Boss Character Background

When first joining a Vendetta game you will be required to select a Boss Character Background from one of nine options. This Background may be different for each subsequent game you join. Your Boss Character Background determines the Characteristics, Abilities and Skills for your own starting character in that game, which you will then be able to tweak to some extent in order to create the type of character you can feel comfortable with playing. Each Boss Character Background also brings with it some specific personal advantages, which you will have for the life of that Character in the game. While these Boss Background advantages are mostly personal to your Boss Character himself, some will have a wider impact on your organization as a whole. You will have to determine for yourself which the latter might be, using common sense and logic. Most of the advantages associated with each Boss Background are also affected by the starting age of your character (20-50 years of age, which you choose for yourself). Generally speaking, the older your character is when first you join the game, the greater some of these advantages may be. However, this is not true in all cases (use common sense and logic here, to decide which might be affected by age) and certainly all such advantages are only marginally increased by starting age, none are massively increased. Note that you will lose these advantages if your Boss Character dies. His replacement (if one exists in your organization capable of taking over leadership) would likely have only limited advantages of his own. However, your organization should by then be off the ground and should contain several other skilled individuals, making the loss of your initial Boss less traumatic than it might seem. Losing your initial Boss is a loss best avoided if at all possible, but later in the game it is by no means fatal for your organization as a whole. The nine Boss Character Backgrounds and the particular advantages of each are as follows:

Street Gang Leader

Historically, many major racketeers of the Prohibition era spent their formative years on the prowl with a youth street gang. With this background, your Character grew up on the streets in one of the city slums and progressed to random crime. Unfortunately, this means you will already have a fairly extensive criminal record, which will definitely weigh against you if ever you are again tried for a crime in a Court of Law. You will also be well known to the local precinct, making you more likely to be considered a prime suspect for local crimes. On the positive side, you will also begin the game with considerable 'Streetwise', 'Unarmed Combat' and 'Close Combat' skills respectively, and your connections with past and current members of the street gang will provide a larger local recruitment pool than that available to most Bosses - some of which will be exceptionally talented, experienced individuals. The average personal loyalty of your men will also be higher as a result, and this will also make your organization harder than most for rival spies to effectively infiltrate. Your intimate knowledge of the streets and its people will also make it easier for you to recruit Underworld Agents and contacts, especially within your own territory. In addition, some rackets would benefit financially from your personal contacts and past reputation among youth street gangs in your territory.

Political Bagman

With this background your Character is deemed to have a long connection with the area of the city in which he operates, with the local underworld, and most especially with its prominent citizens. Some of the friends and acquaintances from your childhood days have since become such as politicians, judges and prosecutors, and you have lost contact with none of them over the years. You have in the past acted as a 'bagman', go-between and political 'fixer' for some of these, collecting pay-offs and bribes for them from members of the local underworld. The main advantage of this Boss Background is that you will begin the game already enjoying considerable influence with several potentially-important citizens. How useful or valuable this influence proves to be will be entirely down to you, and there is also a degree of luck involved. In addition, you will begin the game possessing 'Skeleton' knowledge of a range of other individuals - these being some of those for whom you have collected pay-offs and bribes in the past... This knowledge is a potential source of blackmail income from an early date, or as leverage for expanding your political and legal influence even more.

Black Hand Member

La Mano Nera, The Black Hand, was a very loosely-organized criminal fraternity from Sicily which was transplanted to American slums with the early mass-migrations of the 1880s. The Black Hand were experts in terror - both kidnapping and extortion - mostly through bombing the property and businesses of immigrant Italians and Sicilians. Often just the threat of bombing was enough to secure payment, but still hundreds of gunpowder bombs would rock the slums of eastern cities every year over a period of several decades. The Black Hand all but died out during the 1920s, when Prohibition offered even greater possible rewards for their efforts. Ex-Black Handers would thereafter often form bombing crews for gangsters and racketeers, turning reluctant saloon keepers into customers for their booze distribution outlets, and turning reluctant businessmen into fee-paying members of gangster-organized Business & Trade Associations. With a background as a Black Hand terrorist, your Boss Character will enjoy considerable personal expertise in 'Explosives' skill and also some bonus experience in the other combat-orientated skills. Your long history of involvement in blackmail and extortion would be of benefit to you financially should you continue to personally remain active in these areas, as would your experience in both planning and executing kidnappings, and any activity using explosives - such as some premise raids and (later in the game) hits. In addition, your past connection with the Black Hand gangs is more likely to make this type of skilled individual available to you for hire from time to time, while the few remaining Black Hand gangs in the city are much less likely to target you for extortion.

WWI Veteran

A skilled and decorated war hero, honourably discharged from the army at the end of the First World War in 1918. Historically, a number of returning war veterans joined the ranks of gangland gunmen during Prohibition times, mostly becoming triggermen and enforcers for powerful gang bosses. (Interestingly, the Chicago police also raised a special squad of war-experienced officers and detectives, armed with machine-guns, to combat the rising tide of gang violence in their fair city. It proved mostly ineffective due to the slow communications of the time, and it was disbanded when they inadvertently gunned down an innocent bystander). With the background of a highly-experienced, veteran soldier from the muddy, bloody trenches of The Great War, your various personal combat skills will be unsurpassed by any Boss of another type. Your past friendship with other discharged veterans in search of work is also more likely to make this type of skilled individual available to you for hire. In addition, your connections with past and current army personnel is more likely to make stolen military arms available to you on occasion, including perhaps some specialist weaponry from time to time.

Union Organizer

For more than half a century before Prohibition came around, the ordinary working man had been fighting for his rights. Big business would hire gangsters and goons as strike-breakers to enforce their will and discourage the formation of Labour Unions. From the earliest days, Union Organizers were tough, indomitable and fearless leaders of men. They had to be. As a past organizer of Labour Unions, your connections with various grateful Union Officials around the city will one day form the basis of your power in the underworld - should you survive long enough in the game to make full and proper use of this considerable advantage. In the meanwhile, you will have to content yourself with enjoying a reputation for hard-nosed toughness - along with the 'Unarmed Combat' and 'Close Combat' Skills to back this up - which will certainly affect the way many people might react to you. In addition, it might come as some comfort to you to know that, due to your many contacts in labour unions, you will never have a shortage of 'Goons' and 'Gorillas' available for hire - unlike many other Bosses. These would be useful as Guards for your main men (other Named Characters in your gang) and their premises.

Law Enforcement

As an ex-police officer - perhaps even a detective - you have spent a number of years on the 'right side' of the law, only to eventually determine that, for you at least, this was actually the wrong side. With the background of an ex-law enforcement officer, you will enjoy superior personal weapons skills and a number of potentially-useful contacts and old friends within the City Police Force. Perhaps also within other areas of law enforcement. In addition, your years on the beat gives you considerable 'Streetwise' skill, while your extensive knowledge of (and ability to recognize) petty criminals on the city streets will greatly boost your efforts at recruiting Underworld Agents and contacts, and - to some extent - future potential gang members. Also of considerable likely benefit, what you don't know about the legal rights of ordinary criminals - as well as police and judicial procedure - isn't worth knowing, together providing a useful basis in 'Law Study' skill.

Businessman

You started small and at a young age, perhaps with a street barrow or shoe-shine business. Since then you have begun many businesses, building up each in turn into a successful enterprise before selling it on at a handsome profit and moving on to bigger things. But something was always missing from your entrepreneurial life: it was simply never exciting enough. Having now amassed a not-inconsiderable personal fortune (for the year 1920, anyway) you have decided that a life of crime offers greater potential for profit - and excitement - than anything you have attempted in the past. With the background of a 'Businessman' you would start the game with $10,000 instead of $5,000, providing you with the unique opportunity to expand financially at a faster pace than any other Boss - if you invest this wisely. Your past experience would also have resulted in enhanced 'Business Acumen' ability and 'Accountancy' skill, further reinforcing your personal financial advantages if put to good use. In Addition, your knowledge of business practices and tax legislation will enable you to operate legitimate and semi-legitimate businesses more efficiently and profitably, to avoid tax pitfalls more easily, and to launder 'dirty' money more effectively. Some later business-associated rackets would also no doubt prove extremely lucrative in your expert hands.

College Graduate

You are a rarity in the criminal underworld of Prohibition America, coming as you do not from the slums, but from a respectable - if still immigrant - middle-class family living in a decent neighbourhood. You have enjoyed every advantage life can offer. You have the benefit of a superb education and the intelligence to make good use of it, but still this has never been enough for you. An ordinary life just seems so... well, boring, if you're honest with yourself. Turning to a life of crime, you will enjoy the tremendous advantages of your extensive education and superior intelligence, as a result of which all of your personal Abilities and Skills will increase at a much faster pace than those of any other Boss, and you will also enjoy a greater Aptitude for most of these Abilities and Skills. In other words, you have the potential to personally become a truly formidable character in the underworld of a big city - if you survive long enough, that is. In addition, your time at college among others who have since graduated with honours provides you with unique access to potentially very highly-skilled recruits, mostly Lawyers, Accountants and Political Lobbyists, but perhaps also including more specialists in other areas of useful expertise.

Recent Illegal Immigrant

In many ways the exact opposite of the College Graduate, until now yours has been a hard life in the 'old country'. You have just recently entered America through illegal, underground channels, while speaking only broken English and having little formal education severely limits your options in this new land. Of the options available, you have decided to opt for a life of crime as being your best hope for future wealth and success. You do however have one distinct advantage which no Boss from a different background could possibly enjoy: legally, you don't even exist. You are totally unknown to the local authorities as well as to the various branches of law enforcement, and you don't have either a criminal record or any connection with local criminals. Even to the city's underworld, you are a virtual unknown. The practical advantages of this will not last forever, but while they do you will be able to operate in almost complete secrecy for quite a while, using one alias or another without difficulty (although this will gradually diminish over time as you begin to make a name for yourself). In particular, the police will be clueless about many of the crimes you might commit, especially one-off 'Other Crimes', and their suspicion is more likely to point elsewhere. Likewise will your enemies also have a harder time tracing your hostile actions back to you - unless you happen to leave witnesses behind - and their attempts to learn more about you and your organization would be severely hampered by this veil of secrecy, as even their local contacts would be able to tell them only very little. Perhaps of greatest long-term benefit, having entered the city through illegal channels you will have no great difficulty in also recruiting other recent immigrants for your main gang members, and to purposely bring in trustworthy men and family members from the 'old country' rather than recruit local talent. In addition, bringing in more people from the 'old country' to enjoy the good life working for you will result in a higher-than-usual level of loyalty, while also making your organization almost impossible to infiltrate except by a very skilled actor indeed.