Well, you’d be expected to send a big and expensive wreath, but that would certainly give a whole new meaning to the phrase "Say it with flowers… 
" 
If your aim is to become the underworld boss of Hell’s Kitchen, the Ginelli Mob would be your main (but not only) obstacle. Simply going toe-to-toe would put you at a distinct disadvantage so you will have to be much smarter than that, bide your time, and find their weaknesses – and in the meanwhile build something worthy of respect in the wider underworld so others are more willing to fall into line. To truly succeed, at some point you will have to stop thinking like a gangster and start thinking like a Mob Boss.
I guess it depends on your definition of ‘big leagues’! By my definition, it would take the whole game, and be an End Game goal.
Your background should determine how exactly you aim to achieve that goal, not so much how long it would take or the difficulty involved.
That said, one of the main aims of the final beta test will be to balance this better and make sure that this is in fact the end result. It’s not intended, for example, that a Black Hand Member should find it any easier than would, say, a Business Entrepreneur. It’s intended that their ultimate success should be equally achievable, but by a different overall approach… generally speaking.
Zombie Exodus was, IIRC, well underway when I first dipped a tentative toe in the ChoiceScript waters back around November 2011, and @JimD was a huge help to noob me, helping me get to grips with coding logic. It’s fair to say I probably wouldn’t have survived those first three or four months without the likes of Jim offering the noobs in the community a helping hand.
But if I were to base a Vendetta character on JImD, it most certainly would not be ‘Big Jim’ Caruso! This very repugnant individual is actually based on ‘Big Jim’ Colosimo, the vice overlord of Chicago in pre-prohibition times. He was the uncle of Johnny Torrio, the gangster (and business genius) who came from New York to help Big Jim expand his operations – and the man responsible for bringing a young Al Capone from Brooklyn to Chicago…
[measures FauxCoeur for a Chicago Overcoat… three bags of cement should be enough… ]
It was very good! 
With the recent, much-expanded version of the game, it’s possible to build a much larger organization than was originally envisaged / possible, so the End Game possibilities have similarly… grown in potential achievement.
That’s very good – only a few percent short of the max possible!
One and the same. Louis Campanini tends bar / manages the pool hall that is (for most backgrounds) your initial outwardly-legitimate business – if you choose not to immediately sell it.
Thanks, it’s great to be back. 