Start your career as a petty thief, taking on dirty jobs and pulling off thrilling heists. Work your way into the ranks of a cutthroat but close-knit crime family. Earn the Godfather’s favor. Build an empire of terror and dominate the underworld. Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostra is a mafia-themed RPG text-based browser game (try saying that five times fast) founded in 2010 by Kano – not to be confused with Mafia Wars, one of the many subsequently created games inspired by the classic Mob Wars. While there is no physical world for your character to move around in, Mob Wars: LCN still has its ways of getting you sucked into the lore and taking on a full-on mobster persona.
Simply put, the game revolves around doing illegal jobs for money, buying properties all around the globe, building up your mob, and of course knocking heads with powerful bosses as well as rival players. You need energy to do jobs which give you XP, cash, and random item drops. You need money to buy properties and gear (weapons, armor, and vehicles), and you need health and stamina to fight bosses and other players. You can refill your needs instantly using favor points at the Godfather’s shop, where you can also buy rare gear and hired guns. The kind of mobster you are is determined by which skill set you pick when creating your character and what aspects of the game you capitalize on the most.
Are you a Double Agent, master of shadowplay known for sneaking in buttloads of extra cash from each job without using much energy to pull it off? Are you a Knuckle Duster with the stamina of a lion, who prefers the challenge of fighting real players over doing jobs, raking in the dough by stalking the hit list for worthy opponents? Or are you a Vigilante, who cares less about the money and more about how to wreak as much havoc in the game as possible?
Speaking of wreaking havoc, the fights are the most interesting and second most important part of the game. From PvP brawls with other players on the Fight List (±10% within your level), to all-out syndicate wars, to gruelling boss battles, your character is bound to get into a fight or even be killed at some point. But you can protect your character by equipping yourself with awesome gear which can be bought with cash, earned by doing jobs, or randomly dropped after winning a boss battle. And don’t forget to keep extra gear in your inventory for the rest of your mob to use when following you into battle. For a price, you can even add a rival to the hit list if they’re really pushing your buttons, where level restrictions don’t apply and anyone in the game can attack them. Similarly, if a rival mobster is continuously re-adding you to the hit list, you can rig their ignition to stop them. You just pay a small fee and next time they put you up there – plot twist! – they instantly die instead.
Now for the most critical part of the game: the community. Can’t roleplay as a mob boss without a mob. You can build up your mob by adding other players as friends, or if you’re not very sociable, buy artificial hired guns from the Godfather using favor points instead. Your friends will function the same as hired guns when you go out and fight, automatically following you into battle and auto-equipping themselves with the best gear available, without it interfering with their own gameplay if they happen to be online while you’re battling. You can make friends (or rivals!) by interacting in the chat servers. The quickest way to gain strong allies is by checking the jobs channel for players that need help fighting a tough boss together, syndicates looking for mobsters to join their loving family of dangerous criminals, etc. A syndicate is different from a mob because they’re entirely made up of real players who make decisions together and develop close bonds. In a competitive game like this, strong relationships can go a long way.
This is a general overview of what Mob Wars is like and how the “mob” and “war” parts compliment each other. It’s easy to play and quite addictive, making it the world’s largest text-based mafia RPG out there.
