Wednesday 14 February 2018

New Orleans as a setting

Happy Mardi Gras!

We’ve started the Marvel SAGA game about some of the former Heroes of Detroit now covering the entirety of Michigan as part of the 50 States Initiative, and that naturally got me thinking about other regional teams, and that naturally got me thinking of New Orleans.

New Orleans is home to some characters in the Marvel universe already - Photon, aka one of the Captains Marvel and leader of NEXTWAVE, and Gambit is Cajun but has lived there at times - and of course it’s been occasionally infested with vampires, but Louisiana never had an established Initiative team.

So I made one myself.

DC puts Belle Reve Penitentiary, home of the Suicide Squad, in Louisiana, while a fantastical version called Bete Noire is home to Peter David and David López’s DC-then-IDW series Fallen Angel. Valiant’s Shadowman is such a New Orleans character that he had his own holiday there in real life.

It’s a city with a lot of character, and a great setting for a variety of stories I’ve seen from urban fantasy and horror to cops and PIs to romances to slice-of-life dramas.

Both Vampire games have city books for it, for example. (I recommend the Requiem one.) I’d probably avoid vampires for this reason, though it might include a visit to the Boutique Du Vampyre at some point.

I’d tread carefully around voodoo as well, because it’s a real religion, and in fiction is very very done.

It’s also possible to visit it outside of Mardi Gras! Though there are businesses and organisations planning for it year-round, and due to local law allowing anybody to stage a parade with a permit and fifteen days’ notice you can still have a parade anyway.

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