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.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1033884Prof. 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."
Oliver Twist LARPing gone wrong!
As mentioned, most of them, but Fates Worse Than Death is famous for it:).
"Lord Baller" - my new royal gangleader title
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I ran a long campaign set in Port Blacksand where the PCs were basically a gang, facing off against the other various gang forces of the city.
I might be cutting it fine, but my definition of a "gang" is one that holds literal physical territory either controlling actual streets and buildings or just handling the criminal proceeds from a certain area.
A roaming group of criminals I'd call a "crew". They may or may not hold a base or hideout and generally don't deal with street-level crime but are higher up the foodchain, being good/powerful enough to be professionals or members of an organized crime organization.
All adventuring groups aren't really gangs as we know them today, or even as they knew Magnus and his Pueri. Most of them aren't even remotely close. Almost all do map quite well against the concept of a crew though.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1033884In 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."
Knight was Saxon for "boy". Huscarl is literally "house man".
I'm running Blades in the Dark at the moment, so definitely.
In my Wild West campaign, the PCs are literally a gang. They've become known as the core of the Dodge City Gang, which began in Dodge city but then migrated to East Vegas and then Tombstone.
I played in a short game of the Iron Kingdoms RPG where we were a gang operating in Five Fingers. I loved the setting, but the mechanics drove me away.
Starting a another Mafia campaign tonight. These I usually keep short (like 6-8 sessions). Been a little while since I ran one, but online resources have improved dramatically since I last did so. We are pretty much just going to run it straight with the Patriarca Crime family (for which mafia wiki has a list of current administration, capos and even soldiers--good enough for a game at least). One thing I tend to do in these campaigns is bring in real world politicians (mostly local) and celebrities. But I take a lot of liberties with their vices and offscreen personalities. So the local governor, reps, mayors, etc usually end up being much more colorful.
Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1034474I'm running Blades in the Dark at the moment, so definitely.
I was part of a BitD campaign for a while. Absolutely loved the ambition of that product, sensational. Our group wasn't the best (logistics), the game definitely needs attention / buy-in.
I would have backed
Cartel (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marktruman/cartel-a-mexican-narcofiction-tabletop-roleplaying), but I'm trying to be good (financially) in 2018. :)
We played an entire Earthdawn campaign we called Earthdawn: Kratas Quest which was set completely in the Kratas:City of Thieves except for a few adventures. Our gang was called the Usurpers and we were out for compete control of Kratas. We started small in the slums and wiped out the main power in the slums then built up the area with our own base and a brothel to make money and worked our way into other areas of the city. We even killed the leader of the main faction, Garlthik, the One-Eye by allying with his enemy, the blood elf Vistrosh and a nethermancer from the Theran Empire before betraying them as well.
It's funny how many elements from gangster movies can end up appearing in a Wild West campaign.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1035761It's funny how many elements from gangster movies can end up appearing in a Wild West campaign.
The wild-west gunslinger lifestyle has a lot in common with the roots of society that produce gangsters. Consider the "wild-west" was mostly lawless and people had to make do. Banding together for mutual gain in the middle of nowhere makes doing bad things a lot more lucrative than trying to sell saddles or pan for gold. Robbing that payroll train seems mighty tempting!
I keep misreading the title of this thread.
I was in a GURPS Fantasy game where our group of mercenary PCs spent about two years of real world game sessions being one of the criminal gangs in a fantasy-roman city. It made for some fun game play.
I'm going to be running sometime in the next year or so a Shadowrun gang campaign, with a heavy influence from the criminal side of The Wire.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1035761It's funny how many elements from gangster movies can end up appearing in a Wild West campaign.
All of them except those that depend on technologies that weren't invented yet, I'd guess?
Quote from: AsenRG;1035868All of them except those that depend on technologies that weren't invented yet, I'd guess?
Pretty much, though it's not what you usually see in the western movies.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1036065Pretty much, though it's not what you usually see in the western movies.
I'm probably weird in that when I think about the Wild West, I don't think about movies. Spaghetti or not, Westerns are a genre, but not how things really were, IMO.
Instead, I'm thinking how Pinkerton, railroad workers, Indians getting pushed away, and outlaws with bounties on their heads would mix;).
Quote from: RPGPundit;1033629I 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?
It must have been around 2002. The players were Hobbits in a street gang in a mostly-human (above the ground, anyway) city in a Dwarf kingdom. They were doing a bit of mugging, some extortion and so forth. The campaign ended when most of them were killed or imprisoned but the gang still exists in the same city in my current campaign but it's all NPCS.
My Nine Pearls campaign runs intermittently since last fall. It involves a ninja clan but they actually serve the local Daimyo, doing things his Samurai wouldn't do. So gang is a stretch.
Quote from: AsenRG;1036123I'm probably weird in that when I think about the Wild West, I don't think about movies. Spaghetti or not, Westerns are a genre, but not how things really were, IMO.
Instead, I'm thinking how Pinkerton, railroad workers, Indians getting pushed away, and outlaws with bounties on their heads would mix;).
Well yes, actual wild-west history was strongly about 'gangs'.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1037019Well yes, actual wild-west history was strongly about 'gangs'.
Called "posses";)?
Had the first session for my Patriarca Family campaign (session two is tomorrow). Pretty much all the NPCs with a handful of exceptions were real people (or at least my fabricated idea of people based on their image on a company website or something). The downside to this is session online recaps haven't been easy, since we are using local dentists and community leaders. I also had all the players roll on tables to determine the details of blood relatives and people they know from growing up in the area. The session started out with them going to a strip club to take over the place from someone who owed the family money, and ended with them in a horrible car wreck on the highway after being chased by someone they were following (it turned out the guy had a lot more protection and skilled people detailing his security than they at first thought). Healing is pretty slow, and characters are squishy, so the PC driving the car ended up nearly dead and had to be taken away in an ambulance at the end of the session.
I did modern criminals with GURPS once. We were young and immature. It got ugly.
I also did "noble knights" in Westeros. We were mature then... but in some aspects the end was even uglier.
Also, western (after watching "Young Guns", although I liked the first movie better).
As I player, I had an evil necromecner and a modern mafisoso.
Also, FWIW I once argued that the "gang" is essentially what most PCs are in almost ANY D&D game...
http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com.br/search?q=gangs
"I also watched Vikings for a while. I eventually got bored, but I watched enough to realize the Vikings are exactly like the Sons of Anarchy (a 1%er biker gang) with better plot armor.
Think about it: they are both gangs of bigoted (or downright racist), arrogant armed thugs that have to fight other gangs and external threats to survive, get rich, pursue happiness etc. They are often very loyal to one another and respect their own peculiar codes, but despise higher laws and authorities. Most of their problems are solved with violence, deception, bribery, etc. But they also have to ally themselves with other gangs, even "enemy" gangs, because if they fight against everyone else at once they will be massacred (by other gangs or by the higher authority/external threat).
It doesn't matter if they are illiterate, violent or lazy; they are the heroes, because there are worse people out there, and at least they are brave and protect their own.
In short, they are the player characters."
I ran a GURPS Tredroy campaign some years back. The PCs didn't start out as members of any particular gang but they became entangled in the machinations of several gangs that operated in the city. They got involved in the war between the Irish gang and the Russian mob with some additional interactions with the Sahudese faction and Hashashin from Al Haz. It was a fun campaign of bluffing, diplomacy, double crossing and all out gang warfare. It was kind of like the fantasy version of Miller's Crossing.
Quote from: AsenRG;1037671Called "posses";)?
Well, the Posses were sometimes the people who went after the gangs. Though lawman corruption was also pretty endemic, so that's not always true.
BTW, I just found my actual plays for a campaign that was almost completely gang-based:).
http://aflashingbladeandpanache.blogspot.bg/search/label/Actual%20Play%20report+FWTD
Quote from: RPGPundit;1037883Well, the Posses were sometimes the people who went after the gangs. Though lawman corruption was also pretty endemic, so that's not always true.
From an RPG standpoint, I prefer to think of them as "a gang with law backing chasing another gang";).
It struck my players pretty strongly how surprisingly blurry the line was between Outlaw and Lawman. Some of the biggest historical figures of the Wild West went back and forth between those two designations with surprising ease.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1039099It struck my players pretty strongly how surprisingly blurry the line was between Outlaw and Lawman. Some of the biggest historical figures of the Wild West went back and forth between those two designations with surprising ease.
Wyatt Earp and Roy Bean come to mind.
A good example of this is Peaky Blinders as well. Sam Neil's character is every bit the gangster as Cillian Murphy's. Only he works for the government, the biggest and baddest gang of all.
Quote from: kosmos1214;1039492Wyatt Earp and Roy Bean come to mind.
Yup. One of those two is a major NPC of the campaign.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1040013Yup. One of those two is a major NPC of the campaign.
Which one the outlaw law man or the hanging judge?
Quote from: kosmos1214;1040287Which one the outlaw law man or the hanging judge?
Wyatt Earp. The PCs met him in Dodge City, and now in Tombstone.