Welcome to the Criminal Underworld

When you advance a level in the Criminal Influence development skill, you must choose to advance a tier in either Black Market or Murder Incorporated (M.I.). This tier is unrelated to the level of skill you are purchasing. For example, if you chose Black Market when you learned Basic Criminal Influence, and then Murder Inc. when you learned Proficient Criminal Influence, you have one tier in both, not two tiers in M.I. and one in Black Market. You may choose to go all in on one, or split your influence. Taking levels in both criminal factions opens a character up to more stories—though be warned, a criminal with a foothold in both may be regarded with suspicion by their purist peers.

These two groups represent two different role play experiences within the criminal underworld. How do you know which group is right for you?

What is Murder Inc?

Murder Incorporated is a wastes-wide network of ritualistic assassins working towards what they view as the “Greater Good”. They work in the shadows to eliminate threats to their communities and the wastes as a whole. More detailed information about Murder Inc. can be found in the network publication “A Killer’s Mind” here.

The organization is structured into three pillars, which are made up of various families: 

  • The Adherents of Betrayal deal primarily with travel, econ, and trade related threats

  • The Silenced Knell deal primarily with political threats and dangerous social groups

  • The Watch of the Bone Chapel focus on threats to the Mortis Amaranthine

Murder Inc. narratives will deal mostly with working as a group to investigate, sabotage, and assassinate groups and individuals who somehow pose a threat to the community or the region. Murder Inc plots take inspiration from the likes of John Wick, Assassin's Creed, Kingsmen, and other secret agent, assassin, spy, and vigilante narratives.    

You can find more details about the DR:CO Murder Inc. here.

Maybe your character is a true believer in the cause, getting your hands dirty to protect the wasteland. Maybe they don’t trust the average Wastelander to stand up to tyranny and evil. Maybe they have violent urges or dangerous skills that M.I. has scouted in order to keep an eye on them. There are many ways to fit your character into Murder Inc, and if you have questions or desires to join a specific faction or family, or want help steering your character towards the role play you’re interested in, reach out to the Writing team.

What is the Black Market?

The Black Market is a catch-all name given to the various crime families and syndicates throughout the wastes and the goods and services they offer. Drugs, weapons, thugs for hire, stolen goods, information – whether a Marketeer’s gig is extortion or gambling rings, their main goals are control and profit. More details about the Black Market can be found in the network publication “Illicit Business” here.

Black Market operations fall into one of three pillars, based on their corner of the Market:

  • Vices and Violence: Brutality and taking the edge off said brutality

  • Social and Mental Control: Shaping what people know, what they think, and what they think they know

  • The Dead Market: Deal in the horrendous, grotesque abominations and exploitations of goods and services centering around Infection

Black Market narratives deal mostly with high-risk, high-reward jobs and navigating various groups who don’t necessarily like one another. Black Market plots take inspiration from The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and other gang, heist, and seedy narratives centered on morally corrupt outlaws.

You can find more details about the DR:CO Black Market here.

Maybe your character is a cunning and ambitious business person looking to corner a market. Maybe they’ve got debts they need to pay off and can’t find work that pays as well as this does. Maybe they’re here to play Robin Hood, stealing from and swindling the rich and giving it back to their community. As with M.I., there are many ways to fit your character into the Black Market, and if you have questions or desires to work with a specific syndicate or group, or if you want help steering your character, reach out to the writing team.

Criminal Influence, Participation, and CVC

Learning levels in Criminal Influence and advancing tiers in either Black Market or Murder Inc. do not require you to participate in all narratives involving Black Market or Murder Inc. If you simply want access to the Criminal Influence skills like Pact of Silence, Disguise, or Harvest Flesh, and to make or use Criminal items, you can do so while only interacting with narrative elements as much as suits your play style and comfort level. However, we do highly recommend engaging with the organization(s) that you have chosen to have your character join. The integration of these organizations into the Criminal Influence skill is to encourage players and their characters to get involved in collaborative, competitive, and conflict-driven role play associated with criminal activity.

The Player’s Guide explicitly states in the text of Basic Criminal Influence that gaining access to the role play involved is part of the skill. The Black Market is a network of criminals vying for business that rely on one another to build their reputation and power in the underworld. Murder Inc. is an organization that shares common goals and carries out missions together in service of those goals. It is recommended that you steer with your fellow players to establish your character’s niche and position in the organization in a way that fits your play style and availability. Playing a “lone wolf” with Criminal Influence is not impossible, but can increase conflict between your character and others with Criminal Influence, and can be at odds with the intended role play of the skill tree, depending on how you interpret and represent that.

Narratives and role play involving Black Market and Murder Incorporated can, and likely will, put them at odds with each other. The Adherents of Betrayal may work against a Vices and Violence gang of highwaymen. A Marketeer focused on Social and Mental Control is a prime target for the Silenced Knell. The Bone Chapel often stands in opposition to the Dead Market. However, while these groups can have friction, they may also find themselves reluctant bedfellows—a Vices and Violence outfit may have to reach out to the Adherents to bring down a financial group with a monopoly on a certain resource. The Knell may purchase valuable information from a Social and Mental Control spy syndicate. The Bone Chapel may need resources only the Dead Market can provide. While the Black Market may see M.I. as weird and self-righteous, their money is good, and they keep bigger threats from rocking the boat if you don’t step on their toes. Meanwhile, Murder Inc. may regard the Black Market as unpredictable and sometimes a threat to the Greater Good, but the goods and services they offer can be indispensable in a dangerous wasteland.  

Participation in Murder Inc. or Black Market narratives and modules may open a player to CVC interactions up to and including Lethal CVC. While it is still advised that CVC actions and scenes sparked by Criminal narratives be negotiated between players involved in order to create good collaborative story, to prevent frustrations that some players might be “opting out of consequences” and avoid scenarios where some characters are harshly punished for an offense another character was not as harshly punished for, we request that players interact with these narrative elements with their own comfort levels in mind, and opt-out in advance by not participating, rather than opting out after the fact. If you are wary of danger or conflict, but still wish to be involved in Criminal narratives, we encourage you to steer your role play to reflect that caution in character. A character with Criminal Influence is implied to be a dangerous person, working with other dangerous people. This may lead your character to interact with their criminal colleagues exclusively in disguise, or through postal correspondence and hired representatives, in order to protect their identity from those that they’re working with. Per “Illicit Business,” exposing the disguise, blowing the cover, or revealing the plans of a Criminal character that is actively trying to hide their Criminal affiliations or intents is a CVC action, and having your character engage in informant behavior automatically opts players of characters affiliated with the informant character into CVC as well. We encourage steering interactions and stories like these directly with the players that it impacts, especially surrounding narratives with NPC or PC law enforcement.

You do not need Criminal Influence to perform criminal activities. You can be a pickpocket or a murderer without needing to get involved with either Black Market or Murder Inc. While there will be some game play and role play elements—meetings, targeted modules, PoEs, or objectives—that are seeded to Black Market, M.I., or both, the changes to the skill this edition mean that we can move away from “Criminal Only” modules that were locked to a skill due to their reward. Anyone can do crimes, some are just better outfitted for them.

While the Writing team may create mods, NPCs, or points of engagement to act as a jumping-off point for both Black Market and Murder Inc., these groups and the narratives they engage are intended to be heavily player driven. Players are encouraged to work with one another to create stories.

Law Enforcement

Crime cannot exist without Law. If everything is legal, nothing can be illegal. While Black Market outfits may quarrel or compete, and while the Black Market and Murder Inc may be held in a dance of “can’t live with them, can’t live without them,” the primary threat to characters involved in criminal organizations is law enforcement.

DR:CO’s primary game setting, the settlement of Barker Meadow, has a PC-run government and may have law enforcement positions for characters determined by the players involved. These positions may have titles like “Sheriff” or “Advisor of Law” and are defined by players with little to no steering from the writing team.

DR:CO has an NPC law enforcement faction, known as the Dead Range Wardens. The Wardens are designed as an antagonistic group. While players are allowed to join this society at the discretion of the Directors, please note that this group is intended to be primarily antagonistic towards PCs, regardless of whether those PCs have the Criminal Influence skill or not. Joining the Wardens means playing a bad guy. Players may not join the Wardens if they have any levels of Criminal Influence, and lose this society membership if they gain any levels in Criminal Influence. It is recommended that players interested in the law side of law vs. crime CVC role play, but explicitly want to play a white hat faction, instead join the Arbiters of the Bond.

The Arbiters of the Bond are a primarily player-driven network society dedicated to hunting down criminals and bringing them to justice. While this society (unlike the Wardens) is explicitly not an antagonistic group, they are still a CVC-heavy group intended to be in conflict with other player characters—specifically those with Criminal Influence. More information about the Arbiters of the Bond can be found in the network publication “Social Creatures,” here. The Arbiters of the Bond are explicitly good guys. If you want to play an antagonistic law enforcement character, consider joining The Dead Range Wardens instead.