A few thoughts on Max Payne, primal story telling Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Max Payne is an old game but it's been on my mind recently. The idea of the vengeful man with nothing to lose versus the mafia may not be a unique story, but I feel that it is compelling on a primal level. It's about the raw essence of someone who has nothing to lose versus the powerful and the embedded. It's about the raw vitality and anti-intellectual virtue of the visceral and the immediate versus the cynicism and calculated cruelty of the established and the powerful.

In every day life, each of us must deal with frustrations. The boss may be an asshole. The bus driver may decide to exercise what little power he has against us by refusing to accept our transfer. The coffee bar worker may decide to wait a full minute before handing us the napkin we asked for. These all amount to petty lashings-out against others in society when we feel powerless. The reason that people act out in these sorts of ways instead of simply going postal is that most people feel that they have something to lose. Nothing bad happens to you in a drastic way if you're a simple ass. However, if you pull a handgun out of your pants and blow away your boss your whole life is flushed down the toilet.

It's this feeling of having something to lose that lets society have control over the individual, and in many ways it can be argued that this is good for a cohesive society that works towards a common set of goals. However, it also makes the individual weaker. Which dog will fight more ferociously? The stray mutt which has had to battle every day of its life for survival, or the well-fed doberman which has been set up as a guard dog on someone's property? As long as someone has something to lose, this makes them weaker in a fight than the person who truly feels that they have nothing at all to lose.

From what I understand of the historical mafia in the United States, they have profited from most people feeling that they have something to lose. If the mafia were to go and break a baker's legs after he refuses to pay them protection money, how come the baker's relatives don't all arm themselves and sacrifice themselves doing as much damage to the mafia as they can? Because they feel that they have something to lose by throwing their lives away. They'd rather salvage what they have, pay the protection money, and continue being bakers. They'd rather not all die in order to make the mafia really sorry they'd ever messed with aforementioned baker.

What is the key difference between organized crime and disorganized crime? Disorganized crime may be undertaken out of impulse and desperation, or possibly out of stupidity. Organized crime, on the other hand, is rather about being efficient and getting something good and sustainable out of crime at minimum risk.

It would seem to me like organized crime (at least in the business of such things as extorting protection money) would fail if all of the ordinary citizen-victims, rather than trying to salvage something, went Max Payne on the mafia, and felt like after being pushed to a certain point the only thing worth doing in the world was causing harm, death, and terror to the mafia, while laying down their own lives. How can you extort from people who would rather, for example, suicide bomb your representatives than pay you a token amount of money? Especially since it seems like many members of the mafia, historically, were at least in part going after the good life; nice clothes, good restaurants. You cannot enjoy nice clothes and good restaurants if you're living under the stress of a platoon of suicidal assasins coming after you day and night.

The story of the vengeful man with nothing to lose may be new, but I really feel that it's compelling. I get goosebumps every time I think about it.


A final note. This actually ties in a bit to how some people like to GM shadowrun, with the idea that the player characters are small fry and they must kowtow to mafia bosses and other "major" NPCs. You know that at least some GMs feel that way. Should the PCs sass off to the mafia bosses, some GMs would then open a world of hurt onto the PCs for not acting within their station. Well, I say, in the context of shadowrun, screw that. As a player, play the way you want to play. If the GM is always trying to browbeat you with mafia bosses who must be respected, crumple up that setting and throw it back into the GM's face by having your PC suicide bomb the mafia boss. No more setting or campaign, perhaps, but also no more bullshit omnipotent mafia boss.