Vendetta: Rise of a Gangster -- Reinvented

Any chance that Lucinda is lesbian/bi? That woman is a badass with a gun :slight_smile:

Also if I remember correctly (been a while since I last played the demo): if you choose to enlist Rosie with avenging Billy, you can’t max out the revenge for Billy bar? The perfectionist in me is a little miffed at that haha. Can there be an option later on to make O’Hara’s life in prison a living hell for a while, and then arrange for someone to kill him in jail?

For a female mc, do you have to rewrite the Dino/Chuck/Mangano job options in the first chapter? It’d be cool if a woman is actually leading the little band of burglars but I can see how it might be a little hard to get Dino to fall in line. Same with Chuck. As for the truck job…well, I just have a hard time seeing Mangano picking a woman along, even if she’s Annie Oakley with a gun. Gotta loooove the patriarchy.

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I believe @Vendetta said there was going to be the option to visit O’Hara in prison, so maybe there is also the option to bribe some guards or fellow inmates to make the guy’s living hell. My mc personally wouldn’t go that far, as he prefers to remain in the shadows, let’s keep O’Hara and his powerful benefactors tearing out their hair guessing who did it. But then my mc prefers to operate on the background whenever possible when it comes to his less than legal dealings.

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Cool! Yep, I was actually also thinking along the same lines of keeping it a secret on the ‘arrange to kill O’Hara’ part. It might be harder, idk, but I figure if I’m going to make someone’s life miserable, might as well go all the way in.

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An assassination is too much honor and effort for the likes of O’Hara. What my mc might do is make sure that at some point he gets added time from the warden for bad behaviour and pay witnesses and victims to come forth at his parole board hearings to make sure he doesn’t get out until he’s an old man. That would be far better revenge than a mere killing.

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That’s a good point. I should clarify that I meant make life difficult in prison for O’Hara for years, then at the end of the dozen or more so years arrange for him to be quietly killed off. Though that means the mc has to even survive that long in the first place :slight_smile:

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That would probably require building a lot of connections, which I’d wager is easier if you’re a political bagman or ex law enforcement. Now, I love to make the guy suffer, but I’m more of making him die in a horrible fashion, hence why I always go to the bar with the past and present Hellions. It’s glory or bust, though I admit, the old bloodlust has faded now as I replayed.

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Look at Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, it can also be done as a successful legitimate businessman. If he gets the funds for it my college boy intends to be a fixture at the annual police charity ball for sure and maybe do something like sponsor the police baseball league too or something. I’m just saying lots of ways to build connections and become a pillar of the community, if you want to.

We should also have a couple of years before O’Hara comes up for parole and my mc doesn’t really care how good or bad his life on the inside is, just that he stays there until he’s at least a senior citizen.

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Me no watch Breaking Bad :confused:. Besides, better deal with the problem now than later. Somewhere, @Vendetta is ensuring the “forgive don’t forget” is active everywhere and that won’t just want involve us dishing out the vengeance.

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my guy. i am so excited for this!! the grifter role sounds awesome - i’m going to swindle everyone. keep up the stunning work c:

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Wait a minute 1986 how old are you I wasn’t even born until 93

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Pretty much the situation we have in Vendetta – at present, even to the extent of potentially having a negative impact on your overall Underworld Respect, making it an additional ‘challenge’ to overcome. I’m still in two minds whether this is actually a good idea or not (although this disadvantage is balanced with some useful, situational advantages along the way) so playtest feedback will be important here.

Originally, no. A fairly recent changed has however moved Lucinda from the ‘straight’ group into the ‘maybe’ group (as a result of overall RO game balancing), meaning that she’s one of those who “don’t even admit it to themselves”. In these cases, seduction is key, meaning (among other things, specific to each individual) a fairly high level of Persuasion will be needed.

If you make use of Rosie to have Danny O’Hara locked up again, it is possible (with Nick Morello’s help) to pay him a visit in prison… More than that would be spoiler territory, but it does allow for a bit more (and more satisfying) closure on the whole thing, should you choose.

Good examples of just some of the many differences determined by the gender you choose to play, yes. Generally speaking, it tends to go on the character of the specific NPC with whom you’re interacting – in some cases there will be no real difference playing a woman, in some cases it can make things harder, and in some cases it can make things quite a lot easier. The overall aim is that it balances out, while properly depicting the very real differences your gender would have in the 1920s underworld. At the end of the day, it still comes down to your actual choices.

I’m at the age where everything is too damn loud, technology is a challenge, not a luxury, and where I regularly lament “the good old days” even though privately admitting that in truth things were really no better back then than they are now. :smiley:

In short, I’m pushing 54, so pretty much a fossil hereabouts.

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I’ve read that the 1920’s in America was before widespread suburbanization and the “nuclear” family, all living in the same suburban residence, that gained prominence in post-war America. As a consequence there were a lot more room and house mate situations among heterosexuals, particularly unmarried working men, too. Making it relatively easy for a discrete gay couple to blend-in.
Like I said I think it might become more troublesome in the sequels if we get to the point where the mc can comfortably and easily afford mansion living. Though of course buying your gay lover his own mansion was an option for the truly, filthy-rich too, I imagine.

We’ll see won’t we?

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An excellent summary of the conclusions drawn from my own research, yes.

What I wanted to do with Vendetta was to give a gay character (and now, of either gender) the very real choice of deciding just how much they wanted to try and “blend-in”, given the era in which the story is set. Unless you choose otherwise, the outward appearance will generally be no different to that of any straight character and your sexuality remains a very private matter.

Should you choose not to “blend-in” at each such opportunity, this course of action will have both advantages and disadvantages along the way. The Adelphi Club is a case in point, being a potentially very lucrative racket only available to a gay character, but being involved in ownership there kick-starts the rumor mill among the local underworld as a whole, and potentially to your detriment in some situations.

The reverse is, however, also true – the less you try to hide your true self, the “better known” you become to others inclined to be sympathetic to your views.

I’m certainly very keen to see how the whole system is received in playtest. There’s a fail-safe though, in that most of the code governing this is handled in a separate subroutine, meaning that it’s a relatively simple matter to ‘pull the plug’ on the whole concept before final publication (losing both the extra advantages and the disadvantages) should it not go down too well.

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I really, really like the Adelphi club, though at the moment it does not impact the mc’s living situation and we’re not even living together with Adamo…yet.

The big draw of this game for me is, after all, being able to be a badass gay gangster. Who possibly graduates to mob boss and eventually godfather should this blossom into a trilogy.

True, still the situation was such that even the more open gay men had to have the cunning to maintain a veneer of plausible deniability. Up to and including the “beard” at times.

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That’s interesting, for a fictional game, I wouldn’t picture society to be forward thinking and hence more willing to collaborate with you around that time. Don’t get me wrong here, it opens up more avenues for the MC, but I’d argue that give a tad more hardship to the MC if they are ‘open’. Again, I’m no expect and will defer to both you and @idonotlikeusernames to your respective area of expertise.

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Is there like a beta test going on right now?

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The problem with gate a romance behind high persuasion is it will look like Pc is coherce the ro to partake in a relationship and that’s objectively wrong in many levels. Like oh I have 20 persuasion I could turn X bi or asexual or whatever is moraly disturving. Another thing is let clear that the character has doubts about a relationship and the pc should deal with it but never based in a stat at least in my opinion

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Vendetta is currently revamping the prologue and first chapter right now. You can only play the old demo as of this moment. When he has completed the new version, he will let us know.

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As @MIGSey says. :slight_smile: Check out the FAQ section of the OP if you’re interested in participating in the final beta.

Understandably. It would of course be oh so easy to limit the gay character aspect to scenes of a private or intimate nature and to not have it impact anything else in any significant or meaningful way – as is perhaps the norm for these things.

I wanted to try something a little more… involved than that, given the game’s era and setting, but I accept that it’s a fine line to walk and guidance / feedback will be paramount to get it right (or to scrap the whole idea, with relative ease, if it doesn’t seem to be received too well).

Overall, that could be the end result – such as accepting that a less secretive approach is bound to have a negative impact on Underworld Respect as a whole. It’s not a glass ceiling, though, just a somewhat harder climb than it would otherwise be. Conversely, the advantages to help offset this would be more situational in nature (and some may therefore be missed / bypassed on a particular play-through, which may at times result in an overall negative impact). The aim is that this would balance out on those play-throughs where you manage to take advantage of all the positives from being less secretive, and so fully reap the rewards.

It’s fair point and I can definitely see how it could be taken that way, so again it will be something about which to keep a close eye on playtest feedback in those few situations where it applies.

I guess the main point is that it’s definitely not a case of just turning on the charm and being able to ‘convert’ anyone. There has to be a case of latent attraction – perhaps on a subconscious level – before there is even a remote possibility of success.

In essence, instead of simply defining every character as either straight, gay, or bi, I’ve also allowed for a gray area in some particular cases, because I feel this is also very much a part of our human nature. Things are not always so cut-and-dried in real life, either.

Yes, Persuasion will play a big part (because in the game this encompasses such as physical attractiveness, natural charm, and your ability to persuade by such as reason and simple logic) but other factors will also play a part, and mostly different ones for each individual. Above all, however, your own choices will be the overriding factor.

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Thanks :stuck_out_tongue: