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I get the obvious ways that the 'Gypsies' book is bad - I mean the title of the book is a loving slur FFS - but I'll be honest; I kind of feel like it's less offensive than the Ravnos. The 'Gypsies' book is constantly going out of its way to point out how the 'Gypsies' aren't bad, just 'different' and who are we to judge them? Sure it's perpetuating horrible and hateful stereotypes and otherizing a real people - one who have been subjected to genocide numerous times in even the modern era - but like it's all coming from a myopic sort of 1990s ignorance and arrogance. The Ravnos always felt more hateful to me. Like the 'Gypsies' is 'just' 90s myopic ignorance, but the original incarnation of the Ravnos are basically if they had chosen to make a race of black Vampires that were stupid but brutally strong and sexually attractive or something. But maybe that's me. Honestly it's surprising they didn't make a properly Indian clan in the original lineup; it's a bit of a stretch (but so are lots of things when you try and map things from different cultures onto the same core idea) but you have the Vetala/Betala from Hindu mythology. And you can easily get some sort of interesting mileage out of the clan weakness revolving around their riddle-telling nature. Like maybe they have oracular powers like the Malkavians, but instead of being lunatics, they're just physically incapable of giving straight answers to people or something. I dunno. Just feel like the 'Gypsies' book is part and parcel of the 90s nonsense that gave us magical Native Americans and poo poo, while the Ravnos are both overtly racist even for the 90s, and also betray a lack of imagination or cleverness that is disappointing. EDIT: Like seriously, of all the criticisms one can level against the World of Darkness, generally 'unimaginative' is not one of them. The Ravnos are a disappointment from both a moral and an artistic standpoint even when examined solely through the lens of the rest of the setting. RoboChrist 9000 fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 10:33
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You also had the Nagaraja in VtM which despite the name seem more like - and the name of the one Nagaraja in Bloodlines would suggest a deliberate connection - Pishacha than anything related to Naga. But yeah, I admit I'm pretty familiar with the bulk of the OWoD, at least the Vampire stuff, but not too much with the newer stuff. All I know about VTR is they made Vampires much more recent and they're not only dating back to Roman times rather than a mythological dawn of Man.
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Jul 29, 2021 10:53
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Huh! I guess I know even less about CoD than I thought! EDIT: Which one by the by?
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Jul 29, 2021 10:57
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Maybe it's the existentialist in me, but delaying the inevitable apocalypse seems heroic and meaningful and triumphant enough. Death is certain. I know that without a doubt one day I and everyone I have ever known or loved will be dead. If I was to save a loved one from death, I'm not literally saving them from death, I'm just postponing the inevitable. Death is certain. Like I enjoy Delta Green and CoC - problematic as both are - and agree with you that DG is SUPER loving bleak, but I dunno, I still can't help but feel like 'we delayed the apocalypse' is still a triumph because that's literally all anyone ever does outside of apocalyptic fiction where the plot is legit about the final victory of good over evil - and that sort of thing is often rare even in fantasy games. Also I forget how DG and CoC handle it, but considering the whole ~Cruel Empire of Tsan-Chan~ and some of the other blurbs in the Shadow Out of Time, we know that the end of the world - in either the sense of sane humans or of life on Earth - isn't for quite some time. It's centuries if not millennia before Big C wakes up.
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Aug 4, 2021 02:22
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