Mafia Campaign

[Lead Luteist]

Has anyone done this? If so, are there any custom rules you could share? If not, any good books on this type of setting? (although I'd prefer keep the costs as low possible. I'm only doing a short campaign after all).
Thanks

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

You can try some free adventure downloads at www.lrgames.com. If you're not using the product, you may want to draw up D20 Modern NPCs for them.

The link to d20npcwiki in my sig leads to some D20 Modern gangster NPCs (see the D20 Modern NPCs by CR link).

I don't know if there's any "broad brush" D20 Crime yet. I have never seen these things covered in Modern rules. (For instance, how to do you corrupt a union, or loan shark?) I've had to research this myself for my own campaign.

 

[Iron_Chef]

There is a $35 softcover with B&W interior (!) you can buy. It's called something like "Tony Digiaromo's Complete Mafia d20" IIRC. I know I'm messing up the name somehow. Anyway, I saw it in my FLGS. It looked good, and was thick with rules and stuff (history of the mob, etc.). I would check it out if I was wanting to get a mafia RPG going.

 

[AIM-54]

I've only played organized crime campaigns in Shadowrun, but I've had a lot of fun with it. I'm not sure you really need any additional rules, the Modern archetypes work fine and they just have allegiances to the mafia. Depending how you want to play it, a decent understanding of how the mafia functions organizationally and where you want the PCs to fit in is important. I can see a few approaches to this. 1)They're low on the totem pole and take orders to do hits or twist arms or whatever. 2) They're mid-level and can both plan and implement tasks, setting up a new "place of business" or acquiring new protectees. 3.) They're the lead element of an expansion, paving the groundwork for their home organization to expand into new territory, possibly conflicting with whoever is there.

I've played in the latter kind of campaign and it was a lot of fun. But you need to have the flexibility to let the players take the lead there, and players who are interested in that. Otherwise the other approaches might work better.

Good luck!