Carnevale - the bridges of Venice

Hi all,

With the imminent arrival of Carnevale to da Grotto, it was time prepare the battleground! 

Carnevale is set in an alternative timeline, in the city of Venice. This northeastern Italian city is built over 126 islands separated by canals and open water, linked by 472 bridges and for nearly a thousand years was one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Thanks to it's ports and central European location it was a dominant force from the 9th until the 17th centuries when, thanks to the rise of Western European countries such as Portugal, France and Great Britain and invoking the displeasure of the Ottoman Empire, it faced a long decline. In the alternative timeline - the year 1795 (2 years before Napoleon invaded and set about the destruction of Venice as a power in Italy), a great catastrophe engulfed the planet and "The Rent in the Sky" has caused cities to disappear below the waves and empires to crumble, creating a shift in geo-politics. Once again Venice has become one of the most influential cities of the world. Factions fight for influence, power and sometimes for the sheer fun of it, spilling blood into the streets and the canals of the once beautiful "Queen of the Adriatic".

So how am I going to represent the battlegrounds of Venice? Well years ago I made up these dungeon/sewer tiles from thick MDF and XPS foam for a dungeon crawler game I designed. So they will be repurposed and used as the basis of my board. Each tile is 12 inches squared and covered by either 1" squares cut into the foam or canals filled with resin. They were perfect for the dark/murky canals of Carnevale. Unfortunately, I only made one bridge for the game as it was a pinch point for the dungeon crawler. As Carnevale is played over 3 foot x 3 foot boards, this left a lot of canal that needed crossing and a lot of space to fill with buildings and terrain for an immersive game.

my blank(ish) canvas

So first things first, another bridge or two was needed and some simple crossings to give the gangs some ability to move across the board. Now because Carnevale is very much a movement based game, with a Parkour type mechanism that encourages risk taking and characters to leap from building to building etc. I wanted plenty of places for them to land and jump off from.  Time to get the XPS out and build some bridges...

my first effort was a simple stone bridge

and some rickety wooden pilings

excuse the alligator, not really part of any faction, but a legacy of the old sewer build

these were really quick to build and to get onto the table, but I felt like I needed to do something a bit more imposing. So I looked at the source material and wanted to do a "tower bridge" type crossing. Out comes the XPS and this time some coffee stirrers. Venetian architecture definitely revolves around "the arch" so that definitely had to feature, also the post cataclysm Venice did not escape unharmed from the event - although nowhere near the devastation of other nations, it still nonetheless has a lot of patchwork repairs or ruined parts. I wanted the bottom part of the bridge to show the solid stone foundations and arches of the old city, but the makeshift wooden structures of the current city.

and voila!!

I think it came out pretty well, with plenty of height and launching points for the parkour side of the game. The doors on the external ground floor and internal upper floors represent an inner stairwell, allowing less agile folks to gain some access/altitude.

That's it for now, next time the rest of the buildings and the whole board reveal.

hope you enjoy

dGG