I don't necessarily mean 1920s gangsters or modern day drug lords (though it could be those), but have you ever run a campaign where your PCs were part of (or the ringleaders of) a gang, either de jure or de facto?

One of my players is partial to gang themed plots. Ive done street urchins in an AD&D campaign, gangs and cults in Warhammer and biker gangs, street gangs, drug gangs in Shadowrun. I had some gang themes happening in Sorcerers of Ur Turuk also.

In my Mega-Sandbox one of the major cities was quite gang-infested before a authoritarian regime took over and cracked down on them city-wide. I had five gangs deeply woven into the machinations of city personalities and organisations.

My players ended up supporting one of these gangs, because they had some shared interests (one of them being the destruction of a child trafficking ring under the guise of a foster home lead by a rival gang).

After the regime change, the few members that were left went into the deep, dwarven underground and formed a rebel militia.

Very memorable stuff.

I do this a lot. Presently have PCs who are rising through the ranks of a criminal organization that is something of a shadow empire. Everyone in the group has a clear rank but you only move up when someone above you died, so they know where they stand and there is a certain amount of infighting. A lot of their early adventures involved smuggling and assasination.

Oddly enough its hardly ever come up. In fact I can not remember a single instance in any campaign I have DMed or played in. I think one ot two players had aspirations of forming a gang. But got sidetracked with other plans instead.

Yup, running one now.  The PCs are street kids with their own gang in Chicago of the Dresdenverse, using Gurps to run it.  Working out nicely.

All the time.

When I wrote a lot of the new Talislanta: Savage Lands races, I was considering their tribal lives being fantasy-gangbanging. All the hallmarks are there - you gotta prove your bonafides and hustle. The only differences is as a GM you set up the circumstances and conditions of how they operate. So big city gangs operate like urban tribes - but you have all the same stuff: marking territory, exploiting that territory (your hustles), you profit from and defend that territory - and when you need to expand, you go to war against the other gangs.

A gang is a great setup for a party. In a city-environs you need to decide what are the means by which a gang can reasonably make wealth?

It can get quite extensive because ultimately a gang is just the "citizens of the Underworld". Like traditional society, the larger the location the more organized and therefore specialized things get. Gangs do gruntwork. Those that steal need fences. Those fences need smugglers. Those smugglers need road-contacts (and protection). Someone has to run all this? Right? RIGHT? So which gang decides to unify all the gangs under their knife? Is this by section of the city? Each place can be its own crime-biome. Whole campaigns can revolve around that competition - and it spans legitimate enterprises and illegitimate alike. But for a low level party - it starts with a gang.

Yeah, I ran a homebrew that was sort of like this. It riffed off the whole Batman Knightfall/Bane movie urban metropolis quarantined trope. It was good, but got too heavy and disappeared into a grimdark gravity well after a half-dozen sessions.

I once wrote a Vampire: The Masquerade game set in 1980's Chicago that was focused on gangs.

The PC's were to be members of a People Nation gang, specifically either the Almighty Gaylords, Latin Kings, or Stoned Freaks.

Necromunda via Savage Worlds. Good stuff.

I almost feel like going meta with this and saying, "All adventuring groups are gangs," but I think that misses the spirit of the question.

My old DW party really got into trying to be the power behind the throne in their base city. If we had played long enough (I moved), they would've been into all sorts of things. One of them, a halfling, was on his way to cornering the market on the "weed trade."

Quote from: cranebump;1033765I almost feel like going meta with this and saying, "All adventuring groups are gangs," but I think that misses the spirit of the question.

My old DW party really got into trying to be the power behind the throne in their base city. If we had played long enough (I moved), they would've been into all sorts of things. One of them, a halfling, was on his way to cornering the market on the "weed trade."

You wouldn't be wrong here. Adventuring groups are pretty much gangs, regardless of the genre. You find a bunch of compatriots, you go around looking for means to make money. You invariably run into conflict. You tend to be willing to murder and commit violence to protect your in-group and your territory/objects of interest. Your goals tend to be power-acquisition oriented, even if you rationalize you're doing it for the "right reasons".

Westside Paladin's of Tyr, represent! foo.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1033723I once wrote a Vampire: The Masquerade game set in 1980's Chicago that was focused on gangs.

The PC's were to be members of a People Nation gang, specifically either the Almighty Gaylords, Latin Kings, or Stoned Freaks.

You read Blood In, Blood Out?

Also, what's the ethnic makeup of the group that would have been playing that campaign?

Quote from: tenbones;1033880You wouldn't be wrong here. Adventuring groups are pretty much gangs, regardless of the genre. You find a bunch of compatriots, you go around looking for means to make money. You invariably run into conflict. You tend to be willing to murder and commit violence to protect your in-group and your territory/objects of interest. Your goals tend to be power-acquisition oriented, even if you rationalize you're doing it for the "right reasons".

Westside Paladin's of Tyr, represent! foo.

Waukeen's Begrudgers ready to make change with 'yo ass! Sons of Cyric standing by to stick you in the Wailing Wall, son!

In the less settled areas in the early middle ages the line between "baron" and "gang leader" is an extremely thin one.

In the Merovingian period the word for "lord" was "Magnus," or "Big Man."  The word usually translated as "retainers" is "pueri," which means "boys."

Prof. B. Bachrach of the University of MN translated some sections of chronicles for us.  You would see things like "The Big Man and his boys came into town today and his boys beat up Odo the Blacksmith for not having the spears done yet."

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1033881You read Blood In, Blood Out?

Also, what's the ethnic makeup of the group that would have been playing that campaign?

I have not read that book yet, but my players are all white suburbanites such as myself.