Spotlight - Crime Pays Overview

I find it very odd that I was extremely late in writing this spotlight, but the timing turned out to be quite perfect. Apparently starting last week, a full fledged gang war broke out in my prefecture in Japan. This particular gang war involves several extremely powerful Yakuza groups; one family, attempted to break off from the most powerful Yakuza in Japan, but that certainly wasn’t going to fly. They have since begun fighting in several of the major cities in the prefecture, including mine! With that premise, I can now actually bring you the first part of my spotlight on Crime Pays: A Godfather’s Grimoire by Goodman Games.

So, what is this book actually? Well, Crime Pays is NOT a simple guidebook for Rogue characters. If you were hoping that in this book you would find a host of feats and new magic items to outfit your thief character with, you’re going to be quite sadly disappointed. Crime Pays offers a methodology to play more of a macro level D&D style game, which has the player at the head of a mob. Crime Pays is essentially the guide for players who want to become a mob boss – a Godfather.

By this book’s definition, a mob is a family that runs a particular territory. The book offers a very detailed explanation for what that entails in quite a bit of detail. It also implements a very interesting style of “domain level” play but from the perspective of the crime boss. There are lots of random generation tables as well. But I’ll get into more of those details in the next installment of my spotlight… now it’s time for me to go dodge some Yakuza :P

Categories: Goodman Games , Review