This is part two of the better-late-than-never* dash-stravagant saga-cum-review of Herb Yang's Kingpin: The Game. Welcome to the rave.
First off, I want to announce my ulterior motive for this post... to get Herb to run another round of his game. I've told various folks about my experience and many of them are interested to try Kingpin for themselves.
Alright, back to the story. Where was I? Ah, yes... the Butterfaces and the Beauties...
So generally speaking I'd put the Butterfaces aside, and I was spending most of my time organizing liquor store robberies and running guns as Misty Eyes LaBone. However, I didn't drop the Butterfaces entirely. The reason was not a desire to leverage more power... it was a matter of play time. You see, Kingpin was a 20-moves a day sort of game. This was one of its initial draws for me... the fact that you COULDN'T play it too much, that every move counted and then you had to wait to click again. Paradoxically, this made me invest more time in the game... by cutting me off before I had my fill of mafia crime, Herb set up a scenario where I spent time outside his world planning my moves, thinking about what I would do next. It was extraordinarily effective. BUT it was also extraordinarily tempting to run over to my other account for a few more robberies.
The Beauties started off lucky. Then I ran into my first bit of trouble, the Greeks, run by a man named Skeckulous. This was my first experience with combat. After this guy first attacked, I beat him back pretty effectively... but he was persistent, and aggressive. Around this time I developed a fierce protection of my crew, as well... a side effect of the fact that almost ALL your actions in Kingpin are carried out through hired thugs (and pushers and bodyguards, but no one uses those chumps). I won't lie... I had some losers in my corner. After Tommy Two-Tone got busted twice, I wrote him off as a lazy waste of space and left him in jail. Spider was a coward... he flat out refused to rob anything except back alleys. But Brokelaw... Brokelaw was a Man. He could intimidate anyone, fight like a bull, and run from the cops whenever necessary.
Now, like all these "thugs", Brokelaw was a collection of statistics. But in a game where ever action represented a real hour of waiting, and every attack was a gamble against 3 2.5 REAL DAYS with a gang member out of commission, these things start to matter. Any failure or success is tangible. And so, on at least four or five occasions, I said, out loud, "you're the best, Brokelaw." I think that may be why people were avoiding my cubicle at ICT.
With Brokelaw (and my second-best guy, Brakepad) on the front line, fighting the Greeks, I had lost my best earner... and my empire was suffering. To make matters worse, I had run up against another gang, the Toddlers. The Beauties were in trouble.
Luckily, I was not a godfather in a vacuum. Every crew leader had a real-world counterpart, and I decided to take advantage of that fact. Through the miracle of the IMD Backchannel, the name Skeckulous was a familiar one... I knew where to go to talk the Greeks down.
I'd talked to Scott Gillies maybe ONCE before this. But I IMed him on pure Kingpin business, to try to form a truce. At first he was dismissive... but I was sure that neither of us could be benefitting from our war. I'd given him a few resounding retaliatory beat-downs, killed one of his men... I needed him to listen to reason. In the end, he agreed not to attack me for the duration of the game... once I set a reasonable territory line and agreed to give him a choice peice of property.
I thought I had made a smart move.
But I was betrayed. I didn't know that the second and third years had an alliance, and that through the Greeks, Mike Brazil and his Toddlers (with support from Mihai) were ready to move in. With full knowledge of my position, the Toddlers swept towards my base. I was unable to expand North or West because of my deal with Scott. Our deal fell apart, and he rejoined the attack. To make matters worse, the game's combat system started to break down... my attempts to defend myself failed due to bugs in the code. All too soon, my home turf was taken... Brakepad and Brokelaw were scattered, the Beauties were history.
Meanwhile, far to the north, a ragtag gang called the Butterfaces were listlessly collecting dues, waiting for a leader. And now, with the demise of the Beauties, they had one... a leader who wanted REVENGE.
Next week... the East Coast cavalry arrives.
*did you know "better-late-than-never" is less likely to hold true than any other English-language maxim?