30 Gangsters

1-Bouncer

When not out with his gang this muscular criminal works as a bouncer at clubs and pubs and generally does a good job at it. Once faced with ruthless ultra violence, few troublesome patrons, once they come to, will come back to fight again. Of course, he lets his fellow gang members in without paying, and also takes fees from certain drug dealers to let them sell drugs in the venues he protects, whilst keeping their competitors outside.

When one of those that the gang extorts from refuses to pay up, he is often sent to teach the person a lesson. He carries a knuckle-duster, as he feels that if he was to carry a knife or a gun he might murder someone and end up serving a very long sentence, whilst if he is convicted of breaking someones jaw the sentence if caught and convicted will be much shorter.

2-Bling-Bling

This gangster is the type who wears multiple gold chains and gold signet rings. The chains advertise to everybody how rich he is, whilst the rings are useful as knuckledusters in fights and to pay for illegal items-after all, even a gangster occasionally has to buy things instead of extorting or stealing them. He is confident that very few people would try and rob him even in the most dangerous parts of town, either because of fear of ultra-violent reprisals, or because they are his friends and work with him.

If encountered in a world that has magic in it, at least one of his gold chains and one of his rings will be magical (for ideas for the rings, check out my 30 Rings submission.) But even without magic, he is a formidable fighter both with his fists and the hidden stiletto that he has on a secret pocket on his belt. Even more then most gangsters, he has a very bad temper.

3-Robin Hood

This gangster likes to think of himself as a good guy, rather then just a robber, and to an extent this may be true. Certainly, he has been known to help the poor and the sick, and once a year he has a large (and illegal) firework display to amuse people. He stays out of the sex trade, seeing it as disgusting, and once had one of his own men murdered for raping a child. However, he has committed several robberies and murders and is as ready to commit ruthless violence as any other gangster, if he considers it necessary.

However, because of his *good* side he is very hard to spy on or to bring to book for any of his crimes. Not only are people scared of him, but many of them genuinely like him, so not only wont they give evidence in court against him, they often secretly tip him off when undercover policemen try to spy on him, making it impossible to get the evidence needed to convict him.

4-Ten Percent.

This gangster never extorts more then 10% of the weekly takings from the shops and clubs that he *protects* which means that they are able to function instead of being sucked dry. Which in turn means a constant supply of money for him, and reduces the chance that someone might get desperate enough to do something legal or otherwise about him. He is also a shylock who lends money at high rates of interest and brutally batters those who cannot or will not pay him back. He rarely murders however, as there is no way of getting money back from a dead person.

He does not drink or gamble, and is careful with the women he has in his life, seeing them as a potential weak link. And he would never ever be unpleasant to his mother.

5-Doc

Doc used to be a genuine doctor before he joined the underworld. He is an expert at setting broken bones and treating gunshot wounds. Gang members who cannot go to hospital because of fear of arrest have had their lives and limbs saved by his treatment. He is also good at knowing what effect any pill, both legal and illegal, will do to the human body and never takes any drug before knowing exactly what it will do to his body. If he gets into a fight, he knows where on somebodys body will seriously hurt them if hit.

Doc rarely fights however, as he is too valuable to his fellow gangsters to risk getting shot down in a gang battle or otherwise whacked. Unusually, he treats members of several gangs for the same flat fee, and because he is so useful to them all, and because they all know he would never inform on anyone, they all accept this and none will murder him, as then none of the gangs could get their wounds treated.

6-Pimp

Pimps area of criminal expertise is the illegal sex trade, and he specialises in forcing unwilling girls into prostitution, sometimes with the use of drugs to get them addicted, and sometimes just by beating them into submission. He has several murders under his belt, of girls who tried to escape from him and failed, and enjoys committing rape.

In fact, there are very few crimes that this particular gangster will not commit. It should be added that not every single one of his prostitutes are selling their bodies unwillingly, and that he also runs a legal and above-board modelling agency as a front to funnel his illegal earnings through.

When one of his legal models turned down his sexual advances, he had two of his men mask up, follow her home and smash a broken bottle into her face so that she could never get another modelling job with anyone ever again.

7-Vampire

This gangster has very little sense of proportion, and as a result often sucks those businesses that he preys on dry, with the result that he tends not to stay in one area and is a travelling gangster. He has committed even more murders then most gangsters, but his life may well end much sooner then he thought as he has unknowingly entered the domain of Ten Percent, and there is no way that Ten Percent is prepared to tolerate his sources of revenue being drained by an outsider, no matter how scary he is.

Vampire is a skinflint and has a large hidden hoard of money that only he knows the location of. Should he die, none of his underlings will be able to find it.

8-Arms Dealer

This gangster, though he dabbles in extortion, makes most of his money through selling weapons to other gangsters, that he either makes himself or buys from corrupt soldiers from a nearby army garrison. He would not be above selling them to PCs, as long as he does not fear betrayal. Do you need a pocket crossbow? Ninja stars? A Firebow perhaps? You can buy it from him. Again, he sells to more then one gang and whilst the other gangs suspect him of this, they dont mind. If they murdered and robbed him, the supply of illegal weapons would dry up and they would be reduced to using kitchen implements.

His personal weapon, if encountered in a world without firearms, is a 100 Luck Sword as he considers it to be lucky. If in a world with firearms, his weapon is one of the best guns possible.

9-NecroGangster

This necromancer sends out ghouls and Ironbones to do his evil deeds. Often they are used for assassinations and magically programmed to drop dead after killing their target, be it a rival gangster, a witness who knows too much, or someone who refused to pay protection money. With a living assassin, there is always the chance that he might be persuaded or forced into giving evidence against or otherwise ratting on his boss, but with the undead this wont happen as a captured undead or one that has completed its mission will collapse, leaving only a rotting body or a pile of metallic bones behind.

He wants to find out how to create The Empty Children but there is no way that Edrea Solon is going to share that secret with anyone. Should he be attacked by PCs, his has a large number of Pocket Ironbones: whilst the PCs are busy fighting those little horrors, he will make his escape. He wishes to be cremated after his death, to avoid any chance of ending up serving another necromancer as a zombie.

10-Knife

He carries one, an illegal flick-knife, and he is happy to use it. He hungers for fights, be they with the law, with ordinary people or with other gangsters, no matter how dangerous they are and how well armed they are. Even his friends generally tread warily about him. Unknown to them, his father is dying slowly of cancer and Knife had a very good relationship with his father and feels that he has very little to live for without him, and so has no fear of getting killed.

11-Ma-O's Disciple

As a member of the banned cult The Children of Ma-O almost all the money from his protection rackets and other illegal activities go to fund the schemes of the cult rather then himself. He does not mind this, and in fact he would not have it any other way as he sees serving his god as the most important thing in his life. If his god that he chose to follow had not been Ma-O, it is likely that he would have just become a monk and not committed any crimes at all. As it is he sees himself as a Holy Warrior rather then a gangster.

12-Turncoat

Turncoat ratted out all his friends when he got arrested for a robbery, rather then do prison time, and now wishes that he had never informed. His beloved girlfriend, that he was planning to marry, was furious with him and dumped him. Many of his own family now despise him, he had to go into witness protection and lost his name, and his new job, on the outer side of the country from where he used to live, is scraping barnacles off the bottom of ships. He misses his family and friends, and he misses the criminal life that he used to enjoy.

13-Undercover

An undercover policeman, he has infiltrated the gang, knowing that if they find out that he is a fake, they will certainly kill him. He has to take great care to act the part to perfection without taking drugs, engaging in serious crime, or urging those he has infiltrated to commit crime, as that would be seen as entrapment. He fears at times that he may be getting in too deep and losing his true inner identity.

14-Torturer

Many gangsters use torture to get revenge, but Torturer delights in it, sees it as fun, and uses it even when its not necessary and the person would give him what he wanted out of fear alone. As a result a lot of people are scared of him, but the other side of the coin is that a lot of people really hate him, and that even his own men are wary of him. Should he end up murdered, there will be a very long list of suspects. Torturer's favourite method is to nail a persons hands and feet to the floor with a nail gun.

15-Toecutter

Most gangsters prey on the general public, but Toecutter preys on other gangsters, robbing them of their money, illegal items and drugs. He knows that the other gangsters are very unlikely to go to the police, but he also knows that if they ever track him down, theyll murder him on the spot. So whilst the chance of prison is far less, the chance of death is far greater.

16-Taxman

This gangster operates with the full support of the state, in extracting taxes from the poor to pay for the follies and wars of the rich. He and his men, on occasion, have burned down entire villages because the villagers have not been able to come up with the amount of money that he demanded. Although a favourite of the king, he is detested by the vast majority of the people.

17-Plastic

He talks the talk but certainly cannot walk the walk If he makes the mistake of messing with the wrong people he will either end up seriously hurt or dead somewhere, his body rotting somewhere in a hidden shallow grave or crushed in the boot of a car.

18-For the Party

This gangster is a member of an underground political party, in a country ruled by a dictatorship where political parties are banned and, at least in theory the vast majority of the money that he and the others in his crew illegally extort or steal should go to the Party, but in practise most of it is shared out between themselves and their higher-ups and relatively little ever reach their Party's coffers.

19-Sheriff Plummer

On the surface this man is honest and a tough sheriff who has built a gallows in his town as a warning to criminals. In practise, although he rarely directly commits crime himself, he is a close friend of a group of thugs who have terrorised the area, whilst making sure that their criminal competitors are swiftly arrested and jailed or sent to the gallows. Some people think that its just bad luck that their sheriff cannot catch the members of one particular gang, others are starting to suspect that he is not as honest as he seems but have no real evidence yet to act on.

20-The Dragon (1)

As well as his normal rackets, this gangster and a couple of his friends have set up a dragons den for other criminals to come and suggest their ideas to, ideas such as smuggling, bank raids, home invasions on the well guarded homes of the wealthy and large scale frauds. If they decide it is a good enough plan they will fund the idea in exchange for a portion of the profits.

Anyone who tricks them and runs off with their money will be murdered if they ever catch up with him or her. Also, apart from that, they will not be seen as trustworthy by other criminals in the area, which means that buying illegal weapons and the like, as well as finding someone to money launder for them or give them a false alibi, will be difficult.

21-The Dragon (2)

This gangster literally is a dragon, a great red-scaled beast the size of a forty-oared ship, who has terrorised all the nearby villages and towns, threatening to set them alight if he is not kept will fed with cattle, sheep and the occasional human female. A few have tried to kill him, but have paid with their lives for it.

22- Sir Edmund Verney

This royal wizard on the surface is the height of respectability, and has royal licenses to possess many otherwise illegal weapons and spells. In fact he is a loan shark, and his speciality is casting a spell on debtors, that if not cancelled in a certain amount of time will activate and rot their bodies from the inside, resulting in a painful and gruesome death for those who cannot or will not pay up. There are plenty of nasty rumours going around about him, but either the king refuses to believe them or chooses to ignore them for his own reasons. Very few would dare accuse him publicly of committing crimes.

23-The Kid

Hes only nine years old, too young to be considered criminally responsible by the law, but hes already stealing things, such as sweets from the local shop, hitting people and forcing those kids who are weaker then himself to hand over their pocket money, and he carries a concealed knife and is not afraid to use it. At this age it is not too late to turn him around, but if that does not happen he could well end up growing up to become a serious and violent criminal.

24-Veteran

Veteran is in his eighties and has more or less voluntarily retired from crime, as he considers himself far too old for it and wants to have a peaceful death in bed, rather then getting whacked or dying in pain on a prison hospital wing. He has done it allpetty crime, armed robberies, extortion, theft, fraud, three murders. He was never caught and convicted for the murders, but he has spent fifteen years of his life serving terms of imprisonment for various crimes that he was caught and convicted for.

He detests rapists, informers, prison officers, and police when they go undercover, but he has a respect for uniformed police as they are just doing their jobs.

25-Evictor

Do you have a problem with troublesome tenants or squatters, but you feel the law is moving too slowly to get them out of your house? If youre willing and able to pay Evictor and his crew, then hell deal with them for you, using as much and sometimes more violence then is necessary. Unlike many gangsters, he does provide a genuine service and his prices are not extortionate, at least not from the point of view of a property owner. He has many who are willing to hire him so he does not have to charge all that much.

The gypsies hate Evictor perhaps more then anyone else and there are rumours that they have clubbed together to put a price on his head. Evictor is not worried about it.

26-Rubbish

This gangster's racket of choice, and one he is willing to do anything to hang onto, is the lucrative one of taking and dumping the waste. One trick is to slash peoples rubbish bags at night, so that the bin men refuse to take them away in the morning. Then he offers to get rid of the rubbish for a fee, and rather then have their trash pile up around their ears, most people are willing to pay him to get rid of it. He then either illegally burns it or he dumps it at the first place where he wont get caught.

He and his men have murdered three people, two of them rival gangsters who tried to take over his racket, and a woman who tried to get him arrested, and their bodies are rotting under a pile of rubbish in a dump somewhere.

27-Consiglorie

With many years in organized crime and a few in prison under his belt, Consigliore is that rare species, a diplomat amongst gangsters. Contrary to what many of the general public believes, organised crime mafia-type gangs do not like getting embroiled in gang warfare with each other, as it cuts off their profits, endangers their lives and brings loads of totally unwanted heat down on them from law enforcement. Consigliore talks with other gangs to try and iron out things like territory boundaries without blood having to be shed.

28-Protocol

A biker gang member and a stickler for one percenter protocol, Protocol has a low tolerance for anybody who he feels does not treat him with enough respect, no matter who they are, and is more then ready to forcibly educate them with his fists and feet.

He is the kind of biker who will break his cue stick across the head of anybody who makes the mistake of touching the sacred colours on his back. His fellow bikers try and keep him away from civilians, as it is not in the gangs interests to be in fights all the time with people who might call the police. Unprovoked fights also risk wrecking the gang leader's public relations campaign.

29-Wannabe

Wannabe is prepared to do anything to join the ranks of organised crime, and is wanting for the chance to make his bones, that is, kill someone on orders from his boss to prove his loyalty. Until then he does anything, both legal and otherwise, that the others in the gang tell him to and is a general gofer.

30-Boss

In his sixties but still going strong, Boss's years of stealing and extorting, maiming and murdering, are over. Now,as the absolute ruler of his Family, he orders such crimes to be done whilst keeping his hands clean and getting a steady supply of money from the captains of his gang. He commands over a hundred made men and each made man has up to ten associates working for him. He has had a few of his own men shot as suspected informers or because they broke other rules of his gang, and is utterly ruthless.