FATE Venture City | Red Queen Rising

Creating your character

🦸 Character Creation We’ll be using the Venture City rules as written to create our heroes. You don’t need a complete sheet before arriving—characters can be built between sessions, finished collaboratively at the table, or you can even start play with blanks and fill them in as we go. If you’d rather skip the process, pre-generated characters are available. They’re designed to fit the tone and setting of Queen City, but there’s always room to customize them if you want to make them your own. Here’s what character creation involves: 💡 Brainstorm Concepts: Talk through your hero’s core idea, influences, and where they fit into the city. ✍️ Write Aspects: Define who your character is, what drives them, and what complications shape their story. 🎲 Pick Skills & Stunts: Choose your character’s strengths, specialties, and those unique moves that make them shine. 🔧 Design Powers: Venture City powers are modular—build anything from neon-blazing firestarters to bulletproof juggernauts to psychic masterminds. 🤝 Team Connections: Establish how your hero relates to the others—what bonds tie you together, and where tensions might spark. You’ll finish with: 🦸 A fully fleshed-out hero ready to hit the streets. 🌆 Clear ties to Queen City, its gangs, and its dangers. 🤝 Connections to your fellow players, so you start as a team, not strangers. Above all, character creation is collaborative and flexible. Whether you want to play a gritty vigilante, a reluctant powered citizen, or an ambitious antihero, we’ll make sure your character fits both the system and the story we’re telling together.

Preparing for the session

🧰 Preparations Getting ready to play Red Queen Rising is simple. You don’t need prior experience with FATE or Venture City — just bring yourself and be ready to dive into the neon-soaked streets of Queen City. 💬 Join our Discord server: We’ll use it for voice chat, scheduling, and table chatter. 🎲 Join our Roll20 game: All maps, tokens, and handouts are set up for you. 🎙️ Have a working mic: Clear audio helps keep play smooth and immersive. 📖 No rules knowledge required: Everything you need will be explained at the table. 🦸 Characters: You don’t need to make one ahead of time. We’ll build heroes together during Session Zero, and pre-generated characters are also available if you’d prefer to jump right in. That’s it — no stress, no heavy prep. All you need is your mic, your imagination, and the courage to walk into Queen City’s neon warzone.

What Ukulele Mike brings to the table

✨ What You Can Expect When you sit down at the (virtual) table for Red Queen Rising, you’ll get more than just a game: you’ll get a fully supported experience designed to immerse you in Queen City’s neon noir. 💬 Dedicated Discord Server: A home base for scheduling, questions, and post-game chatter. 🎲 Roll20 Pro Virtual Tabletop: Smooth online play with dynamic lighting, integrated rolls, and custom features. 📑 Virtual Handouts: Quick-reference rules, tables, and cheat sheets at your fingertips. 🗺️ Maps & Diagrams: Visuals to bring Queen City’s districts, gangs, and battles to life. 🦸 Custom Character Tokens: Distinctive avatars tailored for your heroes. 🕰️ 40+ Years of GM Experience: A long history of running countless systems, from classics to indies. 💻 35+ Years Online: Tech-savvy play that keeps sessions smooth and focused. 📖 Clear Rules Support: Mechanics explained as needed, with a focus on story over crunch. 🎭 NPC Voices: Memorable gang leaders, corrupt politicians, and mysterious queens. 🛠️ Player-Driven Storytelling: Your ideas, your choices, your Queen City. ♥️ Passion for the Source: A love for Venture City and the superhero-cyberpunk-noir genre. The goal: a high-energy, collaborative game where every session feels like an episode of your own comic series — full of action, drama, and unforgettable characters.

Homebrew rules

🏙️ Queen City We’ll be using the Venture City rules as written for the most part. However, while Venture City provides rules and setting guidelines, we won’t be using its official location, factions, or NPCs. Instead, our campaign takes place in Queen City: a supers-influenced, cyberpunk dystopia with a grittier, noir tone. Queen City is our own creation. It may even exist just a few hundred miles from Venture City, but it has its own identity: rival gangs, neon-lit battlegrounds, and whispered legends. I’ve seeded the initial plot with custom organizations, locations, and NPCs, but the city will grow organically. Through play, we’ll be co-creating Queen City together, shaping its districts, factions, and myths based on the choices you make. ⏱️ Initiative & Turn Order Combat and action scenes in Queen City need to flow like a comic: fast, punchy, and cinematic. Initiative will work slightly differently depending on the situation: 🎭 Narrative First: If the scene is straightforward, turn order will be determined by what makes sense in the fiction. 🎲 Skill Checks: When order matters, we may compare skills or use opposed rolls to decide which side gains the first move. 🍿 Popcorn Initiative (FATE Condensed): Once the first character acts, that player chooses who goes next. This continues until everyone has acted. The last player in a round chooses the first player in the next. This style keeps the action dynamic and unpredictable, encouraging teamwork, tension, and spotlight moments for everyone. 🦸 Reskinning & Powers The Venture City power rules are flexible by design. To fit Queen City’s cyber-noir tone, players are encouraged to reskin and flavor powers to make them feel darker and grittier: 🦾 Cybernetics & Biotech: Many powers may represent implants, enhancements, or experimental drugs rather than “traditional” superhuman gifts. 🧠 Psychics & Influence: Mind powers can appear as cybernetic interfaces, brainwave disruptors, or experimental neurotech. 🔥 Elemental & Energy Powers: Firestarters, shockers, or light-benders might wield hacked power cells, unstable reactors, or biotech organs. 🩸 Street-Level Noir: Not every power is flashy. Enhanced toughness, hyper-awareness, or street-forged reflexes fit right alongside neon pyrokinesis and bulletproof skin. You’ll have the freedom to decide whether your character’s abilities come from mutation, corporate science, black-market tech, or something stranger but all powers are encouraged to be tweaked to feel like they belong in a city of neon lights, corruption, and danger. ✨ Why These Adjustments? The goal of these tweaks is to reinforce the noir, high-stakes feel of the campaign. Queen City should feel distinct from Venture City: familiar enough to use the rules smoothly, but unique enough that the city feels like ours. Initiative keeps the story flowing like the best superhero comics. Powers are reskinned to ground every ability in the cyberpunk-noir atmosphere of Queen City.

How Ukulele Mike creates a safe table

Your comfort and enjoyment come first. This campaign includes super-powered conflict, gang violence, cybertech enhancements, and organized crime themes. While the game will feature gritty action and tense situations, we’ll work together to keep the table fun and respectful. We’ll use the following tools: 📝 Session Zero: We’ll review expectations, tone, and lines & veils before play begins. 🚫 Lines & Veils: Players can define what content is off-limits (Lines) or should fade to black (Veils). ⏸️ Breaks: We'll pause for ~5 minutes midway each session. More, if needed. ❌ X-Card / Pause: At any point, anyone may pause or skip content that makes them uncomfortable, no questions asked. 🚪 Open Door Policy: Anyone may step away from the game at any time for any reason. ⭐ Stars & Wishes: At the end of each session, we’ll highlight moments we enjoyed (Stars) and share what we’d like to see more of (Wishes). The goal is a collaborative, high-stakes superhero noir that keeps the edge sharp but never cuts into player safety.