[OOC] Crime RP

[Andalla]

Title says it all. I've been considering the idea for quite a while now, but I've never gotten around to actually doing anything about it. What I imagine is a free-for-all thread where anyone can post short stories pertaining to crime, preferably organized crime. As there won't be any solid storyline, the main purpose of the thread is simply to serve as a depository for such stories. Those who do wish to come up with multiple posts in a storyline could simply add a list of post links at the bottom of each post, or to just create a new thread.

Another alternative would be to create a thread about organized drug trafficking, which is particularly a more popular topic in crime fiction. This time, we could connect the storyline by showing interactions between different crime organizations, friendly or hostile. Of course, since we're involving organizations, we could veer off a bit from drugs every now and then, as these organizations do involve themselves in other types of crime as well.

To start it all off, I'll be coming up with a post sometime, after we've solidified our plans. This is still a rather vague and undeveloped idea, so feedback is always great. Also – do say if you're interested to join. That would be awesome. 👍

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Of course no RP thread is complete without an actual title. "In the Shadows" is already taken by @Rihan but it would make a great title if we choose the drug trafficking storyline. Proposals are always welcome, so fire away!

Edited February 23, 2019 by Andalla (see edit history)

[Rhodellia]

What better way to spice up Eurth's underworld than to throw in more mercenaries, hitmen, and S.T.A.L.K.E.Rs? I'm in.

[Fulgistan]

Is it Triad time? I think it's Triad time.

[Mito]

You know what the art institutes and the crime syndicates have in common in Shffahkia? They're both damn good at framing.

[Tagmatium Rules]

I've occasionally thought about what sort of look crime syndicates would have in Tagmatium but I'm not all that sure.

We also don't really have anything approaching "narco-states" or similar. Although I'd imagine all the failed states in Europa and the blank ones in the New World would give a lot of scope for such things.

[PyeMcGowan]

I have a Rothschild type family, (The Unitsens) that controls a lot of the nation’s wealth, I’ve always had an idea that some of them would be involved in some sort of crime syndicate, and launder the money through their banks.

Edited February 24, 2019 by PyeMcGowan (see edit history)

[Andalla]

3 hours ago, Fulgistan said:

Is it Triad time? I think it's Triad time.

Definitely. We could totally fly drug planes between you and Giokto, Escobar style...

[Andalla]

8 minutes ago, PyeMcGowan said:

I have a Rothschild the family, (The Unitsens) that controls a lot of the nation’s wealth, I’ve always had an idea that some of them would be involved in some sort of crime syndicate, and launder the money through their banks.

Sounds like a job for @Magnaeus or @Cristina.

[Glimmer]

I feel like drug trafficking is all too common when it comes to crime, and in any case I would enjoy seeing the depository of stories for a glimpse of each and every country's underworld large or small. As idealistic and seemingly perfect Oyus may be (at least I feel) there is a reason why the OIA (Oyus Inverstigative Agency) and National Police exist. Unfortunately, it is not because Grandma Susie's cat Mittens went missing.

[Cristina]

16 hours ago, Andalla said:

Sounds like a job for @Magnaeus or @Cristina

Hmmm, sounds Interesting...

[Kacheru]

Ooh! Now I can put the Kushnik Láo Bratva to the test. A lovely combination of terrorism, smuggling, ransom, trafficking, and racketeering all happily contained in the confusing and remote jungles in and around Bulgenstaz.

Who knows, for the right price I'm sure they could assist Bulgenstazi competitors...

[Limonaia]

Well similarly to Soreana I'd be interested in looking into the Limonaian mafia

[Andalla]

Alright. Looks like we've gathered a fair amount of support for this. 👍 So right now, let's decide how this whole thing would go. Basically, specifically what kind of content, how it will look like, posting rules, and all that.

I've got a few questions here – feel free to copy/paste and voice out your own opinions:

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1. How can everyone contribute to the thread? This is intended as a free-for-all thread, not just an exclusive RP wherein only a select group of people participate in. But first, how will the story progress? Will it be planned or unplanned? Will we even have a central plot, or should everybody be allowed to post their own short stories unrelated to each other?

2. What kind of crimes will we deal with? Obviously, we can't take on crime itself in general. Crime encompasses a vast array of topics that could contrast each other too much to be included in the same thread. For example, one moment there's a story about drug cartel street wars and the next moment there's copyright infringement. Don't get me wrong, but stories about nonviolent crimes such as corruption or fraud (See what I did there?) can be exciting too.

To keep things simple, I've categorized crime into 4 categories that we could write about. Depending on what you guys want, we may not need these categories. But they're just here to help:

• White-collar crime or corporate crime basically encompasses those nonviolent crimes done by businesses and the "elite". For the purposes of this list I'll include political crime as a white-collar crime as well. So we have things like fraud, corruption, money laundering... you get the point.
• Violent crimes include your everyday violence such as murder, terrorism, and theft. Now this is a very vague category as there can be many kinds of theft or terrorism, for example. And of course violent crimes also include things like sexual assault, but we wouldn't want to go too deep into that, I guess.
• Organized crime is a special one since it's not really a crime itself, but instead it's a group of people committing a certain crime (or crimes) together. It's not too hard to give examples of this one – triads, drug cartels, mafia, even under-the-table political alliances. Organized crime can be really exciting, but one issue it might pose is that our thread would get too cluttered if everybody's writing about their complex mafia systems.
• Trafficking isn't really a category, but I'll include it here. Basically, trafficking is illegal trade. We'll include illegal consumption of the traded goods as well. Now of course the first thing that comes to mind is drugs, but there are lots of types of trafficking. Smuggling is synonymous to this. Under trafficking I guess we can also include illegal immigration, which is basically you trafficking yourself. 🤣

Again we don't need to be restricted to a certain category, but we may need a general topic just to set the atmosphere. I'm depending on your ideas and suggestions, so don't hesitate to include your own thoughts. 

3. How do we ensure the thread stays in order? Now I don't know how this would turn out, but I sense that a project on this scale might easily spiral out of control. What I'm afraid of is that some people might create their own "series" of posts despite the lack of a centralized story (again, depending on your decision regarding the centralized plot). I mean, if done correctly this wouldn't hurt at all. But people who might end their posts abruptly, or perhaps start their posts in such a way that you have to read all the previous posts, well... that's not really what I intend to do with this thing. But again, any ideas are fine.

The initial concept of this thread was for it to be a collection of short stories. That means each post would already have a beginning, climax and end – all in one post. Don't get me wrong – you could connect two short stories even if you've ended the first one.

Basically what I'm asking is the structure of the posts. Should we follow the short story format? Or should we instead adopt a central plot and have everybody chip in every now and then, like a never-ending story?

Edited February 27, 2019 by Andalla (see edit history)

[Kacheru]

I like the idea of short stories, describe a little bit about how each would do conduct (perhaps by describing a notable example of something they did.) I was also thinking it could be possible (possible!) to coordinate interactions between other crime groups. Maybe they're neighboring each other, maybe they work with crime in ideologically similar countries (or opposite), maybe it's just that working with a certain group is economically viable. Also, it could be that there are secret negotiations with crime groups from other countries. Regardless, I think it would be a good idea to indicate the intentions of the post.

Perhaps this could instead be on a Subforum, like the "Newsroom" in "Affairs". That could keep the post from making a massive confusing mess of contrasting stories.

A subforum would allow for collaborative stories, solo RPs, and it could even be used as a stepladder for other RPs.

Edited February 27, 2019 by Bulgenstaz (see edit history)

[Glimmer]

I mean if there is a short story that everyone enjoyed and the writer wanted to continue, then there is always one of two options. They could add the links to their previous/future posts in their posts relating to it. In other words, they would link Part 2, 3, 4, 5 in Part 1 and vice versa, so on and so forth. Alternatively, they can create a separate thread if they feel it can be its own sort of storyline outright. I would probably say the latter makes more sense than the former.

I personally would prefer the short story route, "Europan Crime Story" or something. Each post is a short story that is unrelated more often than not. I don't think it hurts to have variety in the type of crime stories there are. I imagine the more compelling ones would not be white collar crime. Personally, I wouldn't exclude anything.

[PyeMcGowan]

What we could do is maybe have the top five or so, and some parts will probably be altered. But maybe it could form some sort of International Crime Syndicate? Where many of the stories are connected by their characters.

[Andalla]

19 hours ago, Bulgenstaz said:

I like the idea of short stories, describe a little bit about how each would do conduct (perhaps by describing a notable example of something they did.) I was also thinking it could be possible (possible!) to coordinate interactions between other crime groups. Maybe they're neighboring each other, maybe they work with crime in ideologically similar countries (or opposite), maybe it's just that working with a certain group is economically viable. Also, it could be that there are secret negotiations with crime groups from other countries. Regardless, I think it would be a good idea to indicate the intentions of the post.

Perhaps this could instead be on a Subforum, like the "Newsroom" in "Affairs". That could keep the post from making a massive confusing mess of contrasting stories.

A subforum would allow for collaborative stories, solo RPs, and it could even be used as a stepladder for other RPs.

I like that idea – we could do both planned and unplanned stories, depending on the situation. Also, I didn't really mean this to be a sort of "crime encyclopedia" presenting crime-related events in a formal manner, but an RP thread where we could all do these short exciting stories. Just for the entertainment of the reader or the writer, of course.

Also, yes, this will all be in one main thread. If I remember right, "Affairs" is really where these kinds of stuff should be posted. For the subforum, well, we might need to ask the admins for that – unless this thing does receive a shockingly huge amount of support, we could stick to just a couple threads.

5 hours ago, Oyus said:

I mean if there is a short story that everyone enjoyed and the writer wanted to continue, then there is always one of two options. They could add the links to their previous/future posts in their posts relating to it. In other words, they would link Part 2, 3, 4, 5 in Part 1 and vice versa, so on and so forth. Alternatively, they can create a separate thread if they feel it can be its own sort of storyline outright. I would probably say the latter makes more sense than the former.

I personally would prefer the short story route, "Europan Crime Story" or something. Each post is a short story that is unrelated more often than not. I don't think it hurts to have variety in the type of crime stories there are. I imagine the more compelling ones would not be white collar crime. Personally, I wouldn't exclude anything.

Yep, that's what I thought too. It'd be better to loosely connect the stories rather than turning them into a series right then and there. Plus there would be a whole lot of other posts at the same time, so regardless of whether there are links or not, it merely adds chaos to the thread.

As much as we want variety, it might be hard to connect the stories. Since again this is a free-for-all thing, we're trying to avoid as much chaos as possible. One solution around this could be to connect unrelated types of crime through organized crime, since criminal organizations do like to diversify.

Also, look in the right places and you'll find out that white-collar crime can be fun too 😉

3 hours ago, PyeMcGowan said:

What we could do is maybe have the top five or so, and some parts will probably be altered. But maybe it could form some sort of International Crime Syndicate? Where many of the stories are connected by their characters.

Same as the above – we could use this worldwide syndicate to justify diversifying our crime stories.

For some reason "The Syndicate" from Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation comes to mind. Now that was a good movie. 😂

[Tagmatium Rules]

I'm sorely tempted to think about what form a Tagmatine mafia might take - perhaps something like a lay religious fraternity gone bad.

Or perhaps following on from the way the Thema military system worked, whereby a village clubbed together to support a cavalryman. It could have led to extortion for raising the money or somesuch.

It's worth trying to make it a bit unique.

[Tagmatium Rules]

Once I've worked it out, certainly.

[Sunset Sea Islands]

Sounds interesting. Would be fun to think about (obviously nonexistent) criminal activities in a surveillance state.

[Greater Serbia]

I'd be down.

[Tagmatium Rules]

7 hours ago, Sunset Sea Islands said:

Sounds interesting. Would be fun to think about (obviously nonexistent) criminal activities in a surveillance state.

Or your monstrous Synapse system isn't as perfect as you thought!

😬

[Sunset Sea Islands]

On 3/12/2019 at 7:41 AM, Tagmatium Rules said:

Or your monstrous Synapse system isn't as perfect as you thought!

😬

That's what the anarchists want you to think! Don't be influenced by their seditious slander!

[Glimmer]

Would be nice to see this still happen despite the departure of dear friend Andalla.

[Alenveil]

There's a family in the city of Acquafondo that the police have suspected for a while to be smuggling drugs, weapons, and other contraband to other syndicate groups for their own personal gain. They cover their tracks well, however, and haven't been convicted of anything yet.