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.

[Crusher Bob]

Grats, WR. You've arrived at the solution to the riddle of steel.

[nezumi]

And that's the argument as to why people should be allowed to carry weapons in public. If you, as a bad guy, realize any one of your possible targets may try to whip out a gun and shoot you, it means you do have a lot left to loose, and only the most hopped up crackheads won't think twice at least twice about confronting a victim to commit a crime.

It's also something the mafia realizes. An effective mafia is not going to take everything from a person, but leave him alive. If a fellow owes them $20,000, the mafia would rather kill the guy and lose the money than steal all his stuff, make him lose his job and so on so he has nothing left to do but seek vengeance. The mafia also realizes that, when dealing with another group of organized crime, or of even unorganized individuals, scorched earth is a valid tactic. If Joe's gang tries to cheat the mafia, the mafia will throw more resources than the actual deal is worth in crushing Joe and his gang, to make sure that any other gangs realize the Mafia does not play around.

[Critias]

I wouldn't say that's the entire argument for concealed carry. While deterrence is nice and all, there are certainly several other good reasons for it -- the capacity for law abiding citizens for armed resistance, not merely the fear of it, for instance. Or the simple fact that, on the micro rather than macro scale, I want to be armed and able to defend myself and others). The fact that it would be nice if criminals thought twice about it before doing something stupid and violent in a public place is a nice after-effect, but it's hardly the whole reason behind it.

In much the same way (for instance), the fear of jail time isn't the only reason we send criminals to jail -- we also do so to get them off the streets.

[Kagetenshi]

[hyzmarca]

[Kagetenshi]

On the contrary, both armed and trained students in that situation ended up dead.

~J

[hyzmarca]

[Kagetenshi]

But you can't take an incident to prove the effectiveness or lack thereof of something that didn't happen during the incident. It's dangerous enough trying to prove things about the things that did happen. What happened was that 100% of the armed, trained students were dead at the end—what would have happened if some of them had not been intending to commit suicide, or had not been participants in the attack, is pure speculation.

~J

[nezumi]

While I'm not aware of any case where party A, the shooter, successfully avoided death by suicide or return fire (not to say there aren't any, I'm just not aware of them), there are several examples where party B, the target, is either armed or unarmed. In almost all of the cases where party B is armed, party A is killed by return fire relatively early compared to party B becoming armed. In cases where party B is unarmed, party A has a much longer survival time, dies by suicide, and generally has a much higher success rate.

[Blade]

Err... I've never noticed that Max Payne was about concealed carry in high schools... Guess I don't read enough between the lines.

[Kagetenshi]

Obviously.

~J

[Critias]

[Kagetenshi]

Hey, I don't argue the overall conclusion (in general—like I've said before, I'll gladly trade the right to concealed carry for an antitank and antiaircraft missile in the hands of every man, woman, and child). I do, however, think that there's a trend to create evidence in dangerous ways.

~J

[nezumi]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Kagetenshi]

Is it so unreasonable? I mean, it's why I put up with the "right" of a lot of other people to keep existing.

~J

[Critias]

[Mercer]

It seems like if guns were harder to get, they guys at Columbine wouldn't been quite so loaded down with them. The Columbine shooters got most of their guns illegally, so its not like gun control would have helped, however if the laws we have were enforced more, then maybe two mentally unbalanced high school kids wouldn't have amassed and then unleashed a small armory on their classmates. Or maybe they would have had to do it with hatchets and it would have taken a lot longer.

If I had a choice between Really Really Strict Gun Control Laws and Really Really Loose Gun Control Laws, I'd pick strict, because I have very little faith in people. (The problem as I see it isn't the guns, its the people, but we've had even less luck with People Control laws so I'll take what I can get.) Assault rifles are cool, and they're a lot of fun to fire, but honestly, if I need between 3500-6000rpm to defend my home, I'm leaving, you can have the home.

[Blade]

Actually it's not only a matter of laws, it's also a matter of culture.

For example in France, as in many countries in Europe (if not all), we have really strict gun control laws (with some slip-ups sometimes, but that's another story).
The main idea behind this is that the government is the only one who should be able to use force (especially lethal force). Cops and soldiers are the only one who should use guns, and most people even don't like seeing armed security agencies. There's also no death penalty: killing people, even if they're armed and dangerous, is really the most extreme solution.
But all this is mostly cultural, due to historical circumstances and all.

I think it's similar to alcohol and tobacco. They're legal in many countries where other drugs (such as marijuana) aren't because of the deep roots they have in the culture. And because of these roots, those legal drugs aren't as dangerous as they could be in cultures which aren't used to it. For example a lot of families in France drink one or two glasses of wine everyday, for lunch and/or dinner. Because of this, and because of the large wine-culture, young people won't consider alcohol as just something to get drunk with and will drink responsibly.
Well, it's not exactly the case today, with a lot of students drinking far too much, but actually most of them didn't get that "alcohol education".

[BlueRondo]

Thoughts from a rather uneducated individual with little empirical data and an ambivalent attitude towards gun ownership:

I like the idea of any reasonably sane, law-abiding citizen being able to carry a weapon in order to defend himself just in case something bad happens. Perhaps it is true, as some people have argued, that incidents like Columbine, Virginia Tech, and other similar scenarios would have ended with less casualties if some of the targets had been armed.

Further, I agree that no reasonable amount of law enforcement (short of a totalitarian police state) can guard against every freak incident where some nutjob goes on a suicidal rampage in a school or mall or some other place. And I agree that, short of strict enforcement, gun regulations will not have much of an effect on criminals who buy their weapons illegally anyway.

What worries me, unfortunately, is that sane, reasonable, law-abiding citizens are not always sane, reasonable, law-abiding citizens. You may not have to worry about Regular Joe going on a rampage at a high school, but perhaps he gets drunk one night, or he gets pissed off at somebody in a bar, and in a momentarily less-than-rational state of mind, he pulls out his gun and shoots somebody. How frequently does something like that happen? Would the frequency dramatically increase if guns were allowed in public? And would the overall number of deaths caused by gunviolence increase or decrease? I don't know the answers to those questions, unfortunately, but I don't think they are obvious.

So I must object to Wounded Ronin's proposition that the philosophy behind gun-control is about valuing society above the individual; it's (in part) about evaluating the trustworthiness and responsibility of normal human beings. For example, Critias says that he wants to be armed and able to defend himself, but what the gun-control activist is saying is, "I'm sorry, but I just don't trust you with a gun. I know you say you only want to protect yourself, and perhaps you're being 100% honest, and perhaps you have a perfect legal record and good social standing, but humans are naturally impulsive and irrational, and I'm just worried that you're going to hurt someone - maybe me - if you carry a gun."

Again, is that being overly paranoid, or is that a legitimate concern? I haven't done enough research on the issue to know for myself.

EDIT: I now see that Mercer has touched upon the point I was trying to make. I'll also add that I don't like the idea of the state dictating to people that they are too "stupid" or "untrustworthy" or "irresponsible" to do this-or-that, but I don't think it is always illegitimate.

[Critias]

I can really go on for days and days about this sort of thing, but I'm not sure what we have to do with gaming any more. So, believe it or not, this really is me trying to be brief.

To those that say "Sorry, but I don't trust you with a gun," I can only reply with "Sorry, but why should I trust you to drive a car, carry a pocket knife, cut that steak, or have opposable thumbs? And, anyways, who are you to say what I can and can't be trusted with, if I'm not doing anything wrong?" You can kill someone with frickin' anything, if you've got your heart set on it (especially if you're the aggressor, and/or insane).

Most importantly, though, is the latter half of my reply. Why should anyone else be able to tell me what I can and can't own, and carry with me as a means of defense of myself and others? Hypothetical question (though worth thinking about), because I have in writing a reason that someone can't tell me that -- the RTKBA. I'm gauranteed the right, and I've accepted the responsibility, to do what I can to take care of myself and those around me instead of simply being a burden on the state and a helpless target. A simple look at the average response times for 911 calls can show you why.

I'm fine with the state telling someone they're too stupid, untrustworthy, or irreponsible to carry a firearm. That's why felons can't own them, for instance. Once you do something wrong, a right can be revoked. That's the law of the land. But you shouldn't have a right infringed upon (a RIGHT, not a priviledge) because of what someone else has done wrong, or what you may or may not do wrong.

When in doubt, any state in the world should err on the side of freedom for those the state is created to serve. Most of them don't any more, but they should. People are supposed to run governments, not the other way around.

[nezumi]

[Kagetenshi]

Shadowrun is fairly divided on the point. Canon weapons law is fairly restrictive in the UCAS, but if you go next door to the NAN, you get places like Vegas where by canon people carry SMGs openly.

~J

[hyzmarca]

It all goes back to game theory and optimal strategies.


For the individual acting alone, the optimal strategy for dealing with organized crime is capitulation, simply because the individual can't defeat the organization. For a community acting together, however, the optimal strategy is excessive violence, since organized crime can't kill all of them and the utter destruction of one organization will serve as an example to others. Since communities rarely act of cohesive teams, however, organized crime has a strong advantage.

In the case of universal armament, the optimal strategy is a variant of tit-for-tat called Don't Start Nothin'. Because the individual who starts something risks a high probability of death with little or no possible reward, things will fall into a Nash equilibrium in with no one ever starts anything.


There are sometimes more complicated factors, of course. Take, for example, the current motion picture and television writer's strike. In theory, the Jack Bauer negotiating strategy should be the optimal choice. Whichever side starts covertly employing violence first should win. But, in this situation there aren't really two sides. In many cases, the writers are also producers and the producers are also writers, resulting in the strange situation of people like Letterman and Spielberg going on strike against themselves because they refuse to pay themselves more money.
You obviously can't beat the crap out of yourself in an attempt to force yourself to comply with your own demands. That's just silly. The absurdity comes from the impersonal nature of collective bargaining units and the fact that most individuals in the motion picture business belong to multiple competing unions.

This, of course, brings us to the possibility of people who are members of an organized crime family also being members of groups with are screwed over by organzied crime, making the politics involved much less simplistic.