Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by ewancummins »

But, sure, we both include elements from various historical eras, films, lit, etc.

DMs should use whatever elements , in whatever mixture, works best for their own games.

I look forward to playing in one of your Ravenloft games at some point, Alhoon.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by ewancummins »

Now to push the thread back onto track, after I've contributed to some drift.

Alternate ideas for Vistani:

mentioned so far in this thread

1 Halflings(The OP's suggestion)

2 humans with a nomadic culture and a tendency towards practicing divinatory magic, but without the special powers or connection with Ravenloft/The Mists of the canonical Vistani (this option drawn from a couple of different posts by others)

new


3 Reincarnated and partly 'awakened' spirits bound to the Mists. Their ability to ''see the future'' is actually based on a fragmentary remembrance of their past lives. They can sense the repetition of patterns and anticipate events. But it's not always accurate, because they have only partial information, are fallible, and the future isn't rigidly fixed. The women are better at it. Men who tap into past lives tend to become obsessed with old emotions, lost loves, ancient feuds--and may become Darklings.
Gypsies sometimes take gorgio children who have awakened to a past life and are at risk of madness because of it, coaxing the children to run away with them and learn to deal with their resurgent memories.


4 Vistani come from Har-Akir originally. They worship the Akiri gods (Egyptian Pantheon of AD&D). Women use Tarokka. Men use Dikesha--for gambling as well as divination. Patterna is a distant cousin to the language used by nomads who move between Har Akir and Pharazia.

5 Gypsies come from Rhop, the home of the Rhennee. (Greyhawk reference) They are in fact a branch of the Attloi, the wagon-riding cousins of the Rhennee. Their fortune telling is only partly legitimate, relying as much on illusion magic as on mystical insight. Their curses tend to be more frightful in seeming than actuality, being phantasms that attack the mind. The race does much more business as horse traders, messengers, peddlers, and wheelwrights than as fortune tellers. Their magic shows entertain local people who otherwise mistrust them, taking the edge off visits to towns of Gorgios.

6 Vistani + Carnival. Combine the two.
Vistani are the "carnies" and "roadies" of Isolde. She has been in Ravenloft from the very beginning, trapped when Barovia first entered. She escaped into the Mist, pursued by Strahd's monsters. She gathered to her some nomads and tinkers she met on the road, and out of that eclectic mix the Vistani (visitors) were born. Patterna is not a language proper but a pidgin of L'Morai, Mordentish, and Celestial.


The neutral evil gypsies of the first module are still around, but mostly remain in Barovia when not on missions for Strahd. They are not Vistani at all, but they may disguise themselves as such to fool ignorant countryfolk. These people are actually degenerate, inbred Borjians whose matriarch, Madame Eva, has been drinking vampire blood for a long time to retard her own aging process (and idea borrowed from the World of Darkness, although I seem to recall it shows up in Ravenloft with the Kargatane).
Last edited by ewancummins on Wed Dec 28, 2016 12:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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7 Vistani and Quevari were the same race until a misguided attempt at perfecting human nature to create a utopia led to their mutual curses and the cultural schism. For blasphemously calling on the tidal power of the moon to influence human minds, the Quevari ancestors were cursed to have all their evil thoughts and unholy lusts bottled up through wheels of peace and calm, and then poured out under the Blood Moon in orgies of murder and destruction. The ancestors of the Vistani did nothing to stop their relatives and neighbors, or to warn outsiders, but simply fled. For that grave, though lesser, sin, they were cursed to wander the Land of Mists forever, never resting long, just as the moon can never rest in its cycle of change. If they stay put too long, the moon begins to drive them mad.

(Drawn from multiple hints in canon. Lunatio, the static burn, canon suggestions of a racial link, etc)

8 Vistani are a psionically-aware race (and show little talent for magic, either of clerical or wizardly types). They prefer to keep moving because the psychic static of human/oid populations and the psychic resonances of the landscape and especially the towns tends to repulse them if they remain in one place too long. Keeping on the road also helps them avoid persecution by outsiders afraid of their rumored 'evil eye' and 'mesmerism.'
Females tend to show more talent with clairsentience and telepathy.
Males show more ability with psyhcometabolism and psychokinsesis. No notable sex difference effects psychoportation or metapsionics.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by alhoon »

For the Quevari, I would tenderly go with: "They thought they were better than their nomadic cousins, thinking of them as backward or even primitive. They had their noses held high. They were too good for their cousins and turned their back to them."
Turning your back to your people because you think you're better than them is not good, is it? It makes the whole "I'm too good for you" thing to seem like ... a façade that hides something dark.
You know, like their curse...
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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alhoon wrote:For the Quevari, I would tenderly go with: "They thought they were better than their nomadic cousins, thinking of them as backward or even primitive. They had their noses held high. They were too good for their cousins and turned their back to them."
Turning your back to your people because you think you're better than them is not good, is it? It makes the whole "I'm too good for you" thing to seem like ... a façade that hides something dark.
You know, like their curse...

Such a quiet farming village...
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by tomokaicho »

The Vistani are not an offensive version of gypsies or Roma folk, if anything the level of criminality is downplayed compared to what we see here on planet earth. Nor do the Vistani have any of the baby kidnapping tropes of the Roma which is an actual cultural pathology among those folk.

The intellectual space is increasingly being hemmed in by thought policing. Not good.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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I like the Vistani more or less as presented in the 2E materials. But since this thread is about alternate interpretations of the Vistani, I spun off a few ideas, upthread.
Any feedback on those?
Any new items for the list?
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

tomokaicho wrote:The Vistani are not an offensive version of gypsies or Roma folk, if anything the level of criminality is downplayed compared to what we see here on planet earth. Nor do the Vistani have any of the baby kidnapping tropes of the Roma which is an actual cultural pathology among those folk.

The intellectual space is increasingly being hemmed in by thought policing. Not good.
tomokaicho, I realize that the nature of this thread is prone to generalization of real world people. But disparaging comments like these will not be tolerated here. Unless you have some factual citation about levels of criminal activity among the Roma, please don't perpetuate these stereotypes. As a rule of thumb, any sentence involving real people and the words "those folk" is probably not one that needs posting on our boards. It's not thought policing, it's respectful discourse. You can think anything you want of anyone. You just can't post it here.

Consider this an official moderator warning.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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If I were to use Vistani, I'd run them just as normal people. Much of the "magic" would just be simple herbalism and alchemy unknown to other cultures. Seers would be very much like wild psionic talents or dreamers (from Dragon magazine). Prejudice in Barovia would be because they had accompanied the Tergs as camp followers; other prejudices arise because of their association with Barovia. They aren't nomads; they have villages, mostly in Barovia.

I dislike using the term "Gypsy" in fantasy contexts because of its connection with "Egypt". I'll say that the Vistani are commonly called "travelers". There are other groups that are similar but not truly related, so Vistani are more properly referred to as "Barovian travelers" while other similar populations such as the Sans-seigneur (who I just made up) are called "Dementlieuse travelers".

And as an aside, I'd argue that making halflings into Gypsy stereotypes is kinda like making half-orcs into African-American stereotypes and orcs into tribal African stereotypes.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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Buzzclaw wrote:If I were to use Vistani, I'd run them just as normal people. Much of the "magic" would just be simple herbalism and alchemy unknown to other cultures. Seers would be very much like wild psionic talents or dreamers (from Dragon magazine). Prejudice in Barovia would be because they had accompanied the Tergs as camp followers; other prejudices arise because of their association with Barovia. They aren't nomads; they have villages, mostly in Barovia.
Ah, the dreamer class , or 'Tephramancer. ' I have that issue.

Good times!

Maybe the Barovian Vistani/Travelers call their villages ''camps'' even though these are permanent settlements now? It could be a legacy of their time as camp followers of the Tergs.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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Buzzclaw, I remember reading somewhere - maybe official, maybe one of the netbooks, is the reason why the word "gypsy" is a thing in Ravenloft is because there are traveling people other than Vistani in Ravenloft. Culturally they are similar to the Vistani, but they lack the Vistani magical powers. Even though they lack the power, they sometimes pretend that they can see into the future, sell luck charms, and so on.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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tomokaicho wrote:Buzzclaw, I remember reading somewhere - maybe official, maybe one of the netbooks, is the reason why the word "gypsy" is a thing in Ravenloft is because there are traveling people other than Vistani in Ravenloft. Culturally they are similar to the Vistani, but they lack the Vistani magical powers. Even though they lack the power, they sometimes pretend that they can see into the future, sell luck charms, and so on.
That is in the hardback Domains of Dread book for 2E, under the description of the gypsy character class.

I'm almost certain of this.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by alhoon »

I kinda think I remember that...
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by ewancummins »

alhoon wrote:I kinda think I remember that...

I mean that the class is called "gypsy'', not that the text says anything at all about etymology. But 'gypsy' is sometimes used in published Ravenloft materials, as an in-game term.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by ewancummins »

It's probably worth noting that, in English, 'gypsy' or 'gipsy' can refer to any of several nomadic or semi-nomadic European subcultures, itinerant workers in general, peddlers and tinkers, etc, and so does not always mean the Roma people.

Why is this relevant to Ravenloft?

Because, as the poster above suggests, gypsies in-game can cover a broader ranger of people than just the Vistani.
Or not, as the DM pleases.

Maybe working out a couple of examples of non-Vistani gypsies/gipsies would be appropriate for this thread?
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)
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