16th Century Venice

[ElJeffe]

I plan to gather a retinue and do a game based on Venice of the 16th Century during the wars between the Ottoman Empire and Venice. My setting diverges a little and mixes with the Barbary Pirates a little namely making the Venice of my world "Lunarda" a corsair republic like Sale (near Rabat in modern day Morocco). In Sale the Corsairs elected the head of the state in an assembly called the ocezk (not unlike the Election of the Doge in Venice) but it was such a cool idea that I had to incorporate it. I call it the Corsair of Lunarda. But basically you could say Pirate of Venice. I pretty much would use the LP's the way they are, and do a few cultures up, 1 for the Lunardan's (Venetian's) one for the Stygian's (Shiavoni or Dalmatian Refugees and Mercenaries) one for Janisurians (Ottoman Turks) one for the Hapsiderian's (Hapsburger's) and maybe a few more.

Of course Im not quite sure how to do that, do traits that is. Are they mostly just 1 and 2 point traits?

I have a few ideas, but want to see how a few players would knock the game into place. I also decided to use the Summoning rules as the only magic system (faith is in short supply though)

How much planning as a GM should I do, I mean a linear campaign is kind of out of the question. Should I knock out a few NPC's with some beliefs? Is that a good way to start? Or should I wait to even do that until I sit down with the players. (which at this time are imaginary). Basically this idea has been kicking around for years and now I think I have a good system for it.
Advice would be welcome, as I have really just started perusing the system.

[Dwight]

I really want to do a pirates this period as well, in a similar vein. It's high on my priority list for gaming, has been for a bit. I wasn't sure about location though, whether it would be Americas (late 16th century), Mediteranian/Europe, or perhaps even SE Asia. Although I was thinking pirate hunting would be the hook.

I'm of the mind of just Character Traits to denote different cultures. I'm not sure about languages, I really hate handling and playing with different languages. I find it really cumbersome, although having it on a simple Trait (you know it all or you know nothing) can be passable if all the PCs share at least one common language. Otherwise language seems to dominate the table, and typically not in a fun way.

I'm going to be open to making up new appropriate LP names, but have the all made to order. I really don't want to sink time into something that doesn't get used.

I'm curious about your choice of magic. I'm inclined towards the Nameless-only Spirit Binding plus Faith at or near standard rules. I was leaning towards Americas, which is maybe why I was thinking playing up Faith more (Voodoo and RCC)? For SE Asia maybe less so although at least for those native to the area, although either way I didn't see involving summoning of the standard Light/Dark cosmology named spirits.

[ElJeffe]

I think I chose it because it mirrors the way people tried to do magic back then, Venice of the 15th and 16th centuries was renowned for its religious apathy and because of that it was a hotbed for occultism. It also had connections to both Jewish Kabbalism and Arabic "magic" which were heavy into summoning. Summoning also seems to go really well with witchcraft. Also the summoning rules are really, really fun and scary at the same time. I like the idea of summoning unnamed spirits as well, (summoning the wind seems appropriate for a merchant republic).

My hook right now is that the Empire of Opal's (Ottomans) and Lunarda have just gone to war, right as several prominent families have decided to get involved in their own war, a trade war.

My goal for the campaign is to unite the families of Lunarda and enlisting the aid of other countries to stop the Empire of Opal's.

I think I want to do something like the Firefight rules in BE for Burning Wheel so folks can do sieges and Naval battles, but it all depends on what players want to do,... setting wise there is a lot of ground for PC's to cover if they want, and both internal and external conflict galore.

[Dwight]

Good thoughts, I'll keep that in mind and maybe suggest location or magic adjustments depending on which way the players want to take it. Maybe I'll have a player that wants a character to come from the outside and walk the path of the widely disrepected Faithful person? All that negativity could represent a +Ob to Faith tests even. Thanks.

[ElJeffe]

A few LP's

Turned Turke 3yrs Res 6 Stat N/A Leads-City Dweller, Sea, Soldier, Religious, Court
Skills: 4pts Heretical Doctrine, Foreign Doctrine, Moorish language
Traits:: 2pt: Zealot, Convert "glow"


Conderottie 4yrs Res 10 Stat+1 P Leads-Court, Seafaring, Outcast
Skills: 8 pts Formation Fighting*, Armor Training*, Soldiering, Appropriate Weapons, Ride, Drinking, Haggling
Traits: 2pts Disciplined, Pennywise, Greedy

[Iskander]

Sounds cool.

My advice would be to avoid getting too embroiled in the detail of the setting until you have some players psyched to take part, also. Then, provide broad strokes of outline and enjoy the lush pleasures of filling in the details with the players in play: from character burning and situation creation all through the swashbuckling antics.

(I'm reading The Confusion right now, and the big scene in Cairo is the fucking bomb.)

[ElJeffe]

The Confusion? Haven't read it, whats it about? And don't say 230 pages... :)

I just read Pirate Utopias and Venice the Lion city, as well as the Awesome Buccaneers of America by Alexander O. Exquemelin (AWESOME). Also Captain Altrieste and right now Im on fire.

I don't see too much harm in hashing out LP's and magic system though after all this is a specialised setting. But your right, I dont want to game before I game...

[ElJeffe]

is the rational for firearms having such short range that their AV value is so high? (or at least on par with a heavy crossbow) Im contemplating raising it a bit... but I don't want to be using range and cover forever instead of fight, so I may not. I may just do ranged warfare as a series of Bloody Versus tests using strategy or tactics as the main skills.

[alexmegelas]

The Confusion? Haven't read it, whats it about? And don't say 230 pages... :)

I just read Pirate Utopias and Venice the Lion city, as well as the Awesome Buccaneers of America by Alexander O. Exquemelin (AWESOME). Also Captain Altrieste and right now Im on fire.

I don't see too much harm in hashing out LP's and magic system though after all this is a specialised setting. But your right, I dont want to game before I game...

Wow! What an awesome campaign setting! Have you read Snelder's "The Devil's Anarchy"? If you like Wilson's theories on temporary autonomous zones and historical piracy, you'd really like it (Wilson wrote the intro.)

The idea of running a piracy-influenced campaign was a big part behind a campaign we just ran called Burning Shackles - loosely based on 16th century asia (integrating elements of colonialist slavery, opium-trade flavoring, etc...) In our case, what helped quite a bit was invoking the idea of shared storytelling from the get-go, allowing players a fair amount of leeway in defining / fleshing out factions and key game NPCs.

In our case, we found that the "boat" environment worked quite well as a backdrop and the linguistic differences added flavor despite the occasional challenges (in our case there were 3 diff. languages and cultures on the ship.)

We've since moved on and I'm now running a campaign set in the same world, but diff. continent - this time slavic/ottoman-influenced with a heavy focus on elements of traditional slavic mythology (juxtaposing animist beliefs, the concept of the Dark Forest and fey culture) all of which contribute to an approach to magic that feels quite unique. As such, I'd be really interested to find out how you integrate your idea of magic into your campaign...

I always thought it'd be really cool to play out a carribean piracy-influenced campaign with a voudon element...

right on,

alex

[ElJeffe]

The Slavic Ottoman tension is actually an idea I really wanted to focus on, as a lot of the Venetian Mercenaries and Captains were Slavonic or Shiavonii. In fact the Doge's personal guard were all Dalmatian Slavs. Their sword style the Spada Schivona was one of the seeds for my concept too. These were people with a real stake in resisting the Ottoman invasions because they were on the front line of the wars which were really extensions of the Crusades. The Character I'd love to play if I could is actually a one of these people, a princess in her own country who rises to become a great Captain and War leader (as well as a witch).

The more I read about Venice too the more I fall in love with the setting, I mean these people were the kings of the Mediterranean, had the best ships, the best captains, and the highest profit margins until Sailing Ships began to supplant galleys.

On the flip side, tons of Christians Renegados and Moorish refugees from Spain became pirates and naer-do-wells and crazily enough actually raided Ireland and Iceland for slaves and booty.



I haven't read that one yet, but its on my list of books to read.