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How does someone get out of extortion?


caballero

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1 minute ago, Greyfeather said:
image.jpeg.44f445aee8c68298f6d40838ba5ce468.jpeg
 
“This couldn't be further from the truth” is a roundabout way to say something is a lie. It is completely false, bogus, deceptive, untrue, fake, not truthful; it is so far from the truth that it is not even close to being true.
 
But I also understand what you're saying. 🙂

Yeah, accidentally used the incorrect phrase. Meant to state "It cannot be more truthful".

John Capra extorted my Pawn shop, a year ago, by developing a friendly mutual relationship with my character. They worked with each other, and the character only paid a small weekly tax to receive benefits from the criminal organization. Lasted months, on end.

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1 hour ago, DLimit said:

Yeah, accidentally used the incorrect phrase. Meant to state "It cannot be more truthful".

John Capra extorted my Pawn shop, a year ago, by developing a friendly mutual relationship with my character. They worked with each other, and the character only paid a small weekly tax to receive benefits from the criminal organization. Lasted months, on end.

 

One of the most common things I hear the Pro-Extortion RPers accuse people against Tony-Spaghettio-style extortion is "you legal RPers just don't want to lose and don't want to lose your precious assets!" (Because the pro-extortion RPers are the ones who really, really care about assets in this equation)

 

The one "extortion" RP that I had on this server which I really enjoyed, and the only one to work, involved the criminal faction showing up to every opening, hanging out, buying drinks, paying their tab, being friendly, having a relationship with my character outside of work. Then they called her aside one day and were like "hey, you know, we operate a security service... just saying." 

 

My character did not just agree to pay them, she was thrilled to pay them. On an OOC level, these people showed a large amount of courtesy, and it was fun. Imagine that, having fun with your RP. They weren't trying to stroke their ego and show me how tough they were, they were engaging in business. In doing so, everyone OOCly and ICly won. OOCly, we all won because we had great RP and had a chance to develop our respective characters. We had great RP in the build-up and great RP after that. ICly we all won because our characters all got out of the deal with a benefit, and our characters all came out of the deal stronger.

 

It's amazing what kind of RP you can find when you take the stick out of your ass, open your mind a bit, and realize everyone else on the server is playing to tell collaborative stories with you, not to compete with you in a Cops n' Robbers RPG minigame.

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5 minutes ago, Ink said:

 

One of the most common things I hear the Pro-Extortion RPers accuse people against Tony-Spaghettio-style extortion is "you legal RPers just don't want to lose and don't want to lose your precious assets!" (Because the pro-extortion RPers are the ones who really, really care about assets in this equation)

 

The one "extortion" RP that I had on this server which I really enjoyed, and the only one to work, involved the criminal faction showing up to every opening, hanging out, buying drinks, paying their tab, being friendly, having a relationship with my character outside of work. Then they called her aside one day and were like "hey, you know, we operate a security service... just saying." 

 

My character did not just agree to pay them, she was thrilled to pay them. On an OOC level, these people showed a large amount of courtesy, and it was fun. Imagine that, having fun with your RP. They weren't trying to stroke their ego and show me how tough they were, they were engaging in business. In doing so, everyone OOCly and ICly won. OOCly, we all won because we had great RP and had a chance to develop our respective characters. We had great RP in the build-up and great RP after that. ICly we all won because our characters all got out of the deal with a benefit, and our characters all came out of the deal stronger.

 

It's amazing what kind of RP you can find when you take the stick out of your ass, open your mind a bit, and realize everyone else on the server is playing to tell collaborative stories with you, not to compete with you in a Cops n' Robbers RPG minigame.

Question, would you still be okay with their "extortion" if they pressed your character and insisted on a more aggressive approach with the same RP quality? 

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1 minute ago, BINGBONGGHOST said:

Question, would you still be okay with their "extortion" if they pressed your character and insisted on a more aggressive approach with the same RP quality? 

What all these threads have been about is that the aggressive approach isn't really working. It's not authentic to our timeline, it's not authentic to our setting, it's not conducive to great roleplay, and the server is currently under-equipped for the environment to contain aggressive extortion in a meaningful or interesting way. 

 

Now let's say I was RPing a Mexican immigrant in Los Santos and my character ran a business in MS-13 gang territory with undocumented workers. I'd probably rather enjoy the roleplay of being approached by unsavory local criminals seeking to get a cut of my character's profits. That would make sense, it'd have a realistic precedent, and there's a lot of room for interesting character development because of the circumstances. I think almost anyone creating a character like that would be intrigued by that type of roleplay if it was done well. And most importantly, that's where the extorting party really does have the room to be aggressive and that would be authentic to the characters. Juxtapose this to random European gangsters extorting wealthy and well-connected business owners in prosperous neighborhoods and doing so in such a way that would most certainly lead to an arrest if we were being authentic.

 

To note, if you google any major American city + extortion, virtually every single article you will find ends with the extorting party being arrested and either facing charges, or being sentenced to anywhere from 5 to 25 or more years in prison (depending on what other crimes they already had on them). I don't see any criminal characters engaging in heavy extortion on this server who even ICly acknowledge any risk of spending the rest of their healthy life stuck in a 10x10 barred room. And if these criminals are such tough and effective criminal masterminds that they don't need to worry about the consequences, then shouldn't they have some more lucrative rackets to be operating than brazenly exposing their organizational structure with highly visible, highly enforceable crimes to law enforcement for pocket change? Or is it just that there is an OOC meta at play here where lazy criminal RPers see a chance to squeeze relatively defenseless characters for decent script money for almost no work and with virtually no risk to themselves?

 

To return again to your question, Bingbong, I am not really convinced a more aggressive approach can be roleplayed with the "same RP quality." The reason that roleplay got my praise is because it was authentic to what I'd expect an example of "extortion" in today's day and age to look like. I've never had one of my real life businesses extorted, but I most certainly have had sleazy criminals try to buddy up with me in my businesses to try to gain influence and control over me. 

 

I enjoyed that roleplay because it OOCly gave me agency over my own character and my character's storyline. Sure, I think all of us agree that GTA roleplay as a medium isn't really intended for people to have full control over their own character at all times, but there's a point of courtesy. And what really compounds the problem is that extortion on our server does not carry significant IC consequences for the extorting party, and the odds of any consequences befalling the criminals is incredibly low. And the people roleplaying this extortion are often approaching it with highly toxic OOC mindsets about feeling entitled to dominate other people, and that they don't need to realistically portray their characters having any sort of reasonable fear of consequences. They're effectively exploiting multiple loopholes in the server's rules and the server's current legal system to abuse themselves a massive advantage in pursuing a type of roleplay which in a realistic heavy RP setting should not be particularly lucrative. 

 

It's play2win and cheapens our RP environment. I hear all these criminal RPers who are pro-Tony-Spaghettio-style-extortion-RP come out of the woodwork in these threads. When they're done accusing legal RPers of being asset-hungry, or telling them it's an "IC problem," or making strange arguments about how Los Santos isn't the real world so it's totally okay to roleplay it as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, they really like to claim that there is so much awesome extortion RP happening that's fun for everyone. Looking around, I've still yet to find anyone saying "yeah you know what I had some really awesome extortion RP where some guy walked into my shop while we were open, asked for the owner, and told me I had to pay him 10k a week or else I'd have my business destroyed and I'd get CKed."

 

Maybe because no one thinks this RP is cool or interesting besides the people clinging to it for their EZ drip of assets and ego-boosting fantasy of being tough guys.

 

 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Ink said:

To return again to your question, Bingbong, I am not really convinced a more aggressive approach can be roleplayed with the "same RP quality." The reason that roleplay got my praise is because it was authentic to what I'd expect an example of "extortion" in today's day and age to look like. I've never had one of my real life businesses extorted, but I most certainly have had sleazy criminals try to buddy up with me in my businesses to try to gain influence and control over me. 

Aggressive might have been a bad way to word it, I should of said more intrusive? Proactive?

 

Paying hoodlums to hang around the store, make mess, ruin business for the owner, etc, without directly seemingly involved but swooping in to save the day with the offer of protection. 

 

Honestly feel a lot of the bad examples of extortion aren't necessarily people RP'ing around their OOC power fantasy on some manipulative IC/OOC mix but more people not knowing there's other options beside brute force - you should make a list of alternative methods of extortion as well as anybody else who knows their shit because there's only so many statistics and old news articles you can pull up before you're just repeating each other. From an outsiders POV who's never partaken in owning a business or extorting one none of the back and forth on this thread would educate me on how to operate if i wanted to try, it's just never ending walls of passive aggressive insults. 

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1 hour ago, BINGBONGGHOST said:

Aggressive might have been a bad way to word it, I should of said more intrusive? Proactive?

 

Paying hoodlums to hang around the store, make mess, ruin business for the owner, etc, without directly seemingly involved but swooping in to save the day with the offer of protection. 

 

Honestly feel a lot of the bad examples of extortion aren't necessarily people RP'ing around their OOC power fantasy on some manipulative IC/OOC mix but more people not knowing there's other options beside brute force - you should make a list of alternative methods of extortion as well as anybody else who knows their shit because there's only so many statistics and old news articles you can pull up before you're just repeating each other. From an outsiders POV who's never partaken in owning a business or extorting one none of the back and forth on this thread would educate me on how to operate if i wanted to try, it's just never ending walls of passive aggressive insults.

These two posts within this guide are a good start (don't read the guide, it teaches extortion the wrong way.... read the two posts lol)

 

Edited by Cypher
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Best extortion is played strategically these days. I dare to say, that a proper businessman or a lawyer could get even more by few documents or sealed deals than bunch of thugs with a gas can. But that's the high game, low class stuff you can do good with a gang extorting a pawn shop or market of food stalls.

Edited by Engelbert
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