap labor to shady businesses? The advisor protects them from the laws against evil magic and provides them with 'raw materials' from condemned criminals so they can run their business without needing to 'vanish' noticeable amounts of people, and they give him the money he needs and his own hit squad of elite Franken-assassins you can throw at the players. Undead would work, too.

The players can realize the advisor is involved when body parts from criminals they put in prison on previous adventures start showing up on stitched-together monstrosities. "Hey, didn't that guy we fought two weeks ago have that same scar on his right arm?"