Looks like there are a few groups playing around in New Orleans.
It's a really cool city to play with. From the touristy areas to the not-so-great areas, there's a lot of material there. There's another thread about someone asking for ideas here -
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,21006.0.html.
1. Katrina - the destruction is still evident now, especially in the poverty-stricken areas. Even near the French Quarter, one of the primary tourist attractions, you can still see the marks from where the rescue people went through and marked the houses. It's kind of chilling to go down there and see it.
2. Poverty and people on the streets. Street performers used to be everywhere, but the last few times I've been down there, there aren't many. You can see people setting out their hats for a few coins or dollars, doing a variety of magic tricks, emulations, and so forth.
3. The total culture clashes. For instance, right in front of the St. Louis Cathedral, you have an area populated by artists, fortune tellers, tarot readers/palm readers, and merchants. The city has this reputation for being all about voodoo and vampires and so forth, but there's a strong Catholic presence as well. (Indeed, voodoo has some curious connections with Christianity, especially in Louisiana, as a result of the slave trade.)
4. Rich history you can play on - hauntings, war stories, voodoo priestesses, slavery. (One of the storylines I ran dealt with ghosts, and I was SO hoping one of the PCs would open their Sight in the LaLaurie Mansion. Sigh, he knew better.)
5. Corruption. Though in reality, most cities have their own issues of corruption, New Orleans (and Louisiana in general) has its own little quirks throughout history. It's fairly easy to play off of corruption here.
6. Crime. It's easy to visualize crime here, and it's just as easy to ignore it if you so choose because of the diversity of the city.
7. The French Quarter. This is one of the primary tourist attractions. It features Bourbon Street (fantastic place for White Court vampires!), several quaint shops with all sorts of focuses, warehouses nearby for shady deals, ghost/witchcraft & voodoo/vampire tours, active nightlife, etc.
Necromancers are easy to use here as well. An interesting point is that many of the cemeteries feature mausoleums, as the city is below sea level and there are nasty little stories about the necessity of above-ground burial methods. (There's a scene in the movie Double Jeopardy where she goes into the cemeteries - ignore their horrid accents, though; honestly, most people in New Orleans have an accent that's closer akin to New York/Brooklyn than the deep-South drawl that's really more associated with northern Louisiana and Georgia.) I'd even say that the taint of necromancy would be hard to track down, as it would be so rampant - from wannabe teens who somehow manage to stumble across some remnants of it to the real deal. But that's my thought.
Faces could be politicians trying to clean up and recover the city, white court vampires, black court vampires drawn there by the allure of the already-mentioned Anne Rice novels, in-the-know police officers and priests, and so on. Perhaps even reporters, prominent business folk, and so on.
Hope that helps.
