A taste of the underworld

You start in a real neighbourhood of a real city, with nothing. Over 1,600 street jobs, from pickpocketing and stealing a scooter to collecting protection money and boxing in a cash van. Which ones you see depends on where you are: a port city has different ones than a village, a border town different ones than a villa district.

Jobs take real time. You walk or drive there through your neighbourhood, at night. On the way something happens: a police car on the corner, a witness who looks too long, a door that's locked after all. Then you choose: keep going, pay someone off, or walk away. Every choice changes your odds, your loot and how hot your street gets.

If it fails, you get away, end up with a back-alley doctor or spend a few hours in a cell. Every outcome can be checked: the game stores the state and the roll of every job.

Your rank says how big you are; your careers say in what. There are ten careers, each with its own property, jobs, contacts and a ladder of ten trade levels. Nobody can do everything at once: if you want to grow, you have to choose, work together or buy from others.

You don't need to know what you want up front. Every day you can do a trial job from every career, and the game shows where your talent lies. You become what you do: smuggle a lot and you get slyer, and the slyer you are, the better you smuggle. Your first career comes at the second rank; later you can hold up to four at once.

Your main career becomes a rumour attached to your street name. "They say he's in the port business." Nobody knows for sure.

A day job is your cover. It pays a small salary, makes you look legitimate and opens doors that would otherwise stay shut. A dock worker can skip scanning a container. A car mechanic can borrow a customer's car for the night. A croupier can change chips for a regular.

Those temptations are easy and the risk is small. That's exactly why they work. But get too hot and you lose the job, and suddenly you're someone without a story.

Money that comes in while you sleep. From a barn and a bar to a club, a hotel or a casino in a world city. Every neighbourhood has a limited number of spots, and some of them already belong to the local families.

Production is best done where nobody looks. A grow-op or a lab in a quiet village runs better and gets busted less often than one downtown, where the local officer and the neighbours see everything. In Brabant you can build something big in peace. Until someone talks.

Property wears out, needs fixing up and draws attention: a threatening letter, a smashed window, a takeover bid, sometimes a robbery. Muscle at the door helps.

First you do it yourself. Later you hand it off and direct the work. You hire from the candidates who turn up every round, each with their own skill, their own loyalty and a street name like Sjors the Shark or Nadia Teeth.

Pay them well and they stay. Underpay them and they walk, or talk to the police. A job you've done well five times yourself can be done by someone else: they take the risk, you get the loot and a small share of the heat.

Local earns high margins; far away rules with volume. You buy at the source, where it's cheap, and sell where the street price is high. In between lie borders, customs and 171 real seaports, from Rotterdam and Antwerp to Santos, Guayaquil and Manzanillo.

A load within the country arrives in a few hours; to another continent it takes a day and a half. The bigger the load, the more it pays and the harder it hurts when it's intercepted. A courier, a driver and some muscle help. The right customs officer on the payroll helps more.

Every city has its own underworld: made-up families, gangs, motorcycle clubs, smugglers and syndicates, each with a character of its own. A port city has smugglers, a financial district a syndicate, a metropolis a cartel. Big cities have more of them, and where it's rough, they're more aggressive.

With enough influence in a district you can claim it. Then you collect protection money and every job there pays more. But the families strike back: they take back whatever is weakly held, send a warning, or pay you a visit. You can also make a deal. For now.

You add friends with a six-character code, see who's online and chat. Together you start a clan, with a name and a tag of up to four letters, up to twenty-five members.

Bigger jobs take two, three or five people: a ram raid on a jeweller, a truck of cigarettes across the border, fake invoices on a building project, running an illegal gambling den for a night. Everyone plays the same roll, and the loot is shared fairly.

In your familia you give orders to clan members: a job you've mastered, for a cut of the loot. They get experience, you get respect.

No borders. Too hot? Move to another city, another country or another continent. Every country has its own police, corruption and healthcare, and its own willingness to extradite you. Wanted in your own country? Go abroad. Wanted internationally? You'll feel it at every border.

Fake papers come from the forger: cheap, good or diplomatic. They wear out with every border you cross and burn when you get caught on them.

Or you go to ground. No jobs, no travel, and every round costs money. A quiet country with little surveillance and lots of anonymity beats a loud paradise where everyone watches and everyone knows you.

There are three kinds of money: dirty (cash), clean (in the bank) and crypto. Dirty money is fast and dangerous; clean money is slow and safe. If you want to grow without being noticed, you turn one into the other: through a car wash, a restaurant, an estate agent or a bookkeeper who never asks where it came from.

What you own says something about you. A safehouse lets you cool down. A villa with high walls makes a raid rare, but the neighbours know you live there. A penthouse gives respect that no longer fades. A yacht or a private jet makes borders thinner.

Every job leaves traces. Heat is what the street knows about you right now, and it fades; your file is what the justice system keeps, and it almost never forgets. The thicker the file, the bigger the chance of a raid: property gone, stock gone, more in your file.

Past a certain point you're wanted in the country where it went wrong. Beyond that, with enough notoriety, an international police agency puts out a notice. Then you get recognised at borders, can be found at home, and a cooperative country will extradite you.

You can bribe the local officer, the detective or customs. Every country is different: cheap in a corrupt one, expensive and risky where the rule of law is strong.

There are three rankings, per city, per country and for the whole world. Empire counts your wealth, your people and your districts. Shadow counts wealth nobody sees: notoriety weighs heavily against it. Most wanted is for those who like being in the paper; nobody is anonymous there.

Stay very quiet and you appear on the lists without a name. Just a title and a country. Your title is what your numbers say about you, from Nobody yet and The loudmouth to Someone nobody knows. The highest title is for those who are rich and invisible.

Meanwhile you climb in rank, from Alley Rat to Godfather. You only see your own rank and the next two. They say it ends at Godfather.