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Skijarama
2019-12-24, 04:17 PM
Hey, there. I was wondering if anyone had any sage advice on how to tell a story and run a questline where the main antagonist is an organized criminal sect? See, my players are going through a quest to resolve lingering threads from the backstory of the Dark Knight of the party, and this requires they head back to his home city to seek vengeance on an organized crime family. However, I have basically no idea how something like that would be organized or arranged. If anyone has any tips on how a crime family/mafia would be organized in a big city, or, alternatively, any good material I can watch/read to give me some insight, that would be fantastic.

The system is FFD6, by the way, in case that helps anyone formulate their ideas.

Grek
2019-12-24, 04:47 PM
All successful large organizations, from militaries to churches to feudal governments to the Mafia, follow the same basic structure: there's a Boss (the Don), the Boss's Heir (the Don's kid), the Boss's Advisor (the Consigilere), the Lieutenants (Capos in the Mafia), the Sargeants (Made Men in the Mafia), and the grunts (Associates).

Every big city is going to have its own Boss, who will have a Capo in charge of each of the family businesses. One of them does the money laundering, one of them does the protection racket, one of them runs the gambling places, one pimps, one brings in the drugs, etc. Below the Capos are the Made Men - people who are 'in' the family and do street level stuff. The guy who is in charge of specific illegal casino, or who goes around asking about the protection money on a particular neighborhood. Then below each Made Man is a posse of thugs who stand on the street corners with the drugs or come break a shopkeeper's knees if he doesn't pay up.

comicshorse
2019-12-24, 04:51 PM
Hey, there. I was wondering if anyone had any sage advice on how to tell a story and run a questline where the main antagonist is an organized criminal sect? See, my players are going through a quest to resolve lingering threads from the backstory of the Dark Knight of the party, and this requires they head back to his home city to seek vengeance on an organized crime family. However, I have basically no idea how something like that would be organized or arranged. If anyone has any tips on how a crime family/mafia would be organized in a big city, or, alternatively, any good material I can watch/read to give me some insight, that would be fantastic.

The system is FFD6, by the way, in case that helps anyone formulate their ideas.

Most criminal groups tend to have the same kind of structure :

At the very top is the Boss/Don/Oyabun/Mountain Master

Below him will be his advisor (Consigliere) and his second-in-command (Underboss)

Below then will be the individual captains (Caporegime).

Each of these will have their own trusted crew of crooks (Soldiers)

Below then will be various low-lifes and petty crooks that associate with each Captain for odd or minor jobs below the soldiers dignity. Some of these will be hungry to be 'Made' (become part of the gang) and will view nosy PC's as just the thing to show their boss that they have the stuff to rise up the ranks

For ease its probably best to have each Captain control a different racket(s). And pay up a tithe of their profits to the Don.

Its highly probable that the Don doesn't directly commit any crimes himself and will keep his men in line through terror. The PC's may find it easy to find out who he is but much harder to arrest him.
If he's smart he'll have the local Watch (or at least part of it) on the payroll so just attacking him will get the PCs being the ones hunted by the local law. He should, of course, have high level bodyguards and the protection of the local God of Thieves. (Or be the Gods High Priest if you're feeling nasty)

You could try watching 'Goodfella's' it will probably give you some ideas and is a great movie anyway

Azuresun
2019-12-24, 05:32 PM
Hey, there. I was wondering if anyone had any sage advice on how to tell a story and run a questline where the main antagonist is an organized criminal sect? See, my players are going through a quest to resolve lingering threads from the backstory of the Dark Knight of the party, and this requires they head back to his home city to seek vengeance on an organized crime family. However, I have basically no idea how something like that would be organized or arranged. If anyone has any tips on how a crime family/mafia would be organized in a big city, or, alternatively, any good material I can watch/read to give me some insight, that would be fantastic.

The system is FFD6, by the way, in case that helps anyone formulate their ideas.

Hmm, I think the big thing is to decide where their influence lies. Do they have alliances with people in power? Maybe certain influential people ally with the crime family as a way of getting dirty work done, or maybe the family have enough power to be counted AS the people in power, and have at least some influence in formal politics alongside their criminal activities. Maybe even good people see them as a necessary evil, who at least impose some order on the criminal underworld and who stop it from devolving into chaos.

Or maybe their influence lies more at a grass-roots level, where they're associated with a certain cultural group or race in the region. They paint themselves as champions of the underdog, who can get justice done where the official system doesn't care--the opening parts of The Godfather are a good example. The reality is likely to be a bit less romantic, of course.

Also, what's the power structure within the family? It's not likely to be stable at the best of times, given the high stakes and the ruthlessness that someone needs to rise to power. Even if threatening the greater interests of the family is taboo, there's still a lot of room for vicious succession wars or ambitious members seeking to rise in power and remove rivals. It could be an opening for the PC's to drive wedges between the leaders, or maybe one of the bosses strikes a deal with them to take out one of his rivals.

Crime syndicates usually operate in a cellular structure, where one segment getting busted doesn't affect the overall organisation, and the leaders stay a long way from doing anything obviously illegal themselves (they have people for that). They pass a message to someone who passes a message to someone, and then the people doing the actual crimes have no idea about what the big picture even is--they got an order, end of story and if it goes wrong, you can't implicate someone who never interacted with you. Loyalty is prized, and it's likely that each high-ranking member will have a collection of lieutenants who have proven they can be trusted (and who will also make great mini-bosses, with interesting stories about why they're so loyal).

The hard part is likely going to be even getting to the leaders. If you go through official channels, favours will be called in from crooked police and politicians to make things as difficult as possible and for those who can't take a hint, an anonymous "accident" can always be arranged. If the PC's go vigilante, then that influence is likely to bring hired killers down on them, along with official pressure to get rid of these dangerous outlaws who are attacking respectable citizens. In either case....you can't entirely trust anyone you talk to, and there may well be a sense of paranoia. That guy at the bar who keeps peering in your direction, is he going to pass on information about your whereabouts? That friendly shopkeeper who you get on great with...turns out she owes a favour to the family, and she's leading you into a trap.

For reading / viewing material, I'd recommend The Godfather, as mentioned above, and the Daredevil storyline Born Again. I'm sure people who are more into crime than me can suggest more. :smallwink:

KineticDiplomat
2019-12-24, 05:34 PM
A lot of this come down to how your world has the mafia. The Max Payne version of the Mob are way different than The Godfather version, and both are different from real life. Any idea what your starting point is?

Skijarama
2019-12-24, 05:45 PM
A lot of this come down to how your world has the mafia. The Max Payne version of the Mob are way different than The Godfather version, and both are different from real life. Any idea what your starting point is?

We left it kind of vague when writing up the character's background. The crime syndicate, in general, is mostly based in one specific city but does have a limited degree of influence all across the continent. From how I've handled it so far this is mostly by hiring mercenary groups to act as their hand in distant affairs. An example would be poaching a bunch of animals from a forest many weeks of travel to the north for a third organization that wanted to run experiments on them. So my starting point is that they are based in one city, and I know who the boss is.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-24, 06:09 PM
well, there is a difference between organized crime and mafia.
A band of thugs keeping a city hostage with force is organized crime. mafia, on the other hand, entails political power. it means that the boss is someone in charge, or he controls the people in charge. that he has a vast support network. and that he has the complicity of a large portion of the population.

So, the most straightforward way to present a mafia is to send a bunch of mooks to ambush the party. the mafia does that in the real world. but this is not the real world; a high level party cannot be killed with a bomb or some gunfire. furthermore, that's what the band of thugs would do. the mafia can get more sofisticated.

So, let's assume that i am the boss, and the party comes into the city, and they are high level enough that i cannot just have them assassinated by a hit squad. since i control the territory, i know immeidately that they are there and what they want. someone will recognize the dark knight of the party, or someone may recognize the party, and the information will come to me. Now I have many options.

- I can try to sacrifice some low-level mook in the hope that the party will be satisfied and will leave. take the guy who killed the character's family, send him to try to kill the party, hope that the party will be happy with that. If i am not responsible for the death (say, i took over from the previous boss who ordered the killings) I may well present myself to the party, apologize profusely, claim that my organization brings order and stability, keeps crime to a minumum and give jobs to the poor, and that assassinating people has been a mistake of the previous boss who already paid for it.
- I can just lay low. hide, have everyone else important hide, and hope the party will get tired eventually.
- i can dangle plot hooks far away in the hope that the party will move on.

all those are in the event that the mafia does not want to fight, which should be the primary option. you do not run a successful mafia through violence; if you use too much violence, people are going to rebel. one of the major strenghts of the mafia is that it can present itself as a reasonable alternative, a necessary evil. people must fear the mafia, but they must also feel protected by it. they can do that only as long as they use violence sparingly, and only against what can be presented as "acceptable targets".

now, if avoiding confrontation is not an option, the mafia will want to isolate the party and bring the whole of society against it. frame them for some crime if possible. With most adventuring parties, framing is not even necessary; just wait until they are willing to take their investigations aggressively, then call in the guards. Let's see how those good-aligned shmucks fight against some innocent guards who think they are arresting genuine criminals. And if they fight against the guards, of course, you can appeal to the king, or some other higher power.
Have the common people angry at the party. Have the supposed innocents they are trying to protect make clear that they are not wanted. Have the people laud your virtues, how you fed the poor, how you built homes for the people, how you provide jobs (if you have done your job as boss, you should have done all that, to ensure the help of the population; your trafficking is keeping the population poor, but by throwing them the crumbs you can ensure their complicity), and how those adventurers are just stirring up trouble. if the party has killed some mobsters during a confrontation, bring in widows and orphans of those mobsters the party so callously killed.
perhaps the scariest thing about the mafia is the way it can warp the conscience, until the point where the oppressed people are actively fighting for it.

finally, since you cannot just take them in a confrontation, use indirect ways. have their food poisoned, have a sniper throw a few poisoned arrows from hiding before escaping. try to slit their throat while they sleep. lure them to investigate a basement, then collapse the house on them. have their horses stolen, have kids throw stones at them, everything to weaken their resolve.
have the common people ask their help to fight some monster in the countryside. hope that the monster will dispatch the party (perhaps you brought the monster and set the whole thing up in the first place). If the party survives the monster, maybe ambush them while they are weakened. And if the party survives the ambush too, give a generous donation to the families of your deceased mooks and tell them their husbands and fathers died to protect them and the safety of their lives.

I had a mafia boss in my campaign. Among other things, he encouraged the party to come to war against an enemy, then sold informations about their wereabouts, twice causing them to fall into traps they barely escaped. he hired them to slay some exotic monster and bring the head as a trophy, then leaked informations to their enemies too, so they could set up an ambush. he persuaded the most skilled assassin ever to come out of retirement to hunt the party. all the while the party didn't even knew it was him who was causing them all those troubles.
and in the end, when an even greater villain arose, he jumped the fence and helped the party in exchange for amnisty for previous crimes. he managed to end the campaign in good terms with the pcs, with most of his power still intact (basically, he had to promise he'd stop doing crime, but he had enough money that he smoothly transitioned to pseudo-honest entrepreneur). my most successful villain ever.

Skijarama
2019-12-24, 06:33 PM
Aaah, I see. Then this would probably be more of an 'organized crime' situation than a 'mafia' one, going by that definition.

Pleh
2019-12-24, 07:58 PM
I made a rule with factions in my game: you can't just cut off the head and expect the faction to crumble. You have to work fairly hard to dismantle a faction to truly break its power base. Storming the tower and killing the boss just creates a power vacuum. The faction pauses to restructure, then comes back to destroy those responsible with extreme prejudice (and awareness of their tactics and abilities).

KineticDiplomat
2019-12-25, 01:11 AM
Well, in the fairly generic then:

Organized crime in places where the government is strong typically works within the system rather than replacing it. They work more off a network of guys willing to look the other way, do a mildly illegal thing, or operate an illegal enterprise, all with a touch of violent coercion thrown in than they do a “thief army”. The same legal protections that prevent you from murdering randos in the street or burning down warehouses protect them from being murdered in the street or having their places of business burnt down.

As such, a syndicate is going to look a lot less like “final boss dungeon with layers of increasingly elite mooks” than it is a dispersed network of various functions who answer to a semi-rigid hierarchy. A large part of that is because of you sit around with thirty armed guards and no social permission to do so, the government tends to think you’re in their game - and that’s the end of that. This can be hard to RPG because the combat is, for most heroic-type systems, lackluster. The legwork is enormous; another area many heroic fantasy RPGs don’t focus on.

A good middle ground between “I want some choppy vengeance of combat goodness” and “I want this to look like real organized crime” is to design a few key nodes in the network that your players will have to dismantle, but then make those nodes tougher fights. A few examples:

-The money men.
-A couple local big time fences.
-The corrupt Guard Captain.
-A particularly violently inclined lieutenant.

You may also want to add the RPG staple or the Cool Assassin. The real world doesn’t have these in the criminal; murdering defenseless people by surprise is more a matter of will than skill, and the key survival skill isn’t being a navy SEAL or perfecting your knife work. Its being able to get away with the hit. And you don’t need to dance with shadows to wait in an alley to stab a drunk coming out of a bar. But it is certainly a staple of the genre.

Kaptin Keen
2019-12-25, 05:42 AM
All successful large organizations, from militaries to churches to feudal governments to the Mafia, follow the same basic structure: there's a Boss (the Don), the Boss's Heir (the Don's kid), the Boss's Advisor (the Consigilere), the Lieutenants (Capos in the Mafia), the Sargeants (Made Men in the Mafia), and the grunts (Associates).

Every big city is going to have its own Boss, who will have a Capo in charge of each of the family businesses. One of them does the money laundering, one of them does the protection racket, one of them runs the gambling places, one pimps, one brings in the drugs, etc. Below the Capos are the Made Men - people who are 'in' the family and do street level stuff. The guy who is in charge of specific illegal casino, or who goes around asking about the protection money on a particular neighborhood. Then below each Made Man is a posse of thugs who stand on the street corners with the drugs or come break a shopkeeper's knees if he doesn't pay up.

This. I just want to add that mafias are wonderfully 'tall' organisations. The thug or dealer on the street doesn't need to know anything of consequence, he just knows who gives the orders, sells him the wares, and so on. So to unravel such an organisation isn't something that can be done by going straight to the dragons lair - no one knows who the king pin really is.

NichG
2019-12-25, 07:18 AM
For this kind of opposition, the threat they pose isn't violence or lethal force, it's that they can make it difficult to get other primary goals done if you act in opposition to them. Blackmail, owning social connections and pressures that can be used to force society to react, etc are the real threats.

So if it comes down to squads of goons facing off against the PCs in the streets, it's kind of missing the essence of things. Rather it could be more like, the PCs take out a bigwig and suddenly their friends are getting evicted, the businesses they frequent are having their stocks ruined, the guards plant evidence framing the PCs for crimes, the noble patron they've been working for ends up with a bunch of debts called in suddenly, etc. They're not an enemy that should try to fight fair.

But, before running that kind of thing, I'd make sure the PCs have viable ways of operating in that space, or it will just be frustrating. I'd also make it somewhat clear what kinds of things it would take to kill such an organization (e.g. what does it depend on to live) before getting to this kind of attack.

GloatingSwine
2019-12-25, 08:08 AM
Someone did the RICO?

The big strength of organised crime in the real is that all the people at the top are airgapped from the illegal stuff.

Everyone knows who the Don is but the law can’t directly pin anything on him.

But players might not feel constrained by that especially if they’re choosing classes like “Dark Knight”.

So the problem you have to solve is how do you stop the players going through the organisation like a pack of fantasy John Wicks.

Or just plan for that and write the adventure as a crash smashy action bonanza.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-25, 09:20 AM
This. I just want to add that mafias are wonderfully 'tall' organisations. The thug or dealer on the street doesn't need to know anything of consequence, he just knows who gives the orders, sells him the wares, and so on. So to unravel such an organisation isn't something that can be done by going straight to the dragons lair - no one knows who the king pin really is.


Someone did the RICO?

The big strength of organised crime in the real is that all the people at the top are airgapped from the illegal stuff.

Everyone knows who the Don is but the law can’t directly pin anything on him.


those posts are contradicting each other, but they are both perfectly legitimate models to run a mafia. both have real world counterparts, which i won't get into details because of forum rules.
I'll add even a third shade, where everyone knows who the boss is, but the forces of the law cannot find him. perhaps he's in the middle of the local market talking to people, getting gifts, granting favors, but as soon as the police comes within ten kilometers someone will warn him and he will bolt.

which of the those models you apply depends a lot on the tone you want for the campaign. if everyone knows who the boss is but nobody will take action, then it's likely the party will just attack and devolve it into combat. if there is some shady figure pulling strings from the shadows, then the campaign will involve politics. and if you use the third model, it will likely bring up an investigation.

a_flemish_guy
2020-01-04, 01:38 PM
another 2 scenarios that might make it dificult for that party to extinguish the mafia

1): the maffia makes local rule easier: the local authorities have made a deal with the upper echelons for control, sure they extort and rob local businesses but anyone independant who thinks he can just rob people in alleyways is going to find himself on the wrong side of the canalwater soon enough

2) the maffia is locally grown: sure the maffia demands tithes but so does the duke and they see the maffia do more for them then the duke, this is the thieves guild variant, you can't stick your toe out in the dock before some local beggar has already allerted them to the kind of underwear you're wearing, also nobody knows anybody even remotely connected to the thieves guild, even if they managed to rebuild their house about 2 days after last month's fire

J-H
2020-01-05, 10:51 AM
Speaking of rebuilding after a fire - a powerful mafia is also going to have a charity arm. Maybe they run a soup kitchen, or an orphanage, or both. They're probably good sponsors of a local temple or two. They make the people in the community feel "protected" and "taken care of" in ways the Duke won't.

Roll 1d2 to see if any given charitable institution also has something unsavory down in the basement. Maybe one of the three soup kitchens is also a drug distribution point, or the orphanage has a two-track system where those who have potential (magic, brains, street toughness, etc.) get to be junior members - but the rest of the kids in the orphanage just get a normal experience that leaves them grateful to the orphanage and to their sponsors.... and thus willing to pass information along, look the other way, etc. as adults.

Synesthesy
2020-01-05, 04:27 PM
As a huge fan of Roberto Saviano's books (and local news too much often), I can make you one or two suggestion about it:

First, mafia is about treason. Inside mafia there is no loyalty at all. While there is a formally strict organization with a ruler and a pyramid of people, there is always a fight for the supremacy. Today the godfather is Mr X? Well, tomorrow he can be killed by new godfather mr Y.

Second, mafia is about money. There is only money. Everything is money. People are money. But actually money isn't enough, the real reason is about raw power. Just like Xykon. They said that to control is better than to make sex. This is why you can see billionaires living hidden in bunkers buried underground like rats living a miserable life. But money lead to respect, and both lead to power. So everything money = everything power.

This two points said that in your set you should put at least 3 things:

1) more then one group: even if they seems always one unite family, in reality there are always ambitious people wanting more power.
2) while the boss is well known in the city to everyone (the law is corrupted or too afraid to act against him), he is well hidden. And when your characters will finally come to the last "dungeon", the place where the boss is actually hidden should have a look a little anticlimatic. As even if he owns lots of beautiful houses, he still must live hidden in a dirty place.
3) If mafia exists, they have power. If they have power, they have a lot of money. Why do they have a lot of money? In reality it's drug dealing over everything else. In your fiction?

Rynjin
2020-01-05, 08:18 PM
Taking down a mafia or some other crime syndicate (like a Yakuza clan or family) is pretty much the same as taking out a government. A lot of their power lies in 3 things:

1.) Money
2.) Political power
3.) Manpower

Losing manpower sucks...but you can always refill your ranks. Killing the boss is a blow to the family, but a boss can be replaced; real crime syndicates will have infrastructure and hierarchies in place to weather storms like that, and while it may cripple the family for a little while, they'll bounce back (and often be honorbound to take revenge).

There's also factors to consider in that crime families are often going to be protected by the local government, through some tacit understanding. With some they may even be protected by the communities they're a part of, who see a benefit in keeping them around. In many cases just assaulting their base is going to leave the PCs at a disadvantage numerically, leave them unpopular and unwelcome in town, and on the run from the law.

The final layer is that the boss of a Final Fantasy mafia family is likely going to have a lot of PERSONAL power on top of that, as are his lieutenants.

This means taking down an entrenched crime family is likely to be a bit of a process, and should involve working with the local government to gather evidence to bring the family down. The family will likely be trying a series of things to prevent this:

1.) Giving you "gimmes" and hiding the really lucrative operations.
2.) Using the law to their advantage.
3.) Bribery and corruption.
4.) Hit squads...as a last resort.

Once you've worked your way through all of those things, I imagine a final boss fight with the boss statted as the class of your choice (Entertainer/Thief works pretty well) with his most trusted lieutenants is appropriate.

kyoryu
2020-01-06, 12:07 PM
Also, I'd point out that "Mafia" is a bad enemy. "The Don" or "this particular Capo" can be great enemies.

The Mafia or any other group is not a homogeneous, faceless group of people. It's made of individuals, all of which have their own agendas, which may be aligned with the overall organizational agendas (aka the agenda of the leader) to some extent.

Synesthesy
2020-01-06, 03:41 PM
Also, I'd point out that "Mafia" is a bad enemy. "The Don" or "this particular Capo" can be great enemies.

The Mafia or any other group is not a homogeneous, faceless group of people. It's made of individuals, all of which have their own agendas, which may be aligned with the overall organizational agendas (aka the agenda of the leader) to some extent.

Yes I agree.
But more then generic "mafia" (that actually do not exists: every mafia group has a particular name and unique traits), and more then a specific man, often mafia is defined by his geographical setting. For example, Cosa Nostra is Sicilian (and New York), while Camorra is Naples. So you have the group set in your city/region, and then you have specific families that are actually the enemies of your protagonists.
Family are often named after the surname of the boss (as the "Clan Savastano" from Gomorra) or after the place where they live, or after something else that happened to them (l'Alleanza, again from Gomorra, is an Alliance of different groups wanting to create some sort of mafian democracy, the United States of Scampia and Secondigliano).

Beleriphon
2020-01-07, 01:01 PM
The Mafia is a very specific organized crime unit, at least when referring to type of organized crime that The Godfather and The Sopranos portray.

Michael Corleone is not Thomas Angelo (from the game Mafia). Thomas Angel is not O-Ren Ishii. O-Ren Ishii is not Winston Chu (of the video game Sleeping Dogs).

My suggestion is to take a look a Wikipedia article for the type of organized crime you want to model your organization after. In a lot of ways most organized crime syndicates follow the lines of feudal hierarchy more closely than actual feudal systems in the middle ages did. For example, the Corleone Family in The Godfather has The Don as the top boss, a few powerful men report directly to him, a few more men report to each of The Don's direct agents, and so on until we have street level thugs who either submit or die to the lowest level official members of the family.

Wikipedia has a good article about organized crime in general. It might help set up your structure, which you can then change to suit your fantasy milieu.

Wikipedia on Pre-nineteenth century organized crime. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organized_crime#Pre-nineteenth_century)