Building the Brickhouse, For DitG Players Options

[Spike]

Ah, that explains the instant dislike: Gaiman. Apparently I can now smell his influence even through the intartubes.... We already have a mage using his 'Death' as a totem...

Honestly, I seem to have a tonal issue. Most of the streetgang stuff I've seen so far seems to be out of a bad '80s movie, whereas I seem to be trying to operate on a vaguely defined 'real life' idea.


Don't get me wrong; I like bad 80's movies at least as much (if not more) than the next guy... but that's just not why I sit down to game generally. I think the 'cyberpunk' aesthetic should have grown and matured as it aged, not remained trapped in a weird headspace where 'rocker' was a 'great' idea for a shadowrunner, and gang leaders of frat house streetgangs should be Jamacan Jazz dudes named Fat Charlie.


Of course, I'm also the guy who has WTF! moments when people tell me that in the real world guys drink to get tougher and bolder with chicks, not to get drunk, or take PCP so they'll be strong enough to shatter every bone in their hand as they punch through a brick wall.

Taking the drug generally IS the point, now what it does for you. Yeah, I know, Speed was popularized by truckers who didn't want to fall asleep at the wheel, and lots of opium addicts started with chronic pain they were alieviating. Its not all cut and dried. I'd like to think BTLs would be, but I've been overruled, so...

In conclusion: I see one point of disconnect: You seem to be tossing out literary ideas (melodramatic, tragic figures, poignant moments...). I'm not, generally, operating under that sort of assumption. I'm strictly a cause and effect sort of guy... at least when designing worlds and things that go in them. Even at my most literary I tend to think more grim action movie than Poe or Neil Fucking Gaiman.

Hopefully we'll find a middle ground.



As for Crowbar: I ran into a reference with him as the leader and ran with it. I'm attached to the idea for that reason. Apparently you had the same assumption, but instead of running with it, you realized it was just an assumption and dropped it like a hot rock.

I suppose someone else could have been the leader and Crowbar could have just been someone influential, but aside from my irrational pitbull deathgrip on the idea, why recreate the wheel? We have a working model already: Crowbar is a named NPC from the gang, his death/mauling on the 19th was pretty important to the surviving gang members, and it easy to see him as a leader and move on. At least two of us had already made that assumption, its natural, why not keep it?



Anyway, I'll cut this short. I'm running on less than three hours of sleep, I'm snippier than usual and have been engaging stupidity as a sideline while waiting for the ball to roll and I don't want to get into a fight over nothing.

Also: For influential Comic dude, I prefer Alan Moore.

[Eyeless Blond]

Heh, not a fan of Neil Gaiman? Yeah, I agree he's not very cyberpunk. More later, but middle ground on the leader is definitely appealing; something with a harder edge, but still someone whose ambitions run more to the party side than the business side.

For me, the move from parties and drugs to serious chopshopping smacks of a get-rich-quick scheme, hatched by an upstart lieutenant, more than a sea change by the top leadership. I mean, they're not exactly the most interrelated fields in the world. And a name like Crowbar sounds more like a chopshop leader's name than the name of a party gang leader, so the notion of him being a lieutenant who was known for get rich quick schemes suddenly having a great business idea and following through on it, just seemed to fit better than him as a guy who was pure 24/7 sex, drugs and rock n' roll for years and suddenly decided to take the gang in a whole new direction.

Thing is, it's your show. So far, you're the only one approved to post, so you have the final word on everything, just by posting it IC. You're also the one with the longest-running affiliation with the gang, and it makes up more of your identity than most of us. So however you want to do it, that's the way we'll do it.

[Spike]

Its not that I'm 'not a fan'. Hey, I enjoyed Stardust a hell of a lot more than I expected. Its just that Gaiman, like Harlan Ellison before him has way to rabid a fanbase, and way too much 'fanboy cache' than his CV actually earns him. Too little work, too much 'flash' to the works in question for me to really get all the love. In RPG circles Anasazi Boys crops up EVERYWHERE... and gets annoying fast, sort of like 'gothic lolita death'.

But back to the Brickhouse Boys. Since apparently I'm now shouldering the workload... I'd ask how that happened, but I suspect my intractability and general irritable posts have more to do with it than simply being the only currently active member.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)



For as long as anyone can remember there have been gangs in the old brick tenements in Kingsgate. Hundreds of families live there, poor, dispossessed... the local kids have always run in packs, played in packs, done petty crimes in packs. Just a fact of life of Kingsgate. Not that anyone would rightly call those packs of kids 'gangs', not properly. The real gangs of the area pretty much left the tenements alone, and used the various Brickhouse gangs as recruiting grounds, poaching the kids with the most potential, leaving the hanger-ons to age up and out of the gangs.

The Crash didn't change too much. Not at first. A wave of newly SINless, many of them young adults, college students and dissaffected teenagers looking for an excuse migrated to the area and settled, naturally enough into the relatively tame area of the Brickyard. They tended to group up together, and the younger kids began looking up to these 'more affluent' young men and their party-boy behavior. This was the start of the Brickhouse Boys.

Not that anyone in Kingsgate really cared. The new Boys were an older, larger version of the old Boys. Still unorganized, still committing petty crimes for petty reasons, and anyone with real talent or ability got snatched up and jumped into a real gang soon enough.

Crowbar was an old school Boy, having grown up in the Brickyard, in fact never setting foot outside of the tenement he was born in until he was 8. (Assumption, these are huge hab block buildings...). He'd never moved into real gangs, but his violent streak and tendency to steal cars (be means of the eponymous crowbar he carried for this purpose... breaking locking mechanisms by brute force) earned him his moniker and a reputation as a wild loner. When he was 12 he was picked up in Touristville after boosting a car some foolish SINner had driven to go slumming and spent the next 8 years in the Port Orchard Pit, getting out four years ago a hardened con.

Crowbar could have joined just about any Gang he wanted in Kingsgate, but he went back to the Yard, and linked up with the new incarnation of the Boys, bringing with him more criminal inclinations. Still, the other 'adults' in the gang considered him an outsider, a johnny come lately, and even, to an extent a wet blanket. He was good for scoring booze, often boosting it off of trucks, but not much else.

But Crowbar had some things they didn't have. He had ambition to be more than just another yardie thug, just another ganger. He also had a decent idea of how real gangs worked. He even had some real leadership ability, lots of the younger Boys looked up to him.

The only thing he lacked, the only thing he'd ever lacked, was a good plan.

Taking over the boys was easy. He brought in some real criminals, real street gangers, some of whom (like Maus) he'd met in prison. Others he recruited from other sources. His crew adopted the Peacoats to identify themselves within the Boys, and started doing 'real crime', shaking down the pimps, boosting cars for sale to chop shops, pushing BTLs and Drugs. It wasn't hard to recruit, the Brickhouse Boys party hard lifestyle was attractive to a lot of street gangers who thought the endless rumble was a waste of time.

Amazingly, there was no Schism. The previous Boys lacked real leadership, just degrees of influence over the seething mass of partygoers and boozehounds. The relatively organized and motivated Peacoats eventually became 'The Gang' while everyone else faded into 'hanger-ons', and the Boys had 'arrived'. Two years to the day after stepping out of the Port Orchard Pen, Crowbar looked out over what he had wrought and thought it was good.

That was when they started really pushing themselves as a real gang. The tradition of not messing too much with the Brickhouse Boys held firm for a little while, but when Crowbar cracked down on poaching his members, it evaporated like so much smoke.

The first garage opened up soon after, and the Boys began rumbling, stealing cars and whatever else they could in roving packs, bringing them back to be stripped down for resale. It took another year before they started seeing enough profit to open the second chop shop. That was when they really earned the ire of the Asphalt Kings.

It started small. The kings were still growing into their role, but viewed all cars in Kingsgate as theirs. A few rumbles, a few streetfights and demo derbys were the name of the game at that point, the AK's heavily modified custom jobs against the Boys willingness to go steal an entire carlot just for that fight made for some interesting matchups. Nothing was resolved, and with some arrogance, the Brickhouse Boys thought they'd arrived, able to take on an older, more organized gang and win.

In reality, the Kings had other things to worry about than dealing with the BB's. Kingsgate was rapidly turning into a potential warzone between all the rival gangs in the area, and the Kings were playing things close to their chests.

It helped that the old brick tenements were, by Barrens standards, a fortress. No gang could operate freely in the brickyard neighborhood unless they belonged there. It wasn't the Boys particularly, but the thousands of residents who, while hardly on excellent terms with one another, were hardly willing to allow outsiders to roll through their homes. The last gang who had tried that had never come back out, though the yardies were disposing of their own fallen for days after. Most of the adult residents had grown up in the Boys, considered them family...

But the Boys weren't limited to the tenements anymore, in fact Crowbar had set up shop in one of the garages to be closer to the action. When the Wartoad crashed through the wall, he was one of the first to go down, mangled by the modified dumptruck. Many of the boys retreated to the tenements, shell shocked and confused, many of the newer members holed up in the second chop shop, and planned to fight back. Unorganized, confused and lacking anyone willing to step into Crowbars shoes right away, their petty war was fueled by outrage and numbers.

That ended, along with most of the surviving Peacoats, when UVN, secretly allied with the Asphalt Kings, burned the second Chopshop to the ground with most of the gang still inside.

Plenty of survivors though. The Boys were always a large gang, and the tenements were still safe ground, though these days wearing the coat might get you booted. The Kings and the Ultraviolence Nation are still willing to rumble at the sight of a Peacoat, and the Yardies don't want to invite trouble. Best just to scatter the Brickyard Boys and return to the old ways, when no one wanted to mess with them.





Got to check some timelines in there, but there's my take. don't want to put anyone else character in without their input, but I tried to establish a 'way in' for anyone.

[HeySparky]

Got to check some timelines in there, but there's my take. don't want to put anyone else character in without their input, but I tried to establish a 'way in' for anyone.

Wow. That's nice. I'm still leery of the 'large gang' thing, but overall a very nice treatment. Could you plug that into the wiki? With dates and all?

[Spike]

I can try to plug it in. One thing to keep in mind is the size of the gang is based on a massive pool of 'assosiates' rather than core members. I haven't tried to put up a split between the two, as eventually a huge percentage of even the 'Peacoats' would have been more 'assossiates' than actual gang members, given a lack of Jumping In, if you were a Yardie you automatically had membership just by saying 'yeah, I'm a boy'.

Which turned out to be their weakness when the Kings rolled through them: All those 'members' suddenly... weren't.

[Eyeless Blond]

Yeah, it seems good to me. I don't think WR will object either; with this story it's not like the Boys were ever a large gang; more like a collection of small kiddie crews who were just lumped together under the label "Brickhouse/Brickyard Boys."

Heh, "yardies." Gotta make sure we use that (and Brickyard) too; sounds much less silly than "housers". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Spike]

that's why I adopted it as the general term for the neighborhood. As gang names go, the Brickhouse Boys is fine, but I needed a 'casual use' term that tripped off the tongue better.

I've done the timeline, but it implies some cleaning to the main post before I move it to the wiki. I'd like to get input on Rico and the other members so I'm not utterly ignoring them/making it 'Maus's show' before I move the entire thing over. I've also deepened the rivalry a bit between the Kings and the Boys, hopefully I didn't go too far. I'll post more details in the general recruiting thread about that.

I'm mentally assembling the 'ground' of the Yard as I go. I see, easily, three or four massive brick blockhouses sharing a common 'yard' area, sort of like barracks complexes on army bases. Maybe a few smaller, older brick tenements in teh area as well. Residents would subdivide based on building (E block) and floor, maybe even wing ( I'm from E Block, Four West...), but still see themselves as part of a larger 'coalition', and the kids roam from building to building unopposed, meaning the 'Boys' were a singular entity from the entire complex.

This is presupposing that the tenements are more in line with 'Ghetto' tenements and not more conventional urban housing units. Layout is not unlike a hotel with fewer amenities (long hallways, a lobby area, 'apartments' lined up in identical tiny rooms.). Alternatively, the 'halls' are outside, with mezzanines, but that doesn't sound very 'brick' like to me...

I don't actually see much 'turf' using in the tenements themselves. Obviously, it was a core area that other gangs can't get a foothold in (being outsiders), but for car boosting and chopping the Boys had to 'move out'. While they still essentially 'owned' the turf, the familial connection made it less lucrative to actually run it.

I do imagine that there is still a heavy gang presence in the Yard itself, even this quick after the destruction of the Boys. They've ditched the name and the peacoats, and given up on expanding, but the members who were least likely to move out of the Yard and into the more lucrative gang opportunities outside are still there. If we were to pull back the timeline so we could watch the evolution we'd see a hybrid of the old party boys and the newer businessminded gangers, with an emphasis on squeezing/protecting the Yard area.

Right now I imagine the 'survivors' are those who would be unwelcome in the Yard itself for being die hard 'Peacoats', the ones that were closest to Crowbar's operation. Schism if you like. Mutual anathema, depending upon how close the individual's attachement to the Yard is (Maus has almost none... sadly. Rico probably does have a lot of ties to the Yard itself (through family), despite being one of Crowbar's buddies. Welcome to the hood, but not by the remaining gang, if you will. (the Yard's particular characteristics might explain how Drip survived there and got in a gang at all....without a 'jumping in' other than being a yardie its easy to see less than badass members survive....)

[Bearclaw]

Nice job guys. Sorry for the lack of contribution, but I just found and read the thread. I like what you've got down, and it works with what I had.

In my backstory, Rico was working in the chop-shop and got shot out in the alley before it blew. He woke up to bodies and a burnt down garage.

[Spike]

The real question is (having access to this awesome (I'm modest) resource on gang/neighborhood material ahead of time (unlike moi), how much of it do you want to use. When did Rico join the gang? Is his family in the Yard neighborhood or were you one of Crowbar's 'recruits' from outside, brought in to add legitmacy to the gang outside the yard?

Though now I know why Maus hasn't been hanging with Rico, he missed the showdown all together. Not being the sort to think to check for survivors he just saw the wreckage and 'moved on'. Of course, he might be mourning the loss of the garage more than any individual... he's a bit odd.

[HeySparky]

I've been trying to figure out where to make Dozer from - this is perfect.

((Dozer grew up in one of those kiddie gangs, one that was 'funded' by a scam charity. The scam centered around Daddy (the boss of the kiddie gang) taking a money to (figuratively) pimp out a bunch of 'Children who need your help. Call today.' He'd take pics and vids of them, write or make them write or record messages to the scammed sponsors. Daddy got a cut of the donations and the folks running the scam WAY overcharged the targeted wealthy sponsors. That, of course, fell apart. The falling apart is Dozer's story.

So Dozer's kiddie gang was not much different than the others, but they were sorta kept apart as much as possible. 1) so that folks wouldn't get wind of the scam and want it and 2) because it wasn't profitable if the kids got hurt.

That'll let Dozer have been under the radar a bit.))

Now... I'm thinking Dozer was a recent Peacoat. He's gonna have some sort of tricked out pickup truck. The tricked out-ed-ness is sorta up to WR. I'm gonna talk to him about it.

I like this BG because it's a lot of good flavor and a lot of opportunities to fit your character in however you like.

[Spike]

Sure, nickel and dime scam operations like that are the bread and butter income of many tenement rats, even today. I'm not sure about the isolation bit, necessarily.. I mean, taking the entire tenement as a whole gives a much wider range of potentially 'adoptable' kids, but then again, I had a hard time parsing your posted backstory... that is 'where Dozer fits in the story'....

While I've put the Boys into the mindset of 'drive 'em like ya stole 'em'.... cause they did, that doesn't disallow personal 'tricked out' rides either.

though I suppose I could start chanting 'one of us' over and over again... but then I'd have to make Maus conform more too...


One of us
One of us...





Sorry, its easy once you get started to get trapped in it.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Eyeless Blond]

Well, the "tricked out"-edness I have an idea for. I'll post after lunch. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Spike]

So. When I walked to lunch I had this totally naff idea.

there seems to be some confusion on just how dead Crowbar is. Rather than weigh in on the topic with any finality (and since his 'death' probably involved a giant armored dump truck crashing through the wall of his office unexpectedly, there is BOUND to be some confusion on the subject in any case), I leave that up to WinterRat to decide (oh, great one...hallowed be... um.. nevermind...)

But:

I think I'll stat up the 'post injury' Crowbar as if he DID live and is currently holed up somewhere in the Yard recuperating. He might make an interesting contact later on (the fallen Gang Leader) or, on the off chance Maus doesn't survive the 'first event'... well it'd make an interesting backup character...

WHile normally I would say he should be a higher BP character, I think we can safely assume having limbs ripped off and losing most of what you own to a wartoad justifies a reduction to starthing character levels.


-Spike, who cackles madly whenever the mood strikes....

[Eyeless Blond]

In my backstory, Rico was working in the chop-shop and got shot out in the alley before it blew. He woke up to bodies and a burnt down garage.

Which one? The one on the 19th, or the one on the 31st? That's kind of an important distinction.


Okay, here's what I got:

Dozer and Drip met back in the early days of the chop shops, when Crowbar was aggressively looking for young blood to work in the pits. Drip was a Tacoma native, where the gangs are much more tightly controlled and most of the homeless and downtrodden are individuals, wandering around homeless and scrounging for food, not building gangs and chopping cars. He and Dozer jumped at the opportunity to join the shops, Drip because of the prospect of regular meals, Dozer for reasons of his own.

Now, Drip is a relatively smart guy, but until Oct. 19th he never considered that the Kings would ever come after them. Until he joined up with the peacoats and their chopshop he'd been one of the teeming masses of starving street urchins... well sorta, Drip's never been very conventional. But still, he was naive, and the events of the 19th were a wake-up call. To survive, the yardies needed to be as much of a threat as the Kings, and that meant weapons. Big weapons, because Drip's a little guy and he tends to overestimate the value of being big.

So, while the rest of the oldsters were retreating to the tenements, Drip and Dozer, along with a small group of angry, dedicated gangers were planning a counterattack, a big one. They spent the next week and a half working on a beaten-up SUV they had stolen the week before, busily turning it into a tank that Drip immediately dubbed the Kingslayer. The plan was to bum-rush the Kings on Halloween night, doing to them what had been done to the peacoats only a short time before, but with less smashing of hardware and more running over of people.

Unfortunately, both groups had the same idea, at basically the same time, and they passed in the night. The Kingslayer's warparty arrived to find the King's base devoid of its heavy hitters, and the Kings arrived to destroy the Yardys' chop shop, killing or scattering everyone who hadn't gone on the warpath.

[HeySparky]

You and that SUV. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I really like the name Kingslayer. Gotta have a ganger pal go down named Jaime. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Maybe it was Jaime's ride. Someone that doesn't put Dozer front-and-center too much.

[Spike]

Naff, except it was UVN the second time by the pre-existing timeline (and reinforcing the totally unnecessary (in this case) point that it was the coordination between the bigger gangs that lead to everyone else getting stomped flat, more than just utter patheticness.

I'd love to have Trojan/Johnny Soho's takes on the post 19th stuff too. The idea of this souped up SUV would need to be run through the GM's, unless that happens to be your approved gear so far.

Why I'm saying 'Naff' all the time? No idea. Seemed Naff, so I nicked it.

[HeySparky]

The souped up TRUCK* is what I'm requesting from WR instead of the BP I'd been granted as my reward (for my part in the wiki - linked map, character sheets, structure (all with Vegas' help of course)). So I'm bringing Dozer in at 310 bp and broaching the subject of the Kingslayer and whatever else (Control Rig or summat) being equivalent of the rest of the BP.


* Actual vehicle is TBD.

[Eyeless Blond]

You and that SUV. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I really like the name Kingslayer. Gotta have a ganger pal go down named Jaime. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Maybe it was Jaime's ride. Someone that doesn't put Dozer front-and-center too much.

Don't forget the mechanical arms. Gotta have mechanical arms. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Jaime "Lion" Goldman. Lost his right hand in the Oct 19th raid, and so lent his Kingslayer to Dozer, to get revenge. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[Eyeless Blond]

So, thanks to all that excellent work by Spike, I'm not sure what else we need here. The only thing I can think of is to maybe map out the brickyard itself, and locate it and the chopshops somewhere in yardie territory.

Oh, and inform WR that we have a consolidated background for the Boys now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Spike]

That locating stuff someone else will have to do, The Redmond maps have proven superior to my primative brain....

[Eyeless Blond]

Okay, I'll try to figure out how that works then. Means I'll have to download Flash, darn it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[HeySparky]

If you need a loc added to the maps, talk to Vegas. As to WHERE it should go... I got no idea... and I don't remember where Boys turf was. I should really know that.

Again - talk to Vegas.

[Vegas]

yes, talk to me about placing locations. DO NOT TOUCH THE MAPS. I don't care how "versed" you are in graphics programs.. DO NOT TOUCH THE MAPS (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[WinterRat1]

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSO FREAKING EVER SHOULD ANYONE OTHER THAN VEGAS, SPARKY, OR MYSELF TOUCH THE MAPS!

IN CASE YOU MISSED THAT, LET ME REPEAT, DO NOT TOUCH THE MAPS!!!

DO.

NOT.

TOUCH.

THE MAPS.

(Have I made myself clear yet? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

[Eyeless Blond]

Yes, yes of course. No touching of the maps. When I was referring to downloading Flash it was to get street views of the BB's area; I think that's available through Google Maps. Satellite views are tough to work with, and it's not like I can get in a car and drive around the area myself. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)