Hope mine gets here. It's like every time I order a hard copy book they ship it via llama.

I think this is a great point, and it's one of the things that I really liked about Vice. I know Ancient mentioned the org charts earlier, but I do have one relatively minor issue with the Yakuza section in particular
. The org charts and the sample sections really felt less well-organized and clear in the Yakuza section versus other sections. Maybe it's the larger language barrier for me with Japanese, or more familiarity with the fictionalized Mafia and Vory structure rather than the Yakuza. But either way, reading through the Yakuza section (and most specifically, the org charts/sample sections) something just kept feeling a little disjointed and scattered. I can't put a finger on it specifically, and maybe I'll need to give it another readthrough. I just remember that was my initial thought when I finished the book (well, that and "yup, still not a fan of the zobop", but that's personal taste having little to do with the quality of the material).

I compiled the org charts based on the individual author writeups and other references I possessed, however, I was no longer around to reference check the final version. With a couple of minor tweaks (only one of which actually applies to the Yakuza one) I'm quite satisfied. What might feel disjointed to you in the Yakuza organization is that it doesn't follow the simple, vertical hierarchical flow of other syndicates (plus their higher-level organization is much more fluid and more complex than previous sourcebooks had presented it).

That's fairly likely. I'll have to give it another read through, as it has been a while. I just recall shaking my head after the Yakuza section and thinking "glad I'm running in Tampa and they've got very little presence here."

Nah, Tampa is a mob town...

Thank you Trafficantes!

Fixed it for you

I completely agree. To be honest, I LIKED the holes... they made the anecdote seem like an old spook story that circulated over and over. And Kane is fun to read.

Really glad for the Yakuza section. It helped ENORMOUSLY with my game.

Uh...the extra "f" was just for impact! Yeah, that's it!

Mine finally came in today. Reading now to catch up.

First thing that strikes me was "Man this would have been worth an extra $5 to have in hardcover.

It's pretty.

Vaguely related: the Mafia, it is a-changin'.

Also yay! A section I didn't write.

Triads
I didn't write the Triads. If I did, I might not have used Sticks - not because Sticks is a bad choice, because it's perfectly in line with his backstory of having a Triad prostitute mother, but because I use Sticks a lot.

Like the Yakuza and the Mafia, the Triads are a venerable syndicate with a rich history; like in the previous chapters you can see that the author doesn't want to dwell too much on it - personally, I would have liked to see more of the modern history of the Triads beginning with the break-up of China, but I respect the choice.

The "bleeding oaths" bit was really started by Jay Levine in Hong Kong in Runner Havens, though the ultimate origins of it stretch back a little bit to discussions had about Shadows of Latin America.

If the Triads had a proper analog in Western society, I'd say there were like a felonious version of the Freemasons - and even that does a bit of a disservice, as there are rankings and hierarchies to freemasonry that the Triads aren't burdened with.

It's unfortunate a mention to the Sai Fan wasn't worked in, but I can understand why.

If there's a major difference between the Triad section and the previous descriptions of the Yakuza and Mafia, it's the in-depth look at what criminal activities the syndicate gets into. I like it, inasmuch as it gives a very street-level feel for the organization as a whole. For myself, I think my writing on Crime Pays would have made a discussion of Mafia/Yak operations seem redundant - or then again, maybe the Mafia and the Yaks are so diverse in their activities and less ethnically focused that it would have been difficult to do proper justice. Anyway, I like the criminal activities described in this section.

The Kowloon Massacre was basically my great contribution to Ghost Cartels, and if I still wrote for the game I'd probably make the legend grow a little.

It's kind of unfortunate we didn't get an "example lodge" similar to the example gumi/family for the Yaks/Mafia.

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to post this, but at what point will we be discussing the Vory section? My current campaign is set in Tacoma and the PCs are majorly involved with the Vory. One is actually in the Vory (sort of). So any comments or advice concerning that organization are useful to me. Thanks!

Next week. Unless everybody just wants to discuss it with the Triads, the sections were shorter than I remembered.

Thanks AH! I'll review that section this week and keep an eye to this thread in case anybody elects to post something. I find the Vory a rather interesting criminal organization compared to the Mafia, the Yakuza, and Triads. I find their pragmatic approach to crime makes sense in the modern world. They're scary ruthless bastards but I see their approach could work.

Any compliments on the Vory section should be sent to Synner for making me look at the Vory as more than just thugs (and John Dunn before that as I played with them in Denver). Dispersions about the quality of writing are my fault.

McQ, I told you that you should read The Winter Men.

Stephen I have no problems with the Vory section. Actually I'm integrating some of the NPCs into my game, most notably Lyubov Kiriliskaya. She'll probably be showing up as a fully statted out NPC when my college game cranks back up in the fall. Right now its the end of January 2071 in that game and the Tempo war is about to heat up. And my group is already know to the Ragers. Did some wetwork for the Vory to take out some Yaks meeting with the Ragers. Seems like the Vory want to put that gang in their pocket and don't take kindly to Yak intrusion.

On the subject of literary influences what is the group consensus on the movie Eastern Promises? I picked it up because as far as I can tell it deals with the Vory in London. Plus I heard it got good reviews, plus I like Vigo Mortensson's work.

You did an admirable job and I'm just sorry I didn't get to dev-edit the final material to give it a little extra shine. All the writers went out of their way to avoid the clichés and make their takes on the syndicates more than cardboard cutouts and stereotypes.

As for Vory references Bobby's mentioned the excellent comic book series The Winter Men ,and as far as books go I strongly suggest a look at the Vory bits of McMafia (sidenote:some of the pictures in that book are hilarious and scary all at once) and Russian and Post-Soviet Organized Crime. Both are brilliant though not quite on the same visceral level as Gomorra.

Synner correct me if I'm wrong but you were the mover behind Shadows of Europe right? If so I just wanted to give you and the crew who worked on that book a big thumbs up. I was reviewing chunks of it last night digging for info for one of my player's characters who has a strong European connection. In particular I want to thank whoever wrote the French section and the Czech section. Those have proven most useful. Although I must say as someone who is Spanish and Italian on my mother's side and French and German on my father's side, it's kind of depressing to see what happened to the old country. But that's why they call this a dystopian game, right?

By the way who first came up with the great dragon Schartzkopf? He's turning into a major factor in my game and a mentor to the PC I mentioned above. She's a dwarf so she got a big kick out of learning that Schwartzkopf's metahuman form is a dwarf. And Prague just seems like a really cool town.

Yes, I'm one of the people who put together Shadows of Europe (which started as a fan-project right here on Dumpshock), and it was the book that got my foot in the door of freelancing (and turned out to be my first developer credit!) I did a fair bit of writing for the book itself and it remains one of my favorite Shadowrun books ever.

The French material was the work of a group of exceptionally talented authors who have gone on to freelance for me and now work (well most of them) on the French license. I actually co-wrote parts of the Czech Republic wth the talented Lars Blumenstein (who also wrote Switzerland) and Tobias Wolter (who had the unenviable task of adapting/writing the AGS). We'd actually reintroduced Schwartzkopf (until then a minor reference in German canon) in Dragons of the Sixth World, and later revisited him/his agenda in SOTA64 (Old World Magic), Loose Alliances (Benandanti XXV) and Street Magic.

Given my less North Am-centric approach to the Shadowrun universe, I had big plans for Prague (and Metrópole) as the spotlight sprawl(s) in the Awakened Haunts setting book (another project Catalyst has opted to discontinue).

Just to keep this thread relevant - unlike previous Underworld material I wanted Vice's portrayal of crime to provide a bigger/global picture (beyond the Ethnic syndicates chapter) and the various parts of the Transnational Syndicate chapter accomplish this goal very well, tying into material in older books like the Shadows of... and Target... series. Combined with the sample syndicate/NPCs writeups this allowed us to provide both a macro context and a street-level picture at the same time.

Those were Achille Autran, Mikael "Otaku Mike" Brodu, Ghislain "Namergon" Bonnotte and myself (Nathanaël Jouen). Laurent "Mojo Pin" Guillemard and Jérôme "Riftael" Pfister, while not credited, were also involved in the brainstorming. Also Pénombre was involved at the very beginning of the EuroSB project (can't remember his real name...).

- Otaku Mike also wrote in Shadows of Asia, Loose Alliances and System Failure, and made the maps and corporate logos of (I think) every book from Shadows of Europe to Corporate Enclaves, plus SR4A.
- Namergon is still a member of the French dev team. As far as I remember, he did not author since (or, at least, he didn't take author credit), "only" taking parts in brainstorming, translations and proofreading.
- I had to quit freelancing for professional reason in the middle of Shadows of Asia writing (I think that's Jason Levine who finished my work). Since, I have been providing some input on the joint French-German book SOX, adding some "similar models" name in the French version of Arsenal, and ranting on DSF about corporate plots the remaining freelancers write. I have been toying with the idea of returning to freelancing for some time though, at least for the French line.

Okay, I forgot ho short these things are. This might be the lack of sleep talking, but let's speed this up a little Vory and Ghost Cartels this week, all the Ethnic Syndicates next week. All of 'em.

Vory v Zakone
I do enjoy the Vory, if only because they're supposed to be the bigger bastards, the horrible, violent and alien Others compared to your friendly neighborhood syndicate. The American mafias, for whatever else they may be, are 100% Heinz 57 purebred mutt Americans. The Yakuza are inscrutable, the Triads are mysterious. But the Vory, you know where you stand with them...or do you?

If I had my druthers, I would have focused less on the ancient history and more on the diversity. See, the American Mafia is a melting pot like you won't see in the Yakuza, but the Triads and the Vory, they come from China and Russia. Those are countries that are older, more vast, and more ethnically diverse than we can dream of. The Vory and Triads should have Tibetans, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Chechnyans, Siberians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Uyghur, Kazakhs, Buyei...these are countries so huge and far away and forgotten that they have ethnic groups numbering in the millions you've probably never heard of.

I would probably also have focused more on the Vory's influence on Europe. Maybe the Europeans wanted to write that bit for themselves, I dunno.

The crimes...a little weak. For one, there's a bit of sloppiness ("awakened" <- note lack of capitalization), and "Thaumaturgy" is a word I personally avoided in SR...people throw it about too easily these days.

The Prison Economy, of course, is dead on. You could have written a page on the Vory and their close, intimate relationship with prison. I sort of like to think about The Last Castle, how there's only one difference between a prison and a castle...and El Mariachi, the violent gangster chilling in a prison by himself.

Maybe it's because I read The Winter Men and loved it too much, but I wish more of the Vory dialect had been worked in. Most of y'all probably don't know what I'm talking about, but there was some really great terminology in that book - the lead Vory's would have areas and businesses under their "roof," and it was fine to have some little side business - Russia has this extensive cultural phenomenon of moonlighting, legal and not - but you always had to "pay up to the roof," and if someone wasn't paying then "you had a leak in your roof." I'm not doing it justice, but I didn't sleep last night and the brain fatigue says I'm hitting most of the high points. Carrying on.

The one part of the Vory write-up I really like is the Seattle Vory. Jong Won and I hadn't done much with them in Runner Havens, so it was really great to see half-discarded characters like The Terminator really shine a little and try to carve out their space in the sprawl. I especially like it because it's a smaller, more intimate organization than the old established Yaks and Mafia goombas, and the focus on the key movers and shakers is fantastic. You can really plan what killing one of them would do to the whole operation.

Ghost Cartels
I might have moved the GC to ethnic syndicates, myself. Maybe if tempo and biological drugs continued to be more of a going concern after the actual Ghost Cartels campaign they'd be more interesting...

/dev/grrl is about the most bizarre voice for this section as I can imagine. I can just picture her doing a m-blog report for school and Pistons posted it up on the virtual fridge in the JackPoint lounge, and then Marcos and Glasswalker come in and start arguing over who gets the last michelada when they noticed it and started correcting it. But I digress.

I might be a touch hypocritical about it, but I guess I used to downplay a lot of pre-2011 SR history. It's not that it's unimportant or didn't happen, it's just weird to see a date like "2007" with a pseudo-event attached.

The NewsNow article...I'm meh about it. Don't get me wrong, it's written well enough. Gets the job done. I don't know if I could have written it, tell the truth, so that's my bit of a kudos to the author. It just doesn't sit 100% with me for some reason.

Of the few remaining GC, the David Cartel is probably the best of the bunch to pick. Sort of like a mini-Yakuza, as far the weirdly high-reaching corporate connections go.

I think if I had a gripe, it's the direct connection of tempo with the Ghost Cartels. Yes, I know that the name of the campaign was Ghost Cartels (we literally couldn't come up with anything else, and some of us tried), but a couple of us wen to some seriously elaborate efforts in the book itself to emphasize the secret, hidden nature of this stuff, to the point that player characters were undertaking astral quests jut to find out where the stuff came from. Even then, you only had one major producer and if you played it out until they end, things probably didn't end well for you.

It's really hard to handle some of these characters. If I had the time, I should've upgraded the freelancer domunets on the JackPointersand tried to insert some stuff in their about their speech habits, tone, and little quirks and oddities. Too late now, which is why Fian-o reads like a dirty hippy...whine whine whine, bitch bitch bitch.

It was good to see a little bit of South Amreicam though

The Vory is one of my favorite cartels as well. It's a shame Vice apparently gave them less pages than the Mafia (snooorre) and the Yaks (been there already).

AH, is there a right up of Tamanous in the book? As an organization, it's mentioned briefly in places but never described.

Tamanous gets a four page writeup in Loose Alliances for what it's worth. Good book I recommend picking up a copy.

Vory v Zakone
I do enjoy the Vory, if only because they're supposed to be the bigger bastards, the horrible, violent and alien Others compared to your friendly neighborhood syndicate. The American mafias, for whatever else they may be, are 100% Heinz 57 purebred mutt Americans. The Yakuza are inscrutable, the Triads are mysterious. But the Vory, you know where you stand with them...or do you?

If I had my druthers, I would have focused less on the ancient history and more on the diversity. See, the American Mafia is a melting pot like you won't see in the Yakuza, but the Triads and the Vory, they come from China and Russia. Those are countries that are older, more vast, and more ethnically diverse than we can dream of. The Vory and Triads should have Tibetans, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Chechnyans, Siberians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Uyghur, Kazakhs, Buyei...these are countries so huge and far away and forgotten that they have ethnic groups numbering in the millions you've probably never heard of.



Here's the quote on this from the Vice book:

BIGOTRY
Racism is ingrained deeply into the psyche of every Russian and
is passed through a mother’s milk to each new generation. Unlike
traditional racism, against trogs or halfers, the Vory draw their lines
ethnically. Jews, Mongols, and Tatars are all looked down upon – a
Red Vor will trust a Moscovite ork before Tatar human. Th is extends
to all of the ethnic groups throughout Mother Russia. Due to their
role as “a stranger in the house,” the Western Vory have shed this
pattern to some degree; even outside the motherland though, they
still recruit from Russian ghettoes when given a choice.


That seems to suggest they would not recruit from the ethnic groups you mentioned above. Or am I missing something?

No. There was actually a lot of debate about the spread and profitability of organlegging in the 2070s, and Tamanous as an organization suffered from HYDRA-ization - in 3rd edition, they were literally everywhere, fingers in all sorts of pies.


My personal opinions did not, thankfully, overly influence the author of this section. It's good to get away from one mindset for a while.

My point is that the Vory, even confined to post-Soviet bloc countries, are probably as big and diverse of a crime syndicate as the Mafia - you just don't see it, because all the games are set in Hong Kong and Seattle and places set a world and a suborbital ride away. There are undoubtedly dozens of minor ethnic syndicates in Russia you've never heard of but the Vory have because that's the guys they've been fighting for decades.

But you see, the ones that come out of Russia and related territories - these guys are the risk-takers, the entrepreneurs, the crazies and the fresh young meat looking to get started and carve out their niche. They're new, and unlike with the Mafia killing one of them is a big deal because there's not that many of them setting up shop. They go and they recruit from the immigrants, the expatriates, the college students out there on scholarship - and the scary thing? The scary bad ass bosses are back at home in their fortress-prisons or captains of industry, machine guns with war criminals attached, and they're the ones that someone cashes in their favors to bring over here and solve their little shadowrunner problem.

Not much to say about the Triads' part. The lesson on Chinese numerology was interesting ; it is one of the not so many topic where Vice really taught me something new (having read the 2nd editon Underworld SB sure doesn't help).

Concerning the Vory, I'll start with the two things that left me... disappointed regarding quality :
- "We [the Vory] were the reason that Kalashnikov became a worldwide name." No. The Soviet government foreign policy during the Cold War was the main reason. Then came people like Viktor Bout, most of them being former member of the intelligence services or the armed forced : those are the Avtoritet, not Vor. The Albanian gangs, who looted entire military bases during the 1997 unrest, should get much more credit than the Vory. But, okay, I can imagine Red Anya making that kind of bragging claim.
- "Here's an article I dug up briefing Interpol on Vory tactics based on undercover work and investigation." and three pages later it's down to "we're criminals not sorority member." Okay, maybe the undercover agent hadn't fully recovered from his identity disorder when he wrote that briefing, unless Red Anya actually lied about the file's origin...

Shortly after I read Vice, French magazine Le Point published a article about the Vory and more especially the kanonieri, the Georgians gangs, who are said to be the strongest group these days. The article also explained the meaning of the Vory tatoos, for some extra flavor.

Ethnic Syndicates
With the exception of the Yakuza, the various major syndicates (Mafia, Triads, Vory, Ghost Cartels) are actually very ethnically diverse groups, united by a certain common organization and structure. The ethnic syndicates are...smaller. Usually less organized, though not always. They also have a tendency to overlap with various other organizations - the Grey Wolves maffiya with the Alta Commissione, the Zobop with Cuban/Miami mafia, etc. - but they are generally culturally distinct and geographically tied to a particular ethnic group or groups. It would be kind of hard to see the Grey Wolves operate outside Turkey or Cyprus...but then again, you could say the same for the Mob and the Yaks, but they manage it.

I've done a lot of talking on these so far, and this is supposed to be a book club and discussion so...next poster, I want to hear your thoughts on reading the Fanti Pirates, or the Grey Wolves, or the Koshari, or any of the other groups in this chapter.

I've been fairly quiet, but I am keeping up.

I liked the Fanti Pirates. Seemed a lot like the modern-day Somali pirates, but in a geographical area that's a bit more appealing to average players. What kinda lacked was comment on whether they get near the American coast. If you can get as far as Cyprus, why not South America?

I like the more international focus of this chapter. Instead of just focusing on North America/Europe, it gives me ideas about the flavor of other lands, and the unusual and different things you could do there.

The Zobob were.. mixed. Not all of it made equal amounts of sense to me, because I don't know a lot about the Voice of Ogoun. The Zobob section did require more knowledge of Ogoun than I had, I think.

Kabul Maffiya was maybe just a bit short, but it evoked some interesting flavor. The S-K connection was cute, but could have been worked out further.

Grey Wolves.. I dunno, seemed a bit boring to me.

Because to get to South America they had to cross the open Atlantic, while Cyprus is much easier to reach and allows for travelling close to the coast). But I'm not with the book atm, so I might forget an important detail or three.

Given the kind of vessels and the magical power they have access to (water and air spirits), I don't think that would be a problem.

I think there could have been a lot more done with the Grey Wolves, especially with regards to the ADL and portions of Europe with large Turkish minorities and places where they'd be and trying to reconnect. I liked the Fanti, although I think there could have been a lot more to work with or at least line up later as plot hooks.

My biggest complaint in Ethnic Syndicates is the presence of the Kumon'go; I wished the Sepultra Rings had been in the traditional syndicates portion, mostly as an outline for their structure and how they'd be set up, like their mention in Underworld.

I think the Zobop were in there from a Target: Smuggler's Havens, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe a heirarchy/connection chart for all the Ethnic syndicates might have helped, especially considering that they're supposed to be muscling in on the Yardies which are presented in the gangs chapter later on.

Don

I was rather surprised that Elven syndicate in Tarislar didn't get a mention.

Really small potatos!

Originally I had proposed for the Laesa for Vice. However, Peter Taylor - the developer at that point - wanted more non-NorthAm groups included. We compromised by having the Laesa be a large write up in 10 Gangs (it was originally supposed to get 3000 words - it later got cut to 1,500). If anyone would like to see the original 3000 word write up for the Laesa, I'm sure I could share it.

I, too, was disappointed that Laesa was not included. I would love to see your write-up, Tiger.

Graywulfe

Edited for grammar

I'd like to see it yeah. I was rather curious about them.

I'm not so interested in the Laesa. I think I'd rather see a dwarf syndicate - even if it's only a small one, or a group of white-collar criminals. I'd really like to see a collection of numerous Tier III gangs that have been written open enough to allow them to be inserted into neighborhoods of the GM's choice for a sort of "plug-and-play" usability.

Dwarves could really use some more spotlight time yeah. But I was interested in the Laesa to see elves when they've not quite so glamorous.

Is that a joke??


Thank you for sharing, guys. I'm a little surprised there aren't more Native American underworld organizations. After all, the NAN is still an infant nation, and where strong government is lacking, more unconventional entrepeneurs normally fill the vacuum. Since Seattle is still a port town and smuggler haven, I'd think we'd see a pretty strong representation of NAN-based trans-national organizations running through.

From what I've read about the NAN, they actually have surprisingly strong governments. To the Mary Sue point, in fact; both strong and fairly benevolent.

Think you mean the Seoulpa Rings. Sepultura is a brazilian metal band


Doesn't Seattle have the Red Hot Nukes, a dwarf gang full of pyros?

[EDIT: removed some redundant dwarves]

I believe there is some of what you're looking for coming up soon



I think some of the darker side will be (at least) hinted at.

Mark

Which (planned?) sourcebook are you talking about?

Just wanted to say, I got my copy of Vice, and have been catching up. It's one of the better game books I've got in recent years. Very well done. Some stuff I don't much care for but that's personal preference, not reflective of the work itself. It's all pretty well written for what it is.

If I had a complaint, it'd be very minor one and hard to really get around. The book still seems to be largely written at a 'PG' Level. The crimes and such are discussed but not really 'felt'. It's dark in places but it's .. well like you're watching a PG action movie about stuff. A really hard 'R" rating could have made it a bit more pressing. But that's hard to do with out falling off the other side into camp. I'm not even sure how I'd change it if I did it. I'm just saying, the crime and organizations seem kinda... shiny and washed for our consumption.

I actually meant, later in Vice.

Mark

Ah, ok. Haven't read that far, still stuck at the Triad-section.

There are actually more than one mentioned in Vice though one is part of the Komungo Ring's expanded alliance.

IIRC, the Red Hot Nukes don't appear in Seattle 2072, Vice, or 10 Gangs. I don't know that they show up in 4e at all.

Edit: The red Hot Nukes get a mention of being a major gang in Redmond in Seattle 2072. However, there is no further mention of them in Seattle 2072 - not even that they are a dwarf gang or that they like to plant bombs - to be found there. There is a single bit of Shadowtalk about a RHN member in Runner Havens, but once more, little info. In short (pun intended), the Red Hot Nukes are practically unmentioned in 4e.

You're wrong "HappyDaze"! Wrong! And you smell funny.

I think they mention the RHN on another thread talking about their connection to Assets Inc. and how the initiation is having to disarm a bomb or something.

BTW: Hi Jay, at work?.