Projects

The High Bank

30 years ago, inspired by a fun, low-budget, Italian swashbuckler, The Executioner of Venice I spent a few months working on a swashbuckling campaign setting set in late 16th Century Venice. It used to be available online and was described by an Italian Renaissance history professor as the most authentic fictional version of Venice they'd come across. Which was flattering. They then went on to complain that their students were using as a source of reference material for their studies.

The swashbuckling 15th, 16th & 17th centuries is rather an overlooked period of history in roleplaying games. Finding suitable systems to run the setting with has always been a bit of challenge as the system being used has a big impact on the feel of the game. Initially, I used Ars Magica which had a great magic system, albeit one that didn't mesh well with the historical period although it needed some firm tweaking for swashbuckling action. Most recently I've ran a campaign using Honor + Intrigue which was great for swashbuckling action but didn't quite hit some of the other elements we were looking for.

Consequently I'm revisiting the setting, giving it a polish, fold in the additional elements I've added over the years, and fill in some of the missing elements.

In principle I'd like it to be system agnostic but I'm also considering maybe bundling some lightweight rules customised for the setting. I'm a fan of Jaws of the Six Serpents by Silver Branch Games. I quite like Atomic Sock Monkey Press' PDQ system Jaws uses. It feels more flexible than Honor + Intrigue's career-based character generation process. The flexibility comes with the potential friction of requiring players have a good-ish idea of the setting and what they want their character to be during charater creation.

The name of the project is an early name for Venice. In the 9th Century, the name "Rivoaltus", literally "the high bank", was used to describe an area in the Realtine Islands that would become the Rialto district of the city.