Dark Champions: New Venice

• Quasi's Dark Champions RPG game. Using Champions 6th ED rules set in the town of New Venice!
• Recruitment
• Smallville Rulebook

Characters

• Zarthax playing Tony Stark (Smallville)
• Kreenwarrior playing Lothar Lyesmith (Smallville)
• Tangen playing Carol Danvers (Smallville)
• Blacksheep playing Jessica Drew (Smallville)
• Danny_K playing Victor Von Doom (Smallville)
• Quasi playing Steve Rogers (Smallville)

About The Town

Pronounced Ven-ICE Population: 488,230 Location South West corner of Georga.

At its worse, it is a mix of both the decaying Old South nobility and modern decadence, often clashing. At it best, it is a dynamic vibrant city full of old world charm, in the midst of an economic boom. People of every socal strata have flocked there as the rest of the country's economy nosedives. It is slowing edging out Atlanta's title of as was seen in the ugly competition beteen Atlanta and New Venice for the 1996 Olympics.

New Venice is the second largest city in Georgia. It really came into being in the 1880's where it became the first stop and eventual home of many Italian stonemasons who came over from the old country to work in the US during the post Civil War Reconstruction.

You can have old genteel southern feel of Olde Towne, the once grand "Italian District," the bustle of the skyscrapers of downtown, and the seedy docks of Portside. And of course the forest of hi-rise Condo Towers in the posh suburb of Cuore Beach. What used to be the cuban nieghborhood recently has an influx of Russians.

All these are riddled by its famous canals. There is even a toungue-in-cheek urban legend about "Vinnie," a monster who supposedly inhabits the canals and is the city's unoffical mascot. Depending on who tells the tale, Vinnie may be a plesiosaur, a giant thirty foot alligator, or a mutated man-eating manatee. The manatee rumors are likely just an outgrowth of the New Venice Manatees AA baseball team - they're the ones that first started using Vinnie as their mascot.

Don't forget that wedged between Portside to the south, and the agricultural chemical industrial plants and the train station in the north, is Free Town, the district still primarily inhabited by african american families, and settled during the Reconstruction period by freed slaves. Oddly, this is another area, in addition to Olde Towne, where the homeowners associations are the most adamant about maintaining the "old southern charm" of their buildings, and force property owners to follow strict rules in any remodeling or refurbishment of the old homes and businesses there.

Alternately, the port IS big enough and there's a boom there at the expense of other coastal cites... but with the way container shipping works, cargo shipped inland by train instead of handled by longshoremen, so there's a big economic shift in a traditional working-class area.

Landmarks We have the New Venice Museum Of Modern Art (NV-MOMA) A hideous monstrotrocity that everyone hates. It incorporates all of the worst features of modern art. It looks like it was designed by a lunatic, because it was. Some visitors even complain of nightmares. Its designer Johnson Debuque, went insane and has been a resident of the hopeless case wing of the St. Regis Asylum for the last 45 years. The truth behind it is an ugly story...

Far more popular is the St. Blaise Cathedral. Built as a labor of love buy the orginal Italian stonemasons who settled in New Venice, it put many old world churches to shame. Its crowning touch is an exact copy of the bell tower from St Mark's Basilca in old Venice. (Interesting piece of trivia. When the orginal San Marco bell tower collapsed in old Venice, 1902 they used the New Venice tower as a reference to rebuilt the orginal from scratch. So technically, the belltower in Plaza San Marco, Venice, Italy is a copy of the one here in New Venice! True story.)

Game-Specific

Inspiration? Good question. I was thinking Batman:TAS meets X-Files. Psi and magic, exist as dark rumor. Going for horror movie overtones.

Things like flying, teleport and desolidification depends on the motif. Jetpack (a la Rocketeer) or built in glider OK Flying via unexplained physics defying alien powers -NO

Allowing some low grade mutant, psionic, and magic powers. They definitely fit in the film noir feel.

Aliens exist but only as inhuman monsters. (IE Aliens can't disguise themselves with glasses and pretend to be a newspaper reporter)

Weapons and armor have to be paid for by power points.

Average attack about 8-10d6. That gives powers in the 40-50 point range.

Yah, you don;t need a Killing Attack in order to kill. Of course, it makes it much easier. In general killing is a bad thing. Heroes suspected of murder will suffer real life consequences such as getting hunted by police, bad PR, and trouble sleeping at night. Sometimes police may turn a blind eye, but there is a line that cannot be strictly defined. As mentioned if you keep on killing bad guys how are they going to come back next issue? Superheroes killing, or even attacking bad guys in "the line of duty" run a risk. In this world supers are considered vigilantes. In fact, “vigilantes” is the common word used to describe "superheroes." Also note superhero secret identities have no legal protection. That means, since in the US courts the accused has the constitutional right to know who his accuser is, a super cannot be a witness in a court of law unless he discards his secret identity,

Killing

Which in turn means that the heroes have to gather evidence to make charges stick to criminals. If a bundle of financial records that prove the mayor is dealing drugs turns up on the steps of police HQ, there aren't as many issues as to where they came from in prosecuting. Well, just because you don't have any killing attacks doesn't mean you can't kill people... shoving people off rooftops or into traffic with magic is plenty lethal, and putting a force wall up in front of a speeding car... ouch.

Having a handgun as a backup is sensible