Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

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IrvyneWolfe
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by IrvyneWolfe »

Inuyasha wrote:I'm new to these boards, and I just found this topic, so I figured I'd quit lurking for once!

I disliked the Romani stereotype too, and so I changed the "nomadic plot device race" to astrologically-oriented centaurs instead, I think that my players found that much more interesting than they would have the standard Vistani.
I've been reworking Ravenloft for years and the vistani have gotten tossed in the bin because they're essentially a racist stereotype. What I did instead is make "Elves" in the setting the abandoned children of mortals and fey (statistically they're identical to elves in other settings, but with a wildly different flavour). They don't breed true, and they outlive any mortal relatives LONG before they reach physical maturity so Caravans of nomadic feybourne travel the land looking for young ones to adopt and raise and earn money entertaining strangers with their inborn magical talents and often freakish appearances (since they're descended from fey they often have some downright bizzare physical features). There are rumors all the caravans share a common home base, a feybourne city, but no outsider has ever seen it.

The populace doesn't trust them because they're clearly not human, and they have ready access to magic (which few people in the setting have) and the Feybourne need to keep moving because they're constantly looking to save defenseless children from the hands of that same untrusting mass of humanity.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by ewancummins »

ewancummins wrote: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).
7 The Nibelungs
Duergar-like (but not evil as a race) dwarves with ESP
Oxcarts

8 Feybourne
Mixed children of Men and Fairies, stats as elves
(IryvneWolfe)
9 Centaur astrologers
(Inuyasha)
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by Hell_Born »

So, I was contemplating (not for the first time) how I would "fix" Ravenloft, which prompted me to ask myself what about the setting actually bothered me. As that brought me to the topic of the Vistani, I stumbled across an angle of looking at them that I had never seen before, which in turn inspired me to dig this thread up and try to jot it down before I forgot it.

Long story short, what fundamentally bothers me about the Vistani is that TSR tried to "have its cake and eat it too", presenting them simultaneously as a "real people" (see: Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani, which might as well be any of TSR's legion of cultural splatbooks) and also as "living plot devices". The simple fact is, nothing about the Vistani as their culture is described inherently makes them alien (arrogant, yeah, but alien? No)... the problem is that the Vistani identity is inherently bound up in two major powers that are just too strong to let players have for free: guaranteed successful divination, and guaranteed freedom of travel through the mists.

This problem could have been avoided... but it was thinking on that which made me more excited about the Vistani than I have been in a while, and that's what brings me here.

Firstly, let's look at the obvious: what happens if we ditch the living plot device angle from the Vistani? Does it inherently undermine the culture they have, which is what makes them fascinating? No, it doesn't. You CAN have the Vistani be "the magical gypsy race", you just don't make as overpowered as they were in TSR canon. The Vistani can be a fully playable race using the lore straight from their Van Richten's Guide if you just make the following changes:
* Firstly, Vistani do NOT know all the secrets of Ravenloft. They know MORE about the land than the Giorgios do as a general rule of thumb, but they still don't know everything.
* Secondly, the Vistani aptitude for magic and divination is downplayed. Just give the Vistani a culture where wizards, sorcerers or even just "minor magically talented individuals" are common compared to the rarities they are in the Giorgio lands, and a racial trait that gives them an increased chance that Divination spells will actually work for them, and you have mechanically supported flavor without making them too overpowered to be PCs.
* Thirdly, change the Mistwalking from a perfect "get to where the DM wants you to be" element to something more like an edge. Basically, break it down into a couple of spells that the Vistani guard jealousy, but which anyone could potentially learn, and make them less reliable - "Call Mistway", for example, or a teleport-style spell that CAN breach closed domain borders, but at the cost of requiring an unpredictable time to reach your destination and you'll need to fight several wandering encounters along the way.
* Lastly, just remove any "Vistani only" elements from the world. There's no reason why only Vistani should be able to use bitterblot or Vistan's Tears - that the knowledge of HOW to do so is more common amongst their ranks is fine, but those plants should still work for anyone who knows their secrets.

Having reasoned all of that out, the thought struck me that there's another angle to go with, and that's to double down on the magical nature of the Vistani. Basically, there isn't a Vistani people in Ravenloft - there's a single mysterious caravan community made up of Madame Eva and her followers, which travels mysteriously around the Demiplane as she sees fit. Basically, double-down on Madame Eva's status as "Ravenloft's Elminster" and play up t he mystery of who she is and what she wants. Is she an emissary for/agent of the Dark Powers? Is she their manifestation? Is she an archdevil or an archfey? Or maybe she's just a very old, powerful and cruel archmage who considers all other beings to be toys for her amusement? In this iteration, there are no "generic" Vistani - what the "people" serving Madame Eva as she travels the Demiplane on her mysterious errands are anyone's guess - and instead when you need the services of the Vistani... it's Madame Eva your'll have to deal with.

Even as I write this, you could potentially have the "magic gypsy culture" and "the mysterious magical Madame Eva" co-exist... but you do so by giving them separate names and not making them overtly tied to each other. Maybe the "Trsanti" have more stories of Madame Eva than the Giorgio, but in the end, they are no more "her people" than she is one of them.

I'm sorry for the rambling, but the more I look this thought over, the more it feels obvious to me as a solution to everything that nagged me about the Vistani in canon.
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Re: Alternative Vistani Interpretations?

Post by Mistmaster »

Hell_Born wrote:So, I was contemplating (not for the first time) how I would "fix" Ravenloft, which prompted me to ask myself what about the setting actually bothered me. As that brought me to the topic of the Vistani, I stumbled across an angle of looking at them that I had never seen before, which in turn inspired me to dig this thread up and try to jot it down before I forgot it.

Long story short, what fundamentally bothers me about the Vistani is that TSR tried to "have its cake and eat it too", presenting them simultaneously as a "real people" (see: Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani, which might as well be any of TSR's legion of cultural splatbooks) and also as "living plot devices". The simple fact is, nothing about the Vistani as their culture is described inherently makes them alien (arrogant, yeah, but alien? No)... the problem is that the Vistani identity is inherently bound up in two major powers that are just too strong to let players have for free: guaranteed successful divination, and guaranteed freedom of travel through the mists.

This problem could have been avoided... but it was thinking on that which made me more excited about the Vistani than I have been in a while, and that's what brings me here.

Firstly, let's look at the obvious: what happens if we ditch the living plot device angle from the Vistani? Does it inherently undermine the culture they have, which is what makes them fascinating? No, it doesn't. You CAN have the Vistani be "the magical gypsy race", you just don't make as overpowered as they were in TSR canon. The Vistani can be a fully playable race using the lore straight from their Van Richten's Guide if you just make the following changes:
* Firstly, Vistani do NOT know all the secrets of Ravenloft. They know MORE about the land than the Giorgios do as a general rule of thumb, but they still don't know everything.
* Secondly, the Vistani aptitude for magic and divination is downplayed. Just give the Vistani a culture where wizards, sorcerers or even just "minor magically talented individuals" are common compared to the rarities they are in the Giorgio lands, and a racial trait that gives them an increased chance that Divination spells will actually work for them, and you have mechanically supported flavor without making them too overpowered to be PCs.
* Thirdly, change the Mistwalking from a perfect "get to where the DM wants you to be" element to something more like an edge. Basically, break it down into a couple of spells that the Vistani guard jealousy, but which anyone could potentially learn, and make them less reliable - "Call Mistway", for example, or a teleport-style spell that CAN breach closed domain borders, but at the cost of requiring an unpredictable time to reach your destination and you'll need to fight several wandering encounters along the way.
* Lastly, just remove any "Vistani only" elements from the world. There's no reason why only Vistani should be able to use bitterblot or Vistan's Tears - that the knowledge of HOW to do so is more common amongst their ranks is fine, but those plants should still work for anyone who knows their secrets.

Having reasoned all of that out, the thought struck me that there's another angle to go with, and that's to double down on the magical nature of the Vistani. Basically, there isn't a Vistani people in Ravenloft - there's a single mysterious caravan community made up of Madame Eva and her followers, which travels mysteriously around the Demiplane as she sees fit. Basically, double-down on Madame Eva's status as "Ravenloft's Elminster" and play up t he mystery of who she is and what she wants. Is she an emissary for/agent of the Dark Powers? Is she their manifestation? Is she an archdevil or an archfey? Or maybe she's just a very old, powerful and cruel archmage who considers all other beings to be toys for her amusement? In this iteration, there are no "generic" Vistani - what the "people" serving Madame Eva as she travels the Demiplane on her mysterious errands are anyone's guess - and instead when you need the services of the Vistani... it's Madame Eva your'll have to deal with.

Even as I write this, you could potentially have the "magic gypsy culture" and "the mysterious magical Madame Eva" co-exist... but you do so by giving them separate names and not making them overtly tied to each other. Maybe the "Trsanti" have more stories of Madame Eva than the Giorgio, but in the end, they are no more "her people" than she is one of them.

I'm sorry for the rambling, but the more I look this thought over, the more it feels obvious to me as a solution to everything that nagged me about the Vistani in canon.
This is more or less my approach. My Vistani are tied to the mists but are a people with an history and roots in the Core.
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