Just an Idea for January or thereabouts

I have this idea for a 1930's pulp campaign for the New Year.   Just throwing it out there a while.

GOTHAM CITY 1934: Campaign Synopsis

 

Gotham City, in the midst of the Great Depression is thoroughly in the hands of the criminal underworld.   5 Old Gangs (around since the 1880’s) and 4 New Gangs (2 Chinese, 2 Italian Bootlegger families) have carved up the city rackets (gambling, extortion, prostitution, protection) and thoroughly corrupted every facet of city government from the police to the public works department.  With the collapse of bootlegging, all the gangs have branched out into more sinister pursuits including kidnapping and full-scale plundering.   The revenue from city taxes and union dues go mostly into criminal pockets.   The city is crumbling.

 

In this difficult time, a secretive group of civic-minded citizens and honest businessmen have pooled a secret fund of money to fund a private band of vigilantes to strike against the gangs and clean up the city.   Their agents have searched the country for down-on-their-luck talented detectives, boxers, soldiers and scientists to form this band.   An old warehouse and tenement block has been secretly purchased and refurbished (with the outside left deliberately run-down) to serve as a secret headquarters.

 

Will the power of the gangs triumph or will they simply turn on one another destroying it all in gang war?  Will the rise of criminal psychopaths shatter what’s left of civil society?  Will mad scientists, foreign agents and revolutionaries take advantage of the chaos to seize the city for themselves?  Or will some tommy-guns, Colt 1911’s, blackjacks and brass knuckles bring terror to the evil doers and drive them back to the sewers where they belong?