Mr. D. is always lookin' to expand his business operation. If you have a new scheme, list it here.

Boostin' an Armored Car

As in all things, there is a right way and a wrong way(often an infinite variety of wrong ways) to do anything. For convenience's sake, I'll list the wrong way first:

Presuming that the Mooks in question have just decided to commit an impulse crime, or someone's Impatience flared up during the stake out, the easiest way for all concerned to determine the initial results would be a D20 roll(subject to change for balance):
1: Car was headed back to the shop for maintenance, jamook. Only one man driving, but no money onboard. GM should roll for breakdown each round if high speed getaway is attempted, against whatever difficulty he arbitrarily assigns(15-18 if kindhearted, 10 or less if the group's lack of forethought is a habit he wants to break).
2-5: Hit car before initial rounds, roll 1d4+5 to see how much wealth in bagged change was onboard. Minimum of Driver and second man up front present.
6-9: Hit car before busy time, but after a couple of pickups. Roll 2d6 +5 for onboard Wealth. Minimum of two men up front.
10-13: Decent Score, roll 2d6 +10 for onboard Wealth. Minimum of two mooks up front.
14-17: Caught it on the way ta the bank. Roll 2d6 +15 for onboard Wealth. Minimum of 2 men up front, and they'll have called ahead, so the truck is expected at the bank.
18-19: Special Delivery. roll 2d6 +20 for onboard wealth. 2 men up front, at least 1 man in the back, adjustable upwards for party size. If Wealth of 30 or more generated, there will be at least one unmarked chase vehicle tailing the armored car.
20: Youse lucky bastards. Reroll as above, but reduce mooks onboard by one,treating a 1 as a 2-5. If a 20 is rolled again, the locator on the truck is busted, the radio batteries died, the chase vehicle has a flat, or something else fortuitous like happened dat da PCs don't particularly deserve.

If done previously, a DC10 gather information check wil gather the information that armored cars always have some sort of locator. If trying to remember this without checking prior, a DC15 or higher Knowledge Streetwise check is in order, if they make it by at least five, then someone can make a Disable Device check at DC 20 to turn it off. Otherwise, havin' a backup ride onhand is a good ting.

For the Right Way, the easiest method by far is ta find a couple of mooks that have no kinda record on 'em(or Forge some tings ta make it look that way, DC20 and up), and just have 'em get a job with the company, biding their time before the big score. Dis requires patience, and a possibly abnormal degree of trust in the mooks in question. But if done this way, the mooks just make their daily rounds, load all the money into another vehicle in an alley, and drive the armored car off the docks(or to a chop shop for later reuse). Bluff checks are the order of the day, along with Hide Motive, and Drive checks to get away from sight clean.

For other ways, a tail operation is in order, ta learn da habits and assigned path of the truck. 1 week's stakeout is needed at a minimum ta prevent it immediately going da Wrong Way, with each additional week providing a bonus of +1 to all relevant rolls, up to a maximum of +3. This should apply to any Bluff checks, Drive rolls, and initiative rolls for the first round of combat if any initiated against the drivers, along with anything else the GM believes would be affected by sustained study. The drivers of the Armored car get a spot check each day to notice they are being observed, with the difficulty determined by the precautions the PCs make.

When it comes down to it, the PCs have two rounds from the initiation of combat before one of the armored car crew in contact will attempt to radio the incident in. Speed and precision are critical if the operation is to go off flawlessly. Presuming they succeed, they have at least ten minutes to disable the locator, transfer the cash to another vehicle, or get the armored car under cover before it is noticed that anything has gone awry.

If the word gets out, then the PCs have three further rounds to attempt to disable the locator before the police will be on the way to the van's current location, arriving within 5-10 rounds. After that Drive checks are in order to get away with the goods.

Wealth rewards should be determined by the GM, but realistically should not be less than 20 if the job is planned and executed properly. If needed, the character's higherups could always lean on them for a higher percentage of the take to keep things properly balanced.

If the characters get cute, there are any number of possibilities. Staging out and out robberies of the cash rooms of at least one store on the list is one of the less absurd possibilities, ranging up to using this as a means to get past a lot of bank security to kick off a heist there.


-Thought, observations, criticisms?

Insurance Fraud; Arson
Type: One-time
Who: 1-3 Family Associates
Pay-out: varies, minimum of 10
Division: 1 per Associate, 1 for Soldier, 2 for Capo, 2 for underboss, and 2 for Boss (any leftover wealth divides evenly between Capo and bosses)
Pre-requisites: legal business or extorted legal business worth at least 10 wealth points to set up
Skills: Destroy Evidence, Disable Device
Time: Once
Some businesses become less profitable over time and may even become worth more as ashes. When this happens, it's time to make it turn one last profit. The Associates may need to pick the lock to gain entry (make aprropriate Disable Device check) unless provided by the owner. A Disable Device (DC 25) may be made for the fire detection/suppression equipment to slow its response time (doing so raises the Destroy Evidence DC by 10 but raises investigators' Search DC by 10 and increases suspicion of arson (+2 additional suspicion if investigators find anything)). Starting the fire is a Destroy Evidence check (DC 10). When investigators find evidence, they will have to contend with a crime scene that has been moderately or extremely disturbed by firefighters and water damage.
If this scheme is used on a business that is about to be lost and is owned by a Family member, it can reduce or negate the wealth loss of losing the scheme. Figure out how much wealth will be lost by losing the scheme and subtract that from half the wealth cost for setting up the business. If the total is still negative, then there's no profit or pay-out and the owner only loses that amount of wealth for the lost scheme. If the total is positive, then that amount is divided and distributed equally to the owner's Capo and the bosses (or if the owner was a Capo, the bosses split the wealth).

I think some of the numbers might need some adjusting, but whad'ya think of the concept?

How about a nice little chain letter pyramiding scheme? You know, the ones where you send out 100 letters saying "For $1, the 5 people listed will add you to their "mailing lists," then forward this letter with your name and address at the bottom of the list to X people." Of course, the original 5 names are party members, who are in on the scheme...

That one is actually illegal, but if you send them some sort of "money making pamphlet" for their $1, it's allegedly legal. I doubt the post office is too picky anyhow, since they're having a serious fall-off in first class business, and would love to make an extra $30/month selling a roll of 100 stamps! The first time, you can either buy addresses or pick people out of phone books at the public library, but when you repeat the process, you use your "mailing list" of damn fools, er, people who sent you a dollar the first time, and you're supposed to get better results... Once you're making money off this scheme, you can expand it by just sending out more letters, but your costs would also increase, since you might want to get a box (or 5, so you can be all 5 people on the original list) at a mail drop, a postage machine, copier, label printer, etc.

This might be a good scheme for a Mob Wife. Even at the expanded level, it shouldn't take more than one day a week while the kids are in school...

Angelita thought boys had cooties in 3rd grade, so she actually has nice handwriting. On the other hand, by 10th grade, they'd lost their cooties, so she never learned to type well...

Sounds good. Though I'm curious as to what percentage of the population actually falls for and follows through with chain letters. Of course, that could be influenced by how well the letter is written, how many people it's sent to initially, how many people are added each link, how quickly the people respond, etc. Getting it up to a profit might take several weeks, but after that, everything's gravy. Plus, it's so easy (except for, maybe, the sincerity of the letter) that even a mook could do it.

Personally, every time I get one of those letters, I'm been tempted to get together with 4 or 5 friends and start our own chain, so we'd get all the profits... Just have an equal fraction of the letters with each person at the bottom (for longest "exposure").

Start up costs with 100 letters:
Postage $27
Copies $10
Envelopes $3
Drop Box $30 (can be reused for this scheme or other schemes)

So about $70 and a little time to get started.

Say we figure 10% response. If 10 people send you $1 each, and send to 30 other people,
level 1: $10, 300 prospects
level 2: $30, 900 prospects
level 3: $90, 2700 prospects
level 4: $270, 8100 prospects
level 5: $810 and 24,300 prospects, but that doesn't matter, because you're off the top of the list...

Total $1210 on a $70 investment. If you mail to just 100 (sending to different people each time you do a mailing) of those 1210 names that you collected, that's another $40 investment (unless you want to add another drop box, so you can be on the list twice), and you can figure if they played your game once, they're more likely to play again... So maybe 30% participation, giving you triple the profits. Lots of low level Babes and Mob Wives wouldn't turn up their noses at making $3630 on a $40-70 investment!

The interesting thing to me is that Uncle Sam is raking in most of your costs!

Um, anyone know how to convert all these monetary values into Wealth?

I heard a similar scheme involving predicting sporting events. You convince 1000 people you know the outcome of a game, but you predict Side A for 500 letters and Side B for the other 500. Then, with the 500 you got right, you split them again on another game, then one more time until you're down to 125 people that think you're Nostradamis.

Then you ask those 125 people to send you $500 for the next prediction. If two people do it, you've made profit and everything else is gravy.

The scheme is high-risk because it involves the Post Office, it would automatically be considered a Federal crime and therefore a felony. They payoff would be relatively small, maybe 5-8 Wealth tops. Beyond that, I think it would take too much time for too little a pay off. If you could get a mook to do most of the work and rent the PO Box, you'd be way ahead of the game.

I think in the urban environment of New Milan, however, this scam would be a tough sell. It would probably require several ranks of Minor Con and maybe Performance (writing) to pull off. Interesting stuff though.

5 Respect for Angelita.

Mr. D.

That's why I thought it was funny that you'd be paying $27 out of the $40 in recurring costs to Uncle Sam for postage...

More technosavvy characters could do the Internet version, which reduces the use of the post office to people sending you money, but then you've gotta pay a spammer to send the original letter out. Angelita isn't that technosavvy tho... <points to the comment about boys losing their cooties so she never learned to type well>



Although people say "You can't con a con," sometimes people who want something for nothing are more likely to be taken in by a pyramid scheme. Not to mention, if they're fairly close to the top of the pyramid, they will actually get their money back.

Thanks for the Respect! Sadly, what I really need is experience, and even if I get a group together, I'll probably be GMing...

An opportunity then:

For each new player you bring into the fold, you gain 500 experience points. For each level they gain, you get 100. If you get one to order my book, you get 1000.

How's dat for a scheme, eh?

Mr. D.