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| Crime & The Neighborhood | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 19 2011, 09:58 AM (471 Views) | |
| Jonny | Jul 21 2011, 09:44 AM Post #11 |
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Loving these neighborhoods, both Story's and Arscapi's. Good work! Feel like most of the difference in opinion on the realism front can be pretty easily compromised, and if we nudge it towards Story's end a bit more then it falls well within artistic license. While it may be true that mob influence wasn't wholly cordoned off to specific areas and that some mob families did manage to successfully create a Robin Hood reputation for themselves, Arscapi's portrayal still feels a bit romanticized. By the 40's, mob families were already shaking people down pretty brutally and diverting millions in union money to their own coffers. It really depends on what direction we wanna go with the mob, what role we wanna have them play in the story. If there's no real room for an antagonistic mob presence, we can have them be pretty low-key and vaguely benign. But if we wanna have them play into the Blackcoat challenges, or just be a threatening presence in general, there's no reason we can't have sinister notices of extortion and made men flying off the handle, abusing their untouchable status. An explanation for a more active and dangerous mob could just be that the City's organized crime is a little younger and not as well-consolidated as it was in some other cities at this time period: people are still jockeying for power, and there's not a single unified rulership or a concord like the Five Families to "keep the peace". So who you're loyal to, who you're paying off, and who you look at funny can still be really dangerous. That said, I really do like the idea of Ferrara cultivating a bit of a Whitey Bulger image for himself. Foot soldiers handing out turkeys on Thanksgiving, respected members of the community coming to him (and/or his wife) for advice. Of course, he and his wife are still terrible people that order hits on anyone who gets in their way, but they're canny enough at managing their reputation that the people in the neighborhood aren't talking. |
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| Frozen Smoke | Jul 21 2011, 12:18 PM Post #12 |
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Well, I have few moments, so I'm going to have a crack at doing a bit of an overview on how the flabby, short arm of the law works in the city, starting with the East End; In the East End, Law is enforced in a very politcal manner, as the high ups try to balance their bribes with their public image. They do this by covering up leads that lead to Madame Mai's "Buisness", yet arrest the other small time crime rings that work in the territory, trying especially hard to take out the other prostitutes in the area, in response to the publics pressure on the subject. This area is also laden with scandal, or the potential thereof, as many of those same officers visit the area to "See the effects of their initiatives". I will write more areas and add to this when I can Edited by Frozen Smoke, Jul 21 2011, 12:20 PM.
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| CaseyNuge | Jul 25 2011, 12:27 AM Post #13 |
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Global Moderator
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I have a couple questions regarding the mafias and the way they're run. A huge part of mafia history involves the mafia doing favors for those in need, who would then be indebted into the mafia. This helps the mafia build up a reputation of kindness, which gives them more control in certain neighborhoods and such. The reason I ask this question is because my concept is turning to the underworld to help pay for medical bills. My thought was that she could approach the mafia for a favor, in which case she'd be indebted to the mafia in some way. However, I'm not sure that the mafia we're building are run on any of these concepts. These mafias seem to run entirely on fear. My only worry with this is that love is much more powerful than fear. People are more likely to stay loyal to someone who they trust than someone who they're afraid of, frankly. We can have fear-based crime lords, of course, but I think it's also logical to include some sort of respect that the lords have. They do kind things, help the "downtrodden"- for a price, of course- but they build up a reputation on both ends of the spectrum. They're feared by their enemies and loved by their supporters/friends. |
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| Little Boy | Jul 25 2011, 12:57 AM Post #14 |
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Casey, if it's a money problem, wouldn't that be going into more Loan Shark territory the Mob? I'm not sure, should probably watch The Sopranos.
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| Little Boy | Jul 25 2011, 01:00 AM Post #15 |
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"In the 1920s and 1930s, American prosecutors began to notice the emergence of a new breed of illegal lender that used violence to enforce debts. The new small lender laws had made it almost impossible to intimidate customers with a veneer of legality, and many customers were less vulnerable to shaming because they were either self-employed or already disreputable. Thus, violence was an important tool, though not their only one. These loan sharks operated more informally than salary lenders, which meant more discretion for the lender and less paperwork and bureaucracy for the customer. Violence was also better at extracting payments from high-risk customers that legal salary lenders wouldn't touch." D'oh, well, what do you know, here's an answer. It was the Mob. I need to rewatch the Godfather n' such. |
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| Doghouse Reilly | Jul 25 2011, 01:23 AM Post #16 |
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Somebody's always giving me guns.
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Both sides would be good, yeah. There are also lieutenants. Each mob boss could have a few people, the enforcer, the nice guy, that sort of stuff. They themselves would have to keep up at least a veneer of respectability. |
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3:51 AM Jul 11