Who Wants to Be a Pimp?

by Tjames Madison

2000-08-03 03:49:00

Fishin' With Tjames

Extreme pimpin' under pressure ... how to tell a playa from a sucka ... keeping your hoes under control ... tips for mackin' success from Pigdog's own Terrordrone.

It seems like every nerd on the Net these days who knows his Tek-9 from his AK- 47 is spending all his (and sometimes her) time at Pimpwar. They're mostly white people. I am one of them. We mean no harm. We've just watched too many blaxploitation pictures.

I blame it on Quentin Tarantino. I mean, how many of us really wanted to see "Dolemite" before Q-daddy started talking this stuff up on every talk show in the world in the wake of his sudden, wild, undeserved success? I admit, I have always been a closet "Superfly" junkie, but that was mainly because Curtis Mayfield (R.I.P.) was and is the flyest superpimp that ever walked the earth. Right on.

Which brings me to the game of Pimpwar, where the object is to be the second coolest hustler of all time, right behing Curtis. And I see some of you out there don't know shit, frankly, and I'm here to set you right, because a pimp is a terrible thing to waste.

1. Don't Over Extend Your Pimp Ass

One mistake that newer pimps often make is the "I'll just grab as many hoes as I can" fallacy. Because on the surface of it, it seems like the obvious thing. You are a pimp. Pimps pimp hoes. Hoes make the world go 'round. Not so fast. Thing is, every other pimp is going to be watching you and your little stable, and when the odds are right (and your dumb ass is hung out over the side of the roof with ten times as many hoes as thugs,) you're going to get beat on. Hard. You will quickly find yourself with just you and you dozen or so thugs buddies sitting around finishing off the 1,246 40 dogs you have stuffed into the fridge. Instead, build slowly. Buy thugs periodically to keep a healthy ratio of whore to thugs. Don't be an obvious target. A good rule of thumb is never have more than twice as many hoes as thugs; later on in the game, you're going to want more thugs than hoes, so prepare yourself for this inevitability early on by scraping together enough cash to keep muscle on your side.

2. Pistols Are Dumb, Shotguns Are Dumber

This is how it works. Pistols get one shot off, shotguns two, Tek-9s nine, AKs 30. But this is not expressed in a linear sense of value within the game. Shotguns cost nine times as much as pistols. Tek-9s cost a little less than three times what shotguns cost, and provide 4.5 times the firepower. AKs cost three times what Tek-9s cost, and provide more then three times the firepower. Buy as many AKs as you can. Early on in the game, have a couple of AKs, but mainly buy pistols until you can afford the best. Tek-9s and shotguns are basically not worth buying. Especially shotguns. Nine times the cost for only twice the firepower. Only a sucka invests in shotguns.

3. Play the Pimp, Not the Thug

Basically, this means don't just look at how many thugs a pimp's got when you're thinking about attacking him. Look at his net worth. If he's got about the same number of whores as you, a lot more thugs than you, but around the same net worth, that probably means he's weak in weapons. He might have 100 thugs with 100 pistols, but your hardy 20 thugs with 20 AKs will blow his punk ass out the door and steal his VCRs as well.

4. Low-riders Are For Chumps

They're no good for anything. I see a lot of pimps get right on the first time and buy a low-rider for no good reason. Then someone steals it from them and they cry about it. I can sort of understand that it seems cool to have a low-rider and the ability to do drive-bys, just like we've seen in fine motion pictures featuring Ice Cube, but it doesn't pay off in this game. You will gain nothing from a drive-by. The best you can do is hope you take out more of your rival than he takes out of you. If you absolutely must get medieval, opt for home invasions instead. That way you have the chance to gain monetary reward to hopefully make up for any thugs you lose in the process, as well as the satisfaction of beating down your enemy.

5. Learn Your Ass to Steal Hoes Correctly

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten up in the morning and checked my status only to find a string of utterly laughable attacks on my hoes. "So and so wasted four crackrocks on your whores and got nothing." I can't emphasize this enough: USE THE PROPER AMOUNT OF CRACK WHEN STEALING WHORES. One hundred generally does the trick, although I've seen successful attacks with 80 or even less. I would suggest 100 as a good compromise amount, though. It's not so high that you're going to feel a huge sting from your crack pile, yet not so low as to damage your base chance of success. Conversely, you need to keep your whores happy on the defending side of things so that someone else can't easily steal them away from you, but we'll get more into that in the next installment in this series...

Until next time, and remember, I've got something for your punk ass.

runcible@pigdog.org