06-30-2011, 03:40 PM | #1 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
Greetings, all!
I decided that in the setting I'm redesigning, I want one locale to be heavily affected by organized crime. And I don't mean the 'modern' young men with no principles and lots of greed. I mean the 'mythic' mafia, which was supposedly all about giving people what the government would give or even allow them (usually with a catch, but not not a terrible one for those who are careful). I'm trying to come up with a premise under which such a concept seems plausible. The premise (as far as I see it) behind such a situation is a hypocritical society, with roughly the following setup:
The Providers generally see the population as split into the following groups (some of which might be overlapping):
Here's a rough list of what I think their CoH would include:
How does it look? Anything I'm missing? How would you price the CoH? Thanks in advance! Last edited by vicky_molokh; 04-17-2012 at 03:32 AM. |
06-30-2011, 03:59 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Augsburg, Germany
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
Loose Cannons sounds pretty good to me, but a couple of other ideas would be Rogue Providers or Immodest Providers.
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06-30-2011, 05:48 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
Stand by your clan.
Police your own neighborhood; a Don may profit from crime, that doesn't mean he wants it near his house. Concentrate on illegal gambling, protection, and moonshining. "Hard" drugs and especially human trafficking are what Those Other Clans do. Never let an insult go unavenged. Don't hurt civilians. This includes dependents of the Made Men, Respectable Folk From the Suburbs(except for government witnesses, etc), and such people as Hookers With A Heart Of Gold. Made Men from a rival clan are fair game if there is a feud on. Informants are definitely fair game.* Pay nominal respect the Catholic hierarchy. Despite that pesky "thou shalt not steal" thing. *By the way, that code actually was obeyed in one story I heard. One missionary spoke at our church and told how his ministry was simply to give blankets to homeless people who were cold. Once while he was busy doing this he heard a gunshot. Later an Enforcer came by, told him that he had fired the shot and missed. He also told him that he had mistaken the missionary for a member of a rival gang and to wear a cowboy hat when he went downtown in the night. After that word was apparently spread on the street about who he was and he was unmolested.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 06-30-2011 at 05:52 PM. |
06-30-2011, 05:57 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
As a side note the original Mafia was, according to legend, a secret society for protecting the serfs from the landowners and for protecting Sicily against foreigners. Cynics have noted that it was just as likely to have been for protecting owners from serfs.
The mafia tradition goes back to the middle ages. Steven Runciman implied that they were involved in the Sicilian Vespers. Which proves that you never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
06-30-2011, 07:39 PM | #5 |
On Notice
Join Date: Apr 2007
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
You also might want to take a look at the Japanese Yakuza, who, in many villages in feudal Japan, WERE the 'local authorities', as far as the local nobility was concerned.
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If you think an Apache can't tell right from wrong....wrong him, and see what happens. |
07-01-2011, 01:29 AM | #6 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Udine, Italy
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
Quote:
- don't cooperate with the authorities, - respect the other mafiosi and solve any conflicts with them according to the rules, - minimize damage to bystanders, - set aside a social security fund. Most of this is quite self-serving, can't be worth more than -5. |
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07-01-2011, 02:40 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Daegu, South Korea
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
I feel like I must have misunderstood something there. You say that you are looking for a plausible premise for a kind of extra legal society that handles it's own business. That sounds plausible enough for me so as to need no further justification to exist.
I think this would be easier to accept if you thought of it from the point of view of people who experience having their concerns ignored by their government. That's pretty common. It's also pretty common to have people feel that their interests and those of their government are at odds. I'm a foreigner where I live, this is how I feel. It's how countless immigrants in America felt and continue to feel. Don't look of it as a question of finding an excuse to have strong organized crime. Instead look at the society and figure out which parts of it might wish for more autonomy from their government. Don't think of it as everyone a part of the same state, with criminals on the side. Think of it as several different competing interests in a society, one of which is represented in the government, and some of whom claim their own authority. Then the only question really is about which interest has the biggest discrepancy between real power and socially and legally accepted power. I don't know if that's what you were looking for at all.
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07-01-2011, 04:33 AM | #8 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
Quote:
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07-01-2011, 08:47 AM | #9 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
Quote:
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07-01-2011, 09:01 AM | #10 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: 'Mythic' Mafia and their Code of Honor
Well, yeah. Not paying up on a loan is always dangerous in such culture. But the idea is to make it dishonourable to turn a loan into extortion (i.e. Modest Providers must warn the client about the sanctions, including higher interest rate in case of failure to pay on time, in advance).
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Tags |
code of honor, mafia, worldbuilding |
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