Characters Overview

The Vendetta game system revolves entirely around named Characters, whether Underworld Characters or those civilians coming into contact with - or somehow important to - the underworld; politicians, law enforcement officers, businessmen, and those involved with the criminal justice system. In all there might be in excess of 10,000 named characters in a single 200-player game of Vendetta, all of whom might be interacted with, influenced or even virtually controlled by players.

Personal Boss Character

The single most important character to you, the player, is your personal Boss Character. This individual is you, being the only character in the game whom you will ever absolutely, 100% control. Other characters will work for your Boss or be by some other means under his influence or command, but you do not entirely control the actions, reactions or loyalties of any other character, you can only influence these through the actions of your own Boss Character and the orders 'he' issues to other Characters. Vendetta is not a 'God Game'. Within this Manual we will often refer to "the characters under your control", by which we mean those within your organization and thereby subject to the orders of your Boss Character. Use of this term should not be taken to mean that you as the player fully control any other characters. If your own Boss Character is killed but you have another character in your gang able to assume control (ie. one with sufficient ability in Leadership Qualities) then this character will automatically become your new Boss Character and you will be able to continue playing. However, if no other character in your gang has sufficient ability to assume leadership, you, the player, will be eliminated from the game. You will not be able to return to the same game but your Boss Character may still enter any other game in which he has never yet participated.

Character Types

There are two main types, or Classes, of named Characters in Vendetta, termed Underworld Characters and Civilians respectively. An Underworld Character is defined as any individual who earns most of his income from crime (whether personally involved or not), while a Civilian is one whose primary function is not criminal in nature. This does not mean Civilians do not commit crimes or do not belong to - or work for - Underworld organizations, it simply means that conducting illegal activities is not their main driving force in life as it is with genuine Underworld Characters. Where Civilians form part of your organization (such as Accountants, Lawyers and Political Lobbyists), they will not be able to conduct the actions available to Underworld Characters but will instead have their own special range of available actions. Your Boss Character always begins the game classed as an Underworld Character, although it is theoretically possible for him to eventually become a Civilian in the sense that he personally commits no crime and receives most (if not all) of his income from legitimate sources. This will not, however, prevent him from using the range of Orders and actions available to Underworld Characters, it will simply make it harder for the authorities to convict him of any crime when he is himself so far removed from any such nefarious activities.

Using Characters

The actions, reactions, loyalties and even the physical appearance of every character in Vendetta are governed by a range of Attributes personal to that character. All Underworld Characters and many Civilians in the game will each have around forty different attributes, each of which plays an important part in the game in one way or another. The main attributes are a character's ten Characteristics, ten Abilities and ten Skills, each of which are covered in detail elsewhere. Virtually everything you order a character to do will be somehow modified or affected by one or more of his various attributes, especially by his Characteristics, Abilities and Skills. The only way to learn what affects what, and how, is through good judgment and simple commonsense - and, of course, through trial & error. When issuing Orders to characters under your control you should always give full consideration to their various attributes. Give the right job to the right man and he will excel in his performance, but give him the wrong job and anything might happen - up to and including a virtual catastrophe. For instance, to use a simple example, if you send someone to ambush a rival then it would be wise to make sure he can shoot reasonably well (good Marksmanship Skill), or he might miss his target and instead mow down a sidewalk full of innocent bystanders. The repercussions of such would likely be unhealthy for your gang, to say the least. Taking a character's many various attributes into consideration should be something you do for virtually everything in the game, from deciding which rackets each character should operate, to which one-off Orders (such as an Ambush) each should conduct on your behalf.

Character Activities

There are three overall types of activity in which characters may partake. These are briefly as follows, though each is described in detail in other sections of this Manual: 1. Business Operations: this is the term used to describe the activity of setting up, running and expanding businesses, whether legal or illegal. Illegal businesses are all lumped together under the heading of Rackets, of which there are more than 120 different types in the game. If any character is not given sufficient time to run all of his current Business Operations efficiently, income will suffer. 2. Carrying out Orders: Vendetta has a huge range of possible Orders, these being instructions from the Boss passed down through the ranks until one character receives the final instruction to personally carry out this order. In reality, of course, you the player decide which Order stops where, by deciding which character should carry out each of your Boss' orders. Orders are used for virtually everything in the game not involving day-to-day Business Operations or Free Time. 3. Free Time: this is literally the amount of time each character has spare each week (1 day real-time = 1 week in the game), after conducting Business Operations and carrying out any Orders received. Having free time in which to spend his hard-earned, ill-gotten gains will be important to almost all characters in your employ, so you can expect morale and loyalty problems if for some reason free time is routinely not permitted. Conversely, if enough free time is allowed a particular character he may well spend some of this time practicing or studying one of his ten Skills. A character will improve in Skill only very slowly if never allowed enough free time for practice or study. Your Boss Character has complete control over how each character in his employ should divide his time, within reason. For example, you are free to order any character to not conduct any Business Operations or take any Free Time, only carry out your other Orders, but as you can imagine might happen in real-life, this happening too often would cause a considerable drop in morale & loyalty and might ultimately lead to treachery or desertion.