I'm trying to come up with some rules on extortion protection rackets and hijinks. The required skill would be intimidation. I don't know if the payoff would be worth the extra complexity.
What I'm thinking of is a little mini-game or realm play in which an urban area is divided into neighborhoods. Each neighborhood would be given an extortion value of 2 to 9 (based on the extortion potential - more industry the higher) and a resitance value (based on patrols, existence of guilds, etc.). Every month that someone is assigned to an 'extortion/protection' hijink they would make an intimidation reaction roll with the following mods:
- -2 if only one person, normal if two persons, +2 if three BUT increases severity of the crime if caught (so bonus for extortion roll is instead a penalty on the crime severity roll).
- - the resistance level of the block (or maybe the value of the block if I only want one value)
- + the existing influence level of the rolling syndicate
- - the existing influence level of any competing syndicate
It would be on a modified reaction chart:
2 Caught! Roll on the crime chart.
3-5 Syndicate influence goes down by one. If zero or below, the roll on the hijink caught table,
6-8 No change
9-11 Syndicate influence goes up by one
12 Syndicate influence goes up by two
The maximum amount of influence from all syndicates is the total extortion value of the block. At the end of the month the syndicate will get an amount from the block equal to the influence value x 100gp.
Example: Smiling Pete (intimidation and +1 CHA mod) and Macio (level 0 thug) of the Dock Boys Syndicate are told to collect protection money in the lower docks neighborhood. The Lower docks has a total extortion value of 5, and a resistance level of +3 (people in the docks are not easily intimidated and tend to stick together). The Dock Boys already have an influence of 2 in the area, Smiling Pete rolls a 7, adds +2 for intimidation, +1 for his CHA mod, and +2 for the Dock Boys current influence. He subracts 3 from the roll for the neighborhoods resistance. The result is a 9. The Dock Boys add a few businesses to the rolls and collect 300 gp from the neighborhood.
- I don't know if the cash multiplier is high enough. Once the work is done, a single thug can do collections with little risk, but it does pale in comparison with other hijinks
- I don't know if the risk is high enough
- Should the pay out or rolls scale with the level of the thug?
- Does it make sense to have 2 values for a neighborhood, or should the resistance value equal the total neighborhood value (NV) or NV/2?
- What should happen when the influence of competing syndicates is more than the total value of the neighborhood? do they get caught? Is there a chance for a battle betweeen the different crews assigned to hijinks in that area?
Please let me know what you think.