[Brainstorming] Old-timey fantastic New Orleans-esque city campaign

[Kunimatyu]

I'm about to start a rather unique campaign, and I'd love some input from the collective minds of ENWorld.

The setting is a run-down river city called Sunrise (perhaps named after a famous Animals song), a sprawling den of iniquity, gamblin', and downright villany. Sunrise is one of the few cities on a large western continent being colonized by an empire on the other side of the sea. There's a small uprising -- something about 'independance' -- going on, but Sunrise is a sort of neutral ground, as it's too large and corrupt for either side to really claim as its own. For the poorer parts of the city, I'm strongly considering using parts of the Styes, but I'm currently sort of at a loss for the other parts.

The PCs are a seedy bunch of underworld type trying to make their mark, and the focus of the campaign is on capers(think Ocean's Eleven), with fairly heavy roleplaying. At the request of the players, supernatural elements are minimal, though they will be present.

(more background can be found at: http://true20.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=742&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=)

I'd love some help brainstorming, particularly with music and fleshing out the city.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

On a certain level, you'd probably find good source material in Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork (the main city in the Discworld novels).

Humor aside, I'm an expatriate New Orleanian...

The city was very corrupt and very dangerous: the Feds have investigated and purged the police department 3 times in my lifetime. Some of its corruption has been immortalized in episodes of Law & Order and Homicide: Life in the Streets- notably the incident in which an off duty cop & her cousin robbed the chinese restaraunt in which she moonlighted as security with her partner, killing everyone (including her partner) except for 2 kids who hid in the freezer & later ID'ed her when she responded to the call after it came over the radio... Its murder rate per capita was one of the highest in the USA- once, while visiting family during Mardi Gras, New Orleans had had more murders than NYC or Boston...in fact, it was #1 in the nation...and that city is only a fraction of either's size. A good part of the reason Katrina was so devastating was because of years of redirected funds and criminally substandard construction.

Cuisine: NO was one of the best cities in the world to eat, even if you were poor. You could get a quality oyster Po-Boy for $4 at a gas station...one that would cost you $10 here in Dallas. Spider's sold Po-Boys for $1 per foot. Chez Helene made tartar sauce from scratch...even if it took a few extra minutes for you to get your to-go order 5 minutes before closing.

Music: Jazz, Funk, Zydeco (which actually originated in Texas), Blues and more recently, Rap based forms are king, but you can find almost any genre there. Many of those guys could play circles around the musicians you hear on the radio, but its a question of publicity and exposure- How do you pick out a diamond in a vault full to the rafters of them?

Culture: American, French, Spanish, Native American and South American cultures all mixed together to form its unique societal structure. Even when slavery was in full swing, it wasn't quite the same as it was everywhere else. Some blacks in NO were quite wealthy and powerful... Religion & Excess go hand in hand. My mom was educated in a Catholic girl's school in the heart of the French Quarters...right around the corner from a live sex clubs or 2. (Actually, most of the private schools there are Catholic run, and blacks there are predominantly Catholic- virtually unique among American blacks who are predominantly protestants, usually Baptists.)

Other than that...You might want to check out Barbra Hambly's "Benjamin January" books, all set in the New Orleans of the 1830's-1840's. The main character is a "free man of color," the Paris educated MD Benjamin January, who because he is black, is forced to make a living as a musician...and solves murders along the way. One of the stories involves a fictionalized account of Delphine Lalaurie (whose name still graces a street in the French Quarters). Allegedly, she was so brutal to her slaves (and others) that she could have just as easily been the subject of the movie Stay Alive ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441796/ ) as Elizabeth Bathory (inexplicably moved from Hungary to NO for this bad, bad film).

 

[Kunimatyu]

Thanks, Dannyalcatraz! I'll check out that book series.

Are there any movies or music that really capture the feel of 1700-1800s New Orleans, in your opinion?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For music, pick the best of the European music of the era. Even then, music was at the fore of NO's cultural scene. You could even find world famous Opera divas giving concerts to A-list politicos & celebs of the day in NO theaters. The Ben January stories will also give you some insight- his work as a musician involved a lot of playing for private parties & balls. Harpsichord would still be nearly as popular as the piano up until about 1800.

Street musicians would be playing stuff that would eventually become the blues, zydeco & jazz etc., but that would still be 50-100 years off. Most of the day-to-day stuff was still just work-chants, gospel hymns, and the like. There would probably be a LOT of French folk songs floating around. Still, unless you have purists & historians in the group, Zydeco, blues & jazz tunes from the early 20th Century would still put most people in the New Orleans mood & mindset.

Movies, though...nothing springs immediately to mind. :\

 

[Kunimatyu]

Movies, though...nothing springs immediately to mind. :\

The fact that there haven't been any excellent historical movies made about one of the most uniquely American cities in history....it's a damn shame, is what it is.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Oh, I'm sure there are some...I just don't know of any!

That said, I'm sure there's peripheral stuff about NO in documentaries like Ken Burns' Blues and so forth.

 

[Tonguez]

Whenever I think New Orleans the vision I see is

Grand Old mansions, twisting dark alleys, the old black man with a trumpet, missing tooth and knowing wink, the devil coming to dinner, the formidable Voodoo queen, Cajuns in the swamps, and a depth of mysticism and horror lying beneath the surface like an iceberg

New Orleans is built on a swamp and was once used by Indians as a burial place. French thought it would make a good Trading postdue to its geographical position on the Mississippi River
French Murderers, thieves, rapists, and common criminals were among the first to be sent out as 'labourers' to build the city. Living conditions were deplorable with weather, quick sand, alligators, venomous snakes, mosquitoes and disease rampant. The murder rate was high. Add a couple of major fires that devoured the city, there were numerous hurricanes, wars, and epidemics over the next hundred years all backed up by voodoo, superstition, french folklore and slavery

 

[Stormborn]

Consider the conflict of religion. Perhaps the Empire has an official monolithic, but not neccesarily monotheistic, religion. They would have the big cathedrals and a lot of politcal and economic power. On the other side you would have the smaller sects and cults -colonies are great havens for heritics and new lands often bring out eschatological fervor. They would be generally poor and underfunded and extremly evangelistic or extremly secrative, either to an extreme. Add into that native religions merging with either and producing your world's equivalent of Voodoo.

What does this mean for your band of ne'er-do-wells? Well, they could still at least nominally be faithful, maybe even tithing and going to service on holy days. An old playmate turned priest could be a source of information about the larger powers in the city. Holy icons, relics, or even officials can be captured and sold or ransomed. Occasional outbreaks of religious violence might draw the PCs in or serve as cover, or a hinderance, for their goals. Relgious offices might be for sale, and the perfect opportunity for a con man adventurer with money to burn. They can play powergroup off one another in complex local politics -scamming all of them and making them think they have been helped if at all possible. If the PCs cross the wrong people they might wind up with a Inqusitor coming to town to investigate them.

EDIT: You might also consdier source books for other systems. World of Darkness has a New Orleans source book and so does Call of Cthulhu. While set for different eras I imagine either will have ideas that you can use.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Consider the conflict of religion.

I'm planning on it -- the Empire has a rather unique religion; it's monotheistic(so everyone worships 'God'), but there are Five Faces of God and churches devoted to each. The religion arose out of a sort of compromise agreement among the followers of five original religions, but in the "New World" there's less of an incentive to play by the rules, and certain sects are picking up ideas from the natives, or directly trying to relegate the other sects to minority status, none of which occurs as often when you're in the Empire proper.

You can read more about the religious setup from the link in my original post -- we had an involved discussion about it on the True20 boards.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'd just like to say this is a brilliant idea that is sorely under-explored. I'll be watching with deep interest about it.