🎧 Runners! This week’s signal pings from a sinking city—Marta Palvarini drops EURO VENICE, a sharp-edged satire of Venice drowned in tourists and vampire cosplayers. Inspired by Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy and real-world collapse, it’s euro-fucked, high-stakes, and basil-laced. Let’s dive in before the canals rise...
1. What inspired your Pamphlets?
The main inspiration is William Gibson's Bridge Trilogy for its urbanistic approach to possible cities, and the Venice of the real world, taken to extremes and made absurd but not too much so, as this Italian city increasingly resembles realised cyberpunk.
2. Describe your Pamphlet in three words, then explain why you chose them.
Parody, Euro-fucked, high-stakes.
In this pamphlet, the game group is asked to exaggerate, both with the representation of the worst that Europe can give, i.e. the insane drift of a hyper-touristic city, and in terms of approach to the game. The very future of Venice is at stake here, but will our edgerunners care about this or will they only think about taking home the huge rewards?
3. What’s a design element - either as part of your Pamphlet or otherwise - that you’re particularly proud of?
There are gondoliers and they are a gang of hyper-violent nationalists who demand protection money from anyone who tries to cross the canals. Isn't that enough for you? Vampire cosplayers everywhere who have even built impossible catacombs in a city that stands on stilts.
4. Do you have any advice for someone designing their first TTRPG or module?
Exaggerate, but not too much, just watch any news programme and draw from the increasingly ruined real world. Talk about your home, talk about stories close to home, talk about your culture and tell how capitalism has brought it to collapse.
5. What’s your signature drink in the CBR+PNK universe—and what’s in it?
Gin tonic with a squeeze of lime and shaken with fresh basil leaves. Mediterranean as fuck, basically alcoholic pesto.
6. Any other projects or thing’s you’d like to plug?
I worked on this project as Game Designer and Writer, TAZ - A post-cyberpunk TTRP about loss of control in a ruined world: TAZ
If you are interested in impersonating Lovecraftian entities in a player VS player RPG with elements of strategic wargames, I wrote Elder Mythos RPG.
7. Where can people find you?
IG - @martu_palvarini
----
Don''t forget, CBR+PNK: OVERLOAD runs through the month of June 2025!