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The Antagonist Brigades
Topic Started: Jul 26 2011, 01:46 AM (129 Views)
Anderson

Noir settings have traditionally tended to involve more than just your crime boss(es) and their underlings. Most obviously, Chinatown involved municipal corruption and so forth...but no organized crime per se (we'll leave arguments about what you call a corrupt government for another day). Likewise, a number of films involved rather "personal" enemies or somewhat isolated groups of troublemakers (The Maltese Falcon leaps to mind here, as does Double Indemnity). And a lot of films would throw in all sorts of elements (though more modern, L.A. Confidential throws all sorts of stuff into the pot).

So I think that fleshing out some of this side would make sense...you're not just going to have corrupt cops in this setting, but also corrupt officials (as well as clean ones and indifferent ones). You'll also have your business community, with all of the varied interests (and pointedly, generally not the all-powerful megacorporation, though there will be elements of that with some of the bigger businesses) in all sorts of grey shades.
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Outfoxd
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I personally like it if we work with some of the consequences and stuff involved in the worker's strikes and things like that. I think it's a little early historically, but we could have some more of the rumblings of it. Maybe an official owes somebody in management of one of the auto plant a favor, and that includes keeping worker salaries down. Not sure on specifics.
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Doghouse Reilly
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Somebody's always giving me guns.
There are all kinds of ways to be corrupt. Even everyday business can be used if necessary. Trash collection used to have huge ties to organized crime in some areas.

It can even be as simple as someone petty ripping you off.
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Anderson

Well, I think there's something different between "He sold me a $20 watch for $50!" (in the setting, at least, that would be an issue) and what you're talking about with union job padding and so forth (the garbage collection situation was usually like that: The Mob would get the contract given to a company, that company would have a Mob-aligned union which everyone was a member of (a "union shop"). The Mob would siphon profits off of the deal as well as a share of the union dues while the union would arrange for a bunch of do-nothing jobs to be on the books that could be sold or given out as favors.
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