Creating a mafia

[Onyx Rose]

Terra Fey is a world of fairy tales with free will. I have introduced to my players that The Stepmother (from Cinderella) has created a crime family. Racketeering, extortion, demanding tolls from passers by on certain roads (which is how the players were introduced to The Stepmother in the first place). I have created her "enforcers" which are The Lollipop Guild members with oozies. It is a cask sized tank with a fire hose type device off of it to spray those who will not pay the toll with an extremely sticky ooze (entangle). So the group has been established as part of the world, but now I'm not sure how to create the main characters of The Stepmother (the don) and any lieutenants she would have, the stepsisters most like. I'm not sure what kinds of powers, talents, or skills she should have. She'd be an impressive normal but not a super. What I'm worried about is that my players will encounter her and just destroy her because they are all 300 point supers. I don't know if she should have body guards that are supers to protect her or what. All in all I need to create a mafia and I don't really know where to begin.

 

If anyone has ideas on what to do with the Fairy Godmother I'd love some advice there too. I'd like to keep her good or maybe have bipolar disorder so that she could be both good and bad depending on her mood.

[Outsider]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

Options :

 

1) Make it so the PCs can't just physically attack her for legal or social reasons. Perhaps she managed to marry one of her daughters into the royal family, just not to the crown prince. If they have to defeat her in 'social combat' rather than physical combat she could be pretty tough.

 

2) Have her not be the top boss, but just the one that was assigned to be the boss of petty mafia type crimes like the ones she is doing. There are plenty of personally powerful baddies in fairy tales too. An option would be to have the mafia which she belongs to be made up of many or all of the evil older women in fairy tales. The evil queen in Sleeping Beauty wasnt powerless, for example. Or you could broaden the world a bit to include more than classic 'brothers grimm' tales. Grendel's mother could be a nice enforcer type...

 

3) Point out to the characters that, no matter how inconvenient her goons are, they arent actually doing any physical harm to anyone with their oozies, so doing any actual physical harm to her would be an injustice.

[Guest Confusinator]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

The key to making any successful crimelord is to keep him at a distance from the players. There should never be any direct confrontation between the two. A crimelord should never dirty his hands with such menial work.

 

When they do meet, it should be in a situation that does not afford the characters to take action, either politically (meeting Mother Goose in front of the Queen of Hearts), or at such a disadvantage that they cannot act (trapped with a tempest in a teapot).

 

That way as every session goes on, the tension builds, and the characters want to take her out bad. Then when the final confrontation does come, she will need to be strong enough to hold them off. She is a crime lord after all, she had to step over alot of bodies to get there.

 

Remember that any good criminal orginization has lots of layers between the grunts and the bosses. The Lollipop Gang may work for Mother Goose, but they get their orders from the Big Bad Wolf, who gets his orders from the Wicked StepMother, who gets her orders from the Magic Mirror, who works directly for Mother Goose.

 

If given a chance, PC's will tend to go right to the heart of the matter, and end a long campaign in one session. You have to slow them down with roadblocks, which makes the final victory that much sweeter for them.

 

And if they get to her too fast, well maybe she's not the top of the food chain after all, maybe they find evidence that she's taking orders from someone also....maybe Glenda isn't so good after all.

[MisterBaldy]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

The key to making any successful crimelord is to keep him at a distance from the players. There should never be any direct confrontation between the two. A crimelord should never dirty his hands with such menial work.

How true...a crimelord would never get his/her hands "dirty". That is just not the way. The true crimelord should be well hidden from evidence, and never be revieled until "the climax of the saga".

[sinanju]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

You might want to look for the comic (or the compilations in paperback) of the comic Fables by Bill Willingham. In this comic, all the characters from classic fables and legends really exist, and they're living in exile in the human world undercover (having been driven from their homeland by "The Adversary", who conquered it many centuries ago).

 

The human looking Fables live in NYC. The non-human ones live on "The Farm" upstate (magically enchanted so nobody notices the place). They all have their classic powers AND the ones who are most famous (whose stories have remained popular for centuries) are all but unkillable.

 

(Snow White gets shot in the head by a sniper with a rifle, and she spends months healing...but she does heal completely. Her sister, Rose Red, is very annoyed. SHE couldn't have survived it--she isn't remembered nearly as well.)

 

The interaction of all these disparate characters with their various powers and abilities is...wierdly entertaining. (When they have to break into an apartment building without getting caught, Sleeping Beauty attends a party there and pricks her finger--on purpose--putting everyone in the building into an enchanted sleep until the mission is accomplished....) And more to the point, it might give you some ideas of how to handle your fairy tale mafia. These guys tend to play very rough.

[Citizen Keen]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

One of the most famous crimelords of all time, Lex Luthor, gets his hands dirty all the time. Just a thought.

[Skouser]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

Might want to check out the Jhereg series of books by Steven Brust. High Fantasy Mob stuff, and very good reading.

Could give you lots of ideas.

[sinanju]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

One of the most famous crimelords of all time' date=' Lex Luthor, gets his hands dirty all the time. Just a thought.[/quote']

 

The Kingpin of Crime, however, only really came into his own as a truly dangerous foe (and cool character) when he stepped back from going one-on-one with Spider-Man and became the spider at the center of his web of intrigue, blackmail, extortion, threats and violence. He's still incredibly strong and tough, but his real power comes from being in control of a huge criminal empire and having plausible deniability.

[Lethosos]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

Also, as a GM you'll want to keep things as much under wraps as possible. Defintly lead them on semi-wild goose chases that lead to dangerous dead ends. Get them to realize that she's not afraid to call out the big guns if they meddle in her business too often. But don't be afraid to have her occasionally 'offer' help with strings attached--that's how a crimelord works, after all.

[Cancer]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

If anyone has ideas on what to do with the Fairy Godmother I'd love some advice there too. I'd like to keep her good or maybe have bipolar disorder so that she could be both good and bad depending on her mood.

 

With that goal (which I heartily approve!) then the Fairy Godmother either has to be psychotic or have a motive perpendicular (and inexplicable) to everyone else's. Otherwise she isn't random enough and becomes a major shaping force in the world that others will decide they have to do something about.

 

I'd be tempted to say that FG is an agent of an entirely separate reality, whose goal is to seed the fairy-tale world with enough artifacts of her own reality so as to break down the inter-universe barriers so that her own folk can operate more freely there. If her time horizon is long enough (ten times the lifetime of the typical resident of the fairy-tale world) then "no one" will notice and figure out what she's doing. This doesn't have to be a sinister motive (maybe she wants to absorb the fairy-tale universe into a safe zoo-like enclave where it can be defended before it gets consumed by the raiders from the technohorror universe), but it is going to be inexplicable to the residents.

 

Once you have your motive decided, then you can give your FG a coherent (but strange) set of powers, preferred circumstances, etc. that lets your world hang together better.

[Old Man]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

Might want to check out the Jhereg series of books by Steven Brust. High Fantasy Mob stuff, and very good reading.

Could give you lots of ideas.

 

 

I agree, classic fantasy style organized crime with royalty, magic and general badass-ness thrown in.

[Badger]

Re: Creating a mafia

 

You could always have the giant from Jack and the beanstalk as a bodyguard.

Or similar character. (The BIG BAD wolf with his wind-based blast perhaps?)