The Serene Republic

Venice is one of the great cities of Europe. It has a name to conjure with, and, unlike Paris, which has been transformed by modernity, or Constantinople, which fell to the sword, it still looks much as we, the players who like our cities panoramic, hope that it might. It is still a city of canals and gondolas, bridges and carnivals, even if, in the game period, it was never quite what we hope and expect it was. Venice is one of those bits of Mythic Europe you can still get postcards of.

Like virtually all of this blog's readers, I have never been there, and am faintly ashamed of my worry that the real Venice, and the real Cairo, and the real Athens, will not stand comparison to the cities I've imagined. Then, of course, I realise that there's no way to really imagine the textures of a place. How it smells, how the light looks over a day. This, of course, makes writing about Venice, or anywhere, a bit presumptuous. Calvino has a character who knows less about every city that he describes, and perhaps this is true of those of us who write from a distance. I keep hoping Ars will take off in Europe and that our colleagues there will guide us through their cities and mythologies, because all I could offer is convicts and bushrangers.

The Serene Republic is one of those sites where you hope there will one day be a setting book. Next time, how about we not do yet another Tribunal? Well, maybe Greece, and then, let's just settle down and do Venice instead. Home to chapter houses from a dozen of the most powerful covenants in the world. A global power just grasping the possibility of its empire. This is a setting that's laden with stories: the sorts of easy obvious stories that don't require player to really know much history.

Venice is too large, too full of stories to be dealt with in a single blog entry, but I'd advocate it as an excellent place to set stories based on the new rules in "City and Guild". It has a developed financial system, is ruled by a merchant class, and wages wart to support its trade interests. It is a colonial power, and is willing to give financial aid to allies in distant places in exchange for trade concessions. As such, its presence can loom large in any part of Mythic Europe, as either an aide or rival for magi.