So I was thinking that it would be cool to earn a rank or position within a gang.

For example there should be a Don for the entire gang. How this title would be earned I’m not sure. Maybe a within-gang tournament or rank based on tournament wins and forum participation. Or just a vote of the members.

(I am using the gangster title for now, but naming the ranks should be a whole process)

There would also be local Don’s, Leutenents, Wise Guys, Thugs, Personal Bodyguards (to the Don) etc. The lower ranks could be promoted by many different criteria including promotion by merit or by the local Don. Some positions promoted one way, other positions promoted another way.

I think it would be important that the titles be consistent across gangs. If each gang comes up with their own system it becomes a pain to have to always explain your title to someone from another gang.

Suggest Gang titles and where each title would fit in the heirarchy of the gang.

If “gang” offends people, this sure as hell will. Why not “Captains” or something?

The real trick is the differences between gangs.

While it might be very possible to have the same rank structure in each gang, the names would probably change. A sci-fi gang would want different rank names than a mafia-themed gang. Or a “death” gang. Or a gang called “Schroedinger’s Cats”.

And we can’t exactly name those different ranks as we don’t know for sure what the 13 gangs are going to be.

And then we could have different structures entirely from gang to gang. Maybe the “Mafia-esque” gang runs like what you’ve set up. Maybe the “Broken Bone Society” is lead by whoever is strongest. (thus, you gain rank by beating out the guy above you, not by being granted a promotion; likewise, you’d have to keep your spot by fighting people off) Maybe Schroedinger’s Cats is lead by a council of leaders that rotates on a semi-regular basis, and has no other rank outside of the leading council. Maybe Pathogen has no leadership, and spreads and fluctuates based on what the individuals decide to do.

I would love to have a consistent system, and have discussed it out the freakin’ wazoo (I’m willing to bet it was in the old Gangs forum, which was deleted, and thus I can’t link the topic to you). My favorite suggestion was to have different names per gang, but to color-code the ranks. So a Blue Wizard is of equal power to a Blue Warrior, but both are weaker than a Red Rogue. That way, color would be an easy sign of who is of what strength. Then you’ve got the issue of “what happens if the gangs themselves are color-coded?” (generally speaking, it would ruin my type of argument, as anyone wearing Red might be a Carbonstar member, instead of having the “Red rank”)

All things considered, I think this is something that won’t be settled until closer to launch. Once we know things like the gangs, their insignias (not really necessary, but helpful), whether or not the gangs are color-coded, etc, we might be able to handle something.

Thanks for the detailed reply!

Maybe instead of a color system it could be a Tier system with each tier having unique names according to each “gang” flavor. Top Tier, Tier 2, Teir 3, etc.

Just to throw my 2 cents into the pile. I really enjoy the idea of a “flavored” heirarchy. Such things could really make choosing your gang fun, as each gang would have it’s own unique feel to it. As opposed to just picking whatever name sounds the coolest!

So you’re saying that each gang could have it’s own names for different ranks than another, but they’re both the same rank? I get it now.

I choose and nominate myself the rank of Tyrant. All else doesn’t matter, just do as I say.

I call the rank of crazy cat lady.

Negative. You are and forever shall be: The Village Idiot. (i will however let you own a cat)

Sorry slaxer, but somewhere I claimed Village Idiot for Wampa. A LONG time ago.

Due to stumpy’s post count, he’s been promoted to town drunk.

What? Stumbles down the street

Down the street?

Quick Officer, get him! He’s drunk in public!

Well I was drunk in the bar until they kicked me out for being drunk AND disorderly. Wait…that didn’t really help did it??? :)

well if wampa is the village idot and slaxer is some sort of evil tyrantand rp jesus is a crazy cat. i totally call the tyra banks rank. lol

Well, then I want my rank to be “Oak Tree”. And when I’m feeling bloated, it can be “Oprah in “diet-mode””. And on Tuesdays “Bibendum, The Michelin Man”.

Dibs “Emperor” of the Dark Lotus Gang.

haha that’d be perfect ninja! :)

@RPJesus: What gang are you leaning towards joining?

Mad Hatters, although Shrodinger’s Cats may still pull ahead in the runnings.

I really like the idea of different ranks and titles for each, by the same token I think it would be cool, that instead of 13 gangs, there would be 13 groups that each have their own identifier. Broken Bone Society, would be just that, not the Broken Bone Society Gang. So you have societies, brotherhoods, prides, and yes even gangs.

Just a thought.

Having every gang following a set heirarchy where rank 1 in gang A equates to rank 1 in gang B I think defeats the whole purpose of having the gang idea in the first place. I’m not saying that there should be no set heirarchy, quite the contrary I think every gang needs to have a set structure, but each of those structures should be unique to that specific gang and be a part of what makes that gang who they are.

Gang brawls don’t begin with each gang lining up ranks against opposing ranks of a similar position. This might occur when one leader takes on another, but generally a gang brawl is exactly that – a brawl where everyone takes on anyone.

For example one gang might have a really flat structure, a ‘Council of War’ who establish the intra-gang tournament structure and a gang leader who is rotationally elected every month or 3 months. Another gang might have a distinct pyramid of ranks, from an Acolyte through perhaps 15 levels to a GrandMaster or Leader, and yet another might be organized like a corporation, with a CEO, a Board, a series of high level departmental managers and middle managers who all oversee a region.

Yet another might be totally geographically based – each town or city has a leader, each state (for US based) elects a state leader from its cadre of town/city leaders, then each state leader can stand for national election and all national leaders elect the gang Overlord.

I think each gang structure should be different because each gang aims to be unique. Having every gang with a similar structure provides little incentive or appeal to new players selecting a gang to join because each is effectively structured the same. As much as we originally came up with the concept of traits and virtues defining a gang I think that structure is another element that should help determine a gang.

What I would like to see outside of any formalized structure are areas of specificity within some gangs – a ‘Minister of Propoganda’ or ‘Council of War’ for example, someone tasked with putting up posters in subways or on the sides of buildings in areas dominated by other gangs.

I’d also like to see sanctioned tournaments and their results affect a global ‘turf’ map. What I mean by this is imagine a globe with each country broken down into designated regions. As each region holds an annual or periodical tournament, the gang represented by the tournament winner gets to color the map with their gangs color. This will provide a changing ‘turf’ map of the world and allow people to see the wavering fortunes of gangs, who is the strongest, and who are the weaker ones. It might be a nice graphic to appear on the Decipher web site.

That way gangs can target regions where they want to take over the turf and offer greater support to the local members, or turn up themselves and enter the tournaments to ensure their victory. This is the kind of thing that would promote gang rivalry and get players to move around and enter the tournament scene.

Brilliant idea! It’s like a giant FK game of Risk. Global FK Domination!

And I think you’re on the right track with having individual gang rankings be unique. However, I think part of the motivation to have them all uniform between gangs is for simplicity sake. We don’t want to give the programmers TOO big of a headache.
But if they’re up for a challenge, then bring it on!

The only real reason for similarity is, like ninja said, for simplicity’s sake. I mean, it’s easy to tell that if I’m a “Rank 4” Knight and ninja’s a “Rank 5” Wizard, that he’s stronger than me. The Ranks would determine “strength”, and then you’d be classified by your gang. So if you ran across another Rank 4, you’d know he was equal strength to you. And whatnot.

Of course, we could just have a “player score” that increases independent of gangs. That would allow us a “standard” to compare each other by without forcing gang ranks.

I personally like the idea of each gang being different, but I have this awful feeling that some gang will either complain when another gang is similar in structure, or we’ll have a gang with god-awful organization. I just know we’ll have at least one horribly organized gang, at least for a little while, and it’s going to bug the ever loving crap out of me. Whether I help run the system or not, I like to have a hand in getting it on its feet. But outside of my own gang’s structure, I won’t really have much say in it.

Honestly, I think structure and hierarchy fall under the same category as insignias. Something we can work on better after gangs have been decided on, and once people are actually evened out into gangs.

And to continue from AC’s idea here, I think we can work on structuring our gangs a lot more effectively once we get a bit more info about what the gangs are actually for. We have a pretty good idea on several aspects, and we’ve been able to put together some drafts of what we want to do with the gangs (the FK city), but there is a lot more for us to learn about Decipher’s plans for gangs. I’m sure that they’re going to leave it pretty open for us to design and run the gangs, I’m just saying that structuring the gangs will be a ton easier after we actually know what we’re designing them to do.