Hello Community,
I am planning to run a game of Urban Shadows set in Current-Day Rome. As I want my game to be more than a few overdone cliches of Pizza and Mafia I want to ask around if anybody here has some nice ideas for background plots and threats set in the Italian capital.
Currently I have the following topics written down:
– Catholic Church
– Corrupt Politicians
– Mafia (can’t do without)
– Immoral industries (probably connected to mafia and politics)
– youth unemployment
– Roman Gods and Spirits
– Immigration and human trafficking
We will have our first game on the next sunday, and I want to be prepared to ask more leading question that ties the characteres deeply into the setting, so that the game “feels” Italian.
What are your ideas for such a game? Any topics that I missed? Tips and tricks that I should remember? Do you know any urban legends about Rome?
I am eager for you responses.
Based on what I’ve read of Rome, and what I’ve seen when visiting. Obviously an outsider’s take:
A number of classical Roman buildings had to do with competition between the families for putting up the best/biggest architectural pieces. Not so much these days, but I feel like a political battle around rights to a contentious old piece of land in the city proper…
Parties involved could be
(1) A couple notable local families, picking up the age-old tradition of having a massive pissing contest (with the winner being the one with the best architectural plans, as being judged by a not-quite-corrupt statesman).
(1a) don’t restrict the competition to the living. Roman ancestor ghosts and the like probably play a significant role in families that are big on their unbroken lineage. Research some of the old architectural battles and bring them into this as unsettled contests.
(2) An agent of foreign money, looking to put up a hotel or somesuch. Keys would be that the hotel would be un-Italian, but incredibly wealthy – possibly a “business” hotel w/ conference center, something to make the not-quite-corrupt statesman earnestly consider it as a boon to Italy’s non-tourism economy.
(2a) Pick whatever foreign nation Italy has moderate immigration hate towards (I don’t know, Poland?). That’s where the agent and his staff is from, and where people presume the money is coming from. The organization is, I don’t know, Majevski Inc.
(2b) Pick whatever foreign nation Italy has the most immigration hate towards (I don’t know, Libya?). That’s who’s bankrolling this and, it turns out, a whole bunch of other property purchases in and around Rome that are meriting less scrutiny.
(3) A bunch of little non-NPC design and architecture firms, and a couple of big ones to flesh out like NPCs. Rome’s youth has a focus on design and fashion like Silicon Valley kids eyeball software, in my experience.
(4) Locals – especially very old (read: vampiric) locals, with an eye towards the natural and undisturbed lines of power – that would much rather leave alone the old building on its old land, with its Roman-era subterranean levels. This is not uncommon in Rome, so don’t present it like American-style “oh, backwards conservatives.” This are some of the oldest civilized structures in the Western world: preservation is not foolish. Rome is a city that lives in its history like you live in your skin.
(4a) Non-vampiric locals. Just regular people who don’t want their history rubbed over. They’re probably against foreign money more than the architect firm, but even so: fuck ’em all, leave the city alone.
(5) Local construction firms and/or unions, who want jobs that will
keep them working. The union bosses probably want the foreign money building. The workers are probably more mixed, though. This might be a place to include a mafia NPC, but don’t bring Mafia stuff into this. Let the PC’s just meet the NPC here, but otherwise, keep the mob out. If it touches every plot and sub-plot, it will just be a cliche.
(5a) this could mean lots of fresh jobs! Youth unemployment! Maybe most of the politics lean towards silver-hairs, and the union is biased towards bringing its senior members in off the benches, but there’s some crusading new politician or faction (possibly represented by your PC / PCs) arguing that any thing funded w/ public moneys needs to be equally apportioned to jobs for the unemployed youth. Watch the union start to rip at itself.
(6) The politician should be a recurring character. He should be quasi-corrupt, you know? He has personal interests (maybe he’s an investor with some of the local construction crews), but maybe in the past he was an active supporter of conservatorship efforts; so he’s honestly torn, and trying to do what’s best for the city, and who doesn’t need to put money in their pocket? Torn, sullied politicos are much more interesting than snakes, I think. Showcase him doing the “right thing” now and again (friends I’ve known in politics all have said the same thing: most people don’t enter politics corrupt; they enter willing to trade policies they don’t care about for policies they do. Show what this guy cares about, show him being a good guy, and show him horse-trading to accomplish those goals. Don’t let him be a one-dimensional megalomaniac.) Maybe his goal is spurring on Italy’s non-tourist trade, what with the tourist trade hurting post-Zika (I assume.) Maybe his goal is public health, and he doesn’t give two shits about old buildings when he can bring in the money/tax base to institute a meaningful mosquito control policy, or put money into Zika vax research.
(6a) Maybe the decision doesn’t come down to him: maybe it comes down to a council that he heads, and you need to flesh out a couple of factions that can be swayed one way or another.
I think of this sort of plotline as an introduction to major factions, and major lines of money. Any local big hitter with money in the city will give a shit one way or another, right? So plot down some threads to any factions you care about exploring in the future, and tangle them up in this, and you give the PCs a chance to have some political battles over things with big future impacts, and a chance to see how the big players (and their money, and their influence) all intersect.
I’d also add, unrelated to my idea above,
-Non-Roman Gods and Spirits
-Catholic Gods and Spirits
All roads lead to Rome, once, and the empire was never shy about bringing home major trophies. There’s no reason why some foreign spirits and powers may not have accompanied those trophies back, trapped forever in the culture of their conquerors.
This can overlap with Catholic gods that came about in attempts to over-write indigenous pagan gods. Especially since was once not-uncommon in Rome for art pieces to be stripped from one Church or ancient Roman piece to decorate a new Church: you can easily have the patron saint of a newer church in a feud with a saint of an older church (stripped of art for the new place), both of whom are in an ongoing quiet feud with the Egyptian goddess whose statue was brought back and used in (first one, then the other) church as decoration.
Rome is old, old, old. Buildings atop buildings, graves atop graves. It’s not like NYC, which merrily tears down the old in favor of the new: Rome just builds atop it. It should feel like a place where generations co-exist.
This is why i love this community! Exactly the kind of response I had hoped for. Thanks for taking your time in writing such an elaborate post. It will take some time to digest everything and condense it into an idea quarry that I can dig into during the actual game.
Thanks for pointing out how to avoid cliches! I really like your idea about Roman House Spirits (they had something called Lares back then, so it fits) and the competition between Deities and Have-Been-Deities. Depending on the actual characters that could fit quite well into the story.
There is a TV show (mini-series really) called Zen which is set in modern day Rome. Might be good for inspiration.
There are a hell of a lot of stray cats in Rome. Perhaps this could be something you could use as an indicator of Wild influence. A vacant lot has a few dozen cats lolling around? Likely to be a Wild related location.
The Colosseum might be a good source of Spectre material, a lot of people were killed there. You don’t need to go all the way back to the Roman empire for blood soaked history though, World War 2 had a big effect. There are still walls with bullet holes (that I assumed were from that period).
The Vatican is (or was anyway) very acquisitive. One roman bath ruin that I visited had signs up showing pictures of what should be there with a note explaining that the object had been ‘saved’ by the Vatican and now resided in a basement there.
The Trevi Fountain has a famous legend about how throwing in a coin guarantees you will return. Perhaps there are other Power related wishes it can fulfil given the right rituals. The wikipedia page which gives the legend of how the spring was discovered is interesting.
The “Bocca della Verità” is a sculpture showing the face of a river god with an open mouth. Legend is that a liar who puts their hand in the mouth will lose it.
Tourists. From an insider view, Rome is damn full of turist, and turist’s attraction. If youur character are locals, remember to play up the amount of different tongues, styles, and the fact that, most of times, you’re approached in some kind of bizarre language.
Perhaps some fey tourist?
Native romans are usually friendly, and ready to joke. If you sit down somewhere in the center, be sure that in 10 minutes there will be some native ready to talk with you.
Food. As clichè as it may seems, italians are deeply connected with what they eat. It’s a sort of status symbol. Check about the typical specialities of rome (remember: fettuccine all’ alfredo DO NOT EXIST!) and use restaurants, wine bars, and gelaterias as places of power.
If your character are in a bar, or something like that, ask them “what do you eat? what do you overhear?”
Cripta dei cappuccini is a crypt entirely made of monk bones.
Rome is a center of political power. There are a helluva lot of politicians in the center, even just walking by.
We played in modern Rome. I was an aware jaded single mother guide for this hokey catacombs walking tour. walksofitaly.com – Crypts, Bones & Catacombs: An Underground Tour of Rome
We dealt with a serious backdrop that included terrorism, refugees, and gang wars. I personally guided the story more towards a personal search and investigation into a supernatural conspiracy to find the man who abandoned me and my son years ago.
Good luck. Rome was a really awesome city for Urban Shadows.
Andrea Serafini Thanks for the input. It is very appreciated. Those tiny details like the valueing of food is what I hope will make the characters feel alive. I also really like the idea of a Fey tourist. Maybe he wants to take a souvenir with him, like, an ancient bust or vase, which is inconveniently secured in a museum (peskey mortals).
Eric Nolan I like the idea of the cats as ambassadors from wild. Maybe I can combine it with the idea of ancient gods (e.g. Bastet). Those stories about mystical places like the fountain and the sculpture help me get the “mood” of an ancient city.
I have one more specific topic I want: How vigilant/responsive is the police in Rome? In my mind I have pictures of submachine-gun armed policeman patrolling the tourist sites, but what about normal policemen? How fast do they react? How violent do they react? I think firearms should be as rare in Italy as in any European country, so are Policemen more relaxed during routine duty? Would it be fitting to limit firearms to characters will illicit and/or military background?
In the city center, police is very responsive and very present, but usually not violent (you don’t want to scare tourists).
The more you go in the degraded parts of Rome, the less present and more violent the police becomes.
Btw, about the cat idea – i made this booklet, some time ago – if you feel like it could be interested, feel free to use it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rXPkmfa6vVaP-CFI6euFXm68-9yRdH3nWmyB6HcATyk/edit?hl=it&forcehl=1
Andrea Serafini Thanks for reminding me to the cat. I really enjoyed reading that playbook. But I am not really decided if i would like the feeling of a truly non-human character in the cast. I fear that It would detract a lot from the Urban feeling. I would rather keep the strange and abhuman creates confined to NPCs, mostly. For me, Urban Shadows is made for stories of superficially human beings, with monstrous insides, and not fully fantastic creatures in an urban setting.
Nonetheless the playbook is really a fantastic read for anybody who lives with a cat, so much truth in there…
I have two stories relating to police (as a tourist) but they don’t really address your question. First, there is a rule that you can’t sit on the steps of the huge monument to Victor Emanuel, and they treat it pretty seriously. I was with a very pregnant woman and a woman with a baby and two policemen armed with SMGs made us move. It just seemed slightly weird to have such a strict rule, Urban Shadows should definitely have a better explanation. The second is that Rome is full of interesting buildings and it can be hard to tell the difference between a tourist attraction and a working location. I wandered in to one building and thought there were rather a lot of police about so I asked the guy at the desk if this was a public building to be told that it was a police station. Fancy columns, marble floors, beautiful carvings….regular old police station.
The monument I mentioned, Il Vittoriano, is interesting from an Urban Shadows point of view too. Unlike most of Rome it is pretty recent (only around 100 years old, practically a baby!). The locals seem to think it’s a bit ridiculous, I was told they call it “The Wedding Cake”, perhaps a Roman can confirm that. If I was putting that in an Urban Shadows game I would likely treat it is a nouveau riche palace. Something ostentatious to serve as a base for a faction that wasn’t in a position to set up somewhere classy back in ancient Rome.
Thank you very much for the feedback everyone! We started our game on sunday and I think it went quite well. We were able to come up with a good number of characters and rumors. We fixed some basic assumptions of the world and tried to get a feeling for the city.
I used many of your ideas, Andrea Serafini. When I asked the Tainted Mafiosi what we eats at the very fine restaurant with his Godfather he said that he actually is disgusted by Italian Food and only eats it for a show. He much prefers pure meat and burgers 😀 That definitely was unexpected and really helped to showcase the social tension between expectations and normative behaviour.
The first two scenes were not really related to the city itself but focused more on the interests of the individual characters. But the fronts I have prepared for the next session definitely build up on many of your ideas. We have Roman Gods/Spirits of Hate and Revenge, Patrician Vampires (and Plebejan Street Vamps), Werewolf mercenaries, a mystical department of the church and many more small details.
Sadly, as we play in Real (and talk in German), I only have German transcripts of the story, and do not have the time to translate everything into English. But I would like to thank everybody again for helping me imagine a believable Rome!