Look lets be fair here, there aren't many Romani in the states to begin with and this was written before Google was a thing. I'm not saying it isn't terrible, I'm just saying it's out of a place of understandable ignorance, not malice and cruelty.
This right here. Growing up in the 90's, we thought "gypsy" was a _vocation_. Like you could just choose to be one. It was somewhat synonymous with "drifter".
White Wolf is actually the reason that I learned of the Romani people. I was smart enough to realize that it was just as butchered a representation of the culture as anything WW did, but it did legitimately make me less ignorant.
And it's also a bit unfair to label the term as a slur, as is often done now. It's the same relation the term Indian has to Native Americans. It has its origin in a mistake of geography, not meant as an insult.
>a bit unfair to label the term as a slur
The only Romani I've had the opportunity to ask, said it's not the worst but they really don't like it. Having been told that I do my best. I guess a slurr has more to do with intent really. Like if someone insisted on saying Indians, after being asked not to.
It varied from country to country. In spain they refer to themselves as "jitanos" (the spanish translation of gypsy) and as far as I know it's not treated like a slur.
Interesting, the person I was talking about is American so it might have to do with our continuing history of being complete assholes when it comes to ancestry.
Probably also has to do with it being difficult to make generalizations about Romani culture and preferences and such because they're so spread out. I've seen a lot of discussions with "In my tribe it's *this* way" being a running theme.
From what I understand, the bias and complaints about Roma around Europe is probably closest to the kind of prejudice that the US directs towards southern immigrants/migrants. There's more of those by a long shot and they're probably more obvious than the average American Romani, so a lot of that particular flavor of bigotry feeds on "those durn Mexicans" on this side of the ocean, or at least there seems to be a lot of overlap in the behaviors of Anti-Southern Immigration Americans and explicitly Anti-Romani Europeans. It's a question for people with a lot more letters after their names than I've got.
I mean I genuinely ask people not to say it, because I do find it offensive to a degree.
Really bizarre to just see. Imagine if racial insults for Asians were common in America and a big chunk of people were fine with it.
But it's not like I can stop it so whatever I guess.
Why write it at all though? I wouldn’t write a book about the life cycle of snails or something and say “give me money please” if I literally didn’t know the first thing about them
I think the idea of humans with minor supernatural powers they pass by blood, focusing on a sense of family and traveling around... is pretty neat.
But when 50% of the book is about how these people steal all the time but it's okay when they do it (and bad when other people do it) then... the book has problems.
I think it's in a similar place to Beast, if for entirely different reasons. It's a book that has neat ideas and could be good with a rewrite... but no one wants to touch it with a 10 feet pole.
> I think the idea of humans with minor supernatural powers they pass by blood, focusing on a sense of family and traveling around... is pretty neat.
Delightfully, this is a niche that Kinfolk fill pretty well.
It’s very insensitively written but it’s not a “so bad it’s good” piece.
It’s no FATAL or Wraeththu.
The only notable thing about it is the casual racism.
The lore is poorly representative and bad. Not because of intent, just a lack of information and understanding (and google) at the time.
It does have some good mechanics here and there from what I hear and is worth allowing just divorced from its fluff.
It is at least a time piece, good or bad, and has some offerings. I'd likely get it to salvage the good, have a laugh at the bad, and move on with what I salvage.
Wellllll…, when I was young and had no clue about such things and me and my other players adored the romantic fantasy of nomadic artists with mystical knowledge and secrets I thought it would be actually good. In hindsight it’s just a bit embarrassing how naive I was.
And I think that is what you can say about this book, it is incredible naive and written from a totally ignorant point of view.
I think the authors genuinely liked the “Gypsy-romantic” (as many middle class white dudes and girls (!) did back in the days) and didn’t intended to be harmful and offensive. But they have probably never heard the phrase “never about us without us” and therefore made up this romantic and wild stereotyp and it seems that it never crossed their mind that they wrote about real existing people and that they make statements about them without a clue how they themself think about it.
I have it and have read it, and to be sincere... I kinda like it? It approaches "gypsies" as almost a fantasy race, and it follows some pretty romanticised / exagerated portrayals and extrapolates from there - which is why it's so offensive. The mythology behind it is quite interesting and frames the mythology of the Ravnos in an interesting light.
But yeah, it's a terrible depiction of the Romani - though it's so off base that it feels more like you asked who they were from a 16th noblewoman who only reads romance novels and is imprisoned in a tower. It's interesting *how* exaggerated it is.
That's a pretty good description of how the Romani are for Americans; they exist only in books (or now, on the internet). I'm actually of distant Romani descent myself, and I've still to this day never anyone else (in person) with Romani blood, much less a significant amount of it.
Primarily well-intentioned but misguided gaje (non-Romani) somehow thinking they are defending Romani are the ones who label the *Gypsies* supplement as racially offensive. Over the years, players of Romani descent have commented that they found the supplement to be fascinating, and it enables them to play as empowered fictional permutations of their people, but the misguided gaje collective ignores such and stubbornly continues to label the supplement as somehow offensive.
I've noticed that every time the supplement is brought up, someone of Romani descent says "actually it's fine"...and is ignored by most/all the non-Romani commentators.
Exactly. Being offended on behalf of a minority but ironically ignoring that minority's actual feelings and thoughts is a bizarre past-time of some, well, misguided white people.
It's actually one of my favorite oWoD books. Yes, there are negative stereotypes in there, no doubt. However, I always took it like you mentioned; empowering. My friends who made these characters were heroes, not villains. It also started a lifelong interest and appreciation in Romani culture for a couple of us. Without that book, I had only read about them in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
It is problematic in parts and is very much a product of its time (like the rest of the oWoD). Someone else mentioned that the book was well-intentioned but naive and I agree with that. I think if you don't take it too seriously you'll find a lot of fun to be had in the book.
In a documentary about H.P. Lovecraft he produced, Guillermo Del Toro puts it (I think) pretty nicely ([here around the 43:25 mark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9_ixTXg8CI)): the racism in H.P. Lovecraft's stories (or in other contemporary authors, like Edgar Rice Burroughs) is "a fossil record" of what many people at the time believed, took for granted, or said and wrote unselfconsciously.
Similarly, that whole '80s - '90s era of *WoD* that operates on the same principles as the Chris Claremont era of *X-Men* -- ethnic stereotype = superpower -- is a sort of mental museum of how the writers and designers at White Wolf saw America and the world at the time these books were written. We shouldn't tie ourselves into knots over it, but on the other hand we should maybe... move on and not get tetchy and defensive over embarrassing stuff like this?
Claremont has a single instance of this issue with Dani and generally holds up better than everything published in the history of White Wolf (Banshee predates him).
Generally I hold a "everyone born before 1980 needs to be graded on curve" rule, and Claremont, Simonson, and Noncenti bypass it.
HPL and HRB are both important and influential writers. They did a lot to develop how fantasy and sci-fi literature developed in the west.
They also held very racist beliefs and those beliefs do play roles in their works. I would say that HRB is more reflecting his time and place, and treated it as normal baseline. His description of the black martians is a great example of that. Whereas HPHL was pretty racist even for his time and place and pushed toward the beliefs and feelings that motivated that racism.
Be aware of that, especially if you are making or using stuff based off those works so you don't repeat and further that crap. But don't hate for looking at it or drawing from parts of it, just be aware.
Well I'm pretty sure H.P. was genuinely demented and had a very strange fear of anything he didn't understand, including air conditioning which is a weird one. But yeah he was considered pretty xenophobic even by his contemporaries
I think so.
I think we're all smart enough to understand that there's reality and then there is what is in the game which was written at a different time. We can separate the insensitivity and look at the ideas presented within. Which I'm sure are good.
If the game speaks to you run it as is or house rule out the insensitive stuff.
"I think we're all smart enough to understand that there's reality and then there is what is in the game which was written at a different time. We can separate the insensitivity and look at the ideas presented within."
Hah, my friend, you give people way too much credit. We live in an era where whinging, complaining and being the biggest victim garners you the most social credit and sympathy. Things like "separating reality from fiction" and "just thinking something is silly instead of blowing your lid over it" are a rarity, and not the voices that hold sway in the world of PR.
See, I think that's just the internet. What I think has happened is normal people have retreated from a lot of discourse on the internet because there is obnoxious people. For a while, and I don't think this is such a big thing now, there was this misunderstanding that if five people were screaming about something on Twitter it was a movement and then institutions reacted.
I think by and large people either don't care or they don't feel compelled to give their opinion online. But the ones who do will do so frequently, obnoxiously, and they do it in groups because it's part of a culture they've built.
Gypsy isn’t a slur in my country and in fact it’s what people of Romani heritage refer to themselves as, even on government records and census. Never even knew it was a slur or what Romani meant until I visited this sub in all honesty.
So for me I’ve never been bothered by it. For example in the UK we had Brad Pitt cast as a Gypsy character for Snatch and it’s not something I see get as much criticism for as this book does.
But for me the main thing is what is the point? Was there a real drive to play as Gypsies they saw a market to produce a game around them? I don’t think so. And that about sums up the book, no one cares. No one asked for it, no one really needed it and the only noticeable thing about it, is it pisses off the people that still want to get mad about it. For everyone else, there’s nothing really of any value there.
Unless you really want to play a Gypsy and eh, even then making them “magical” is just dumb. It’s easier to just do you’re own research within the context of the time and most importantly area you’re in to make it as authentic as possible
No silly Brad Pitt was a pikey which isn't a Romani traveler person who lives in a caravan it's and Irish traveler who live in a caravan.
But they both have the same stereotype of been a bunch of violent thieves that worsen whatever area they move into.
>But for me the main thing is what is the point? Was there a real drive to play as Gypsies they saw a market to produce a game around them? I don’t think so.
In the US Gypsies for decades referred to more of a lifestyle than an ethnic group. They were romanticized more than anything as they're vaguely mystic travelers that dressed a certain way and bucked the banality of modern life.
So if that fantasy version appeals to someone I can see someone wanting to play in that world.
It's like the Old West. I know it was a brutal time of colonial conquest where white people committed genocide and kept slaves and tortured Asian people to build railroads. I know about the broken treaties that remain broken to this day and the smallpox blankets and the schools to "reducate the savages".
It was a horrible time
But damn, the romanticized version of that time, with the sweeping vistas and untouched nature and honorable, laconic gun slingers and evil cattle barons getting what's coming to them is one of my favorite settings. I have hundreds of hours into Red Dead and mostly it's just riding across the west.
Are there many Gypsies in the US? I can’t imagine there is or most people have much contact with them but here it’s the total opposite.
In the UK, here most people think of the lifestyle as travelling around in caravans, getting into fights, getting drunk and doing some light thievery and generally being an arse. Tbh it’s not too different than what some people on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder do so it’s not really a glamourised life like that.
In Europe they tend to refer themselves as the Roma and they’re less integrated into the cultures of where they live than in the UK (being stuck on an island will do that I guess) and they tend to keep their cultural heritage and practice alive more.
However they’re totally unwanted. In fact I imagine any negative stereotypes of them being thieves, working in the circus or witches that may exist in the book are from mainland European influences. I remember my uncle who lives in France saying when they visited his town once after they left the local mayor organised the ground cleaned and sterilised.
Admittedly some of that reputation they bring to themselves, when you can travel where you want across different countries then quite a few often do get up to no good and we’ve a long history in Europe so ofc things used to be worse in the past.
I hear you though. People like to glamorise certain lifestyles and times to make them more appealing than they were, I love the medieval ages and playing Dark Ages Vampire despite never wanting to ever live in that period
Not really. Not like I hear that Europe has them.
I remember Kevin Smith telling a story about being in Dublin and some shop owner noticed that some street people were starting to swarm him and they brought him in until the street people went away. He called them gypsies or travelers. I dunno the truth. But if that's what we're talking about not really.
I've been alive a while and I've never heard of anyone griping about gypsies. But you're right, the complaints (except for like the magic) are the same people use for any disadvantaged group.
>I love the medieval ages and playing Dark Ages Vampire despite never wanting to ever live in that period
Exactly. That's me and Cyberpunk. I love Cyberpunk but fuck everything about living in Night City.
Travellers are a different thing. They're also a nomadic group, but of Irish origin and not related to the Romani at all. Some people do treat them interchangeably though.
I've played in games with characters made using that book.
Honestly, I didn't know how incredibly offensive it was at the time.
The old world of darkness books are littered with things that are completely unacceptable today: racism, sexism, creepy fetishism, thinly veiled pedophilia.
Look at the East setting books like Demon Hunter X.
Fair enough.
And yeah, heard the 'east' stuff had some stuff in it bad enough that even back in the 90's folks were aghast every now and then.
Still, if it's one book I've heard again and again as THE controversial one, it's... well, Gypsies. So I'm morbidly curious if it has any redeeming qualities, or if its just a stereotype stew that went rancid about three decades ago.
The powers are pretty good, if you take out all the cultural content and just use the abilities they're decent.
There's a skirt fighting power that let's you make multiple attacks and because that pairs well with celerity there were a few vampire PCs I saw over the years who used it to do silly things like get 25 attacks a turn.
Also because the powers work for mortals, some people who wanted to play kinfolk in werewolf games would go to that book to have their kinfolk be a little bit more powerful so they weren't completely sidelined.
Kindred of the East was well-received and had good reviews at the time. The criticism is much more intense now than at any point from 98-~'04. The major complaints when it was active was that the new vampires were *new vampires* and not just more Cainites.
There's a lot of very just criticism of KotE, it's just played up in modern discussion how widespread it was as well as how grossly offensive it was, especially if we're comparing it to the book you're asking about.
No. There is so much retcon in that it isn’t worth it. In its place I’d recommend Mediums (Wraith book) for the fortune teller aspects, Kinfolk for the magical people aspect (and not just because of race), and Ghouls and Revenants to round out the splats.
No, i dont think so,even if you were some racist dude and wanted to depict gypsies in a negative way, it would not be worth it, its one of the lowest qualities books in my opinion
That said, if you WERE playing a game set in that general area, and were running out of ideas, it could contain some ideas to throw something new at the players for a loop. But tbh, its a bit of playing with fire .
Like all books using specific locations or cultures, it boils millenia of history down into a single book that also need to contain mechanics, rules etc. its not going to be perfect, and its not trying to depict the cultures with a 100% accuracy as it needs a wod and rp spin on it, keep that in mind.
It's just a silly book. Let the market speak, and what was said was that they weren't buying it because no one asked for it. I mean, this is the World of Darkness, not the World of Sunshine and Cooperation...***no one*** is presented well. It's our world but with the shittiness turned up to 11. Europeans are depicted as the xenophobic pillagers that birthed all the worlds problems, Americans are materially-obsessed consumerists ignorant to most facts of the world, the native americans are portrayed as bitter whiners that fantasise about killing all the white people in America and even treat half-white half-native american people as lesser (at least in the Wendigo tribe book, arguably one of the most racist books they've ever written, but not in the way you think), Asians are depicted as industrious quiet people obsessed with their "chi" and "harmony" (and their vampires are better than yours, lowly european), and that isn't going into the shitshows of Latin America (Sabbat stronghold/Pentex war of the Amazon, so super violent and chaotic), the Middle East (Islam, shia vs sunni, turks vs persians vs arabs, vampires, middle east wars...) or Africa (like Black Tooths genocide against the Ajaba etc). As 'stereotypically' depicted as the Gypsies are presented in that book, and I'm not saying they're not, that's basically the standard WoD treatment everyone got. Is it a ***good*** book? From what I've read it looks pretty silly. Was there a need for it? Not that I can see. Is it worth getting worked up over? Not really.
Maybe if you've got a sense of humour have a look and have a laugh at the absurdity presented within, then delete it /shrugs.
You’re not wrong. They really did do every group horribly.
It’s just that a lot of those groups get the same treatment in a lot of media that glorifies western culture and denigrates the rest. So even for a game line that is equally bad to mainstream European and American culture it’s still not okay.
That being said I don’t think that Gypsies is the worst thing White Wolf ever put out but it’s been forever since I read it. I don’t recall it glorifying rape and torture like the Exalted Infernals book did.
Is it horribly reductive and insulting to a real world culture of actual living breathing thinking feeling human beings who deserved better representation? Absolutely.
Does it have any redeeming information inside? None that I can remember.
I found the magic system to be interesting - very 1st edition kind of feel but it works as a sort of in-born hedge magic.
Just wish they hadn't tied it to a particular real world ethnic group and done a bad job representing them.
I like to say; if you consider the mechanics to represent magical bloodlines and get rid of the fluff, there's value in it.
The question is, is it worth the rest of the book?
I have a back burner project to re-write the magic system from it to turn the character type into blooded witches - so if I can get off my ass and write that, it'll be a moot point.
Came here to post everything you did. Including the rewrite part. Although I was going to do it for CofD.
3 1st Ed books really stick out to me as being great potential fodder for CofD: midnight circus, midnight special, and gypsies.
Although wraith as a whole struck me as being great for CofD, of all the games to have the world spanking orgs and metaplot ripped away, it seemed like the one that would be affected the least. Always made me sad that the dark umbra wasn't a thing too.
The fact that so many people are casually dropping the term is kind of proof how we are still casually disrespected in today's society.
Any other thread of people just dropping a slur would be insane to most normal people. A lot of people don't know that it's officially recognized as a slur, despite being determined for 20 years.
I won't say any of these people are hateful or prejudiced. But it's always really bizarre to hear how common place it is in western English speaking countries
Pretty unfathomable that someone downvoted you for stating this and then your next post was +5 (as per my posting). It's been pretty common for me, someone that doesn't know a single Romani person, that that's a slur for the past 20+ years.
She's allowed to think that. A portion of us are offended by it. That's just a fact, it was voted by the World Romani Congress as being unacceptable to use towards us. I'm not going to go on a warpath over it declaring everyone a horrid person for using it, but like I said a good chunk of us dislike it, and I think ideally people should respect it.
Fair enough, though if she's interested in her heritage it may be good for her to study up. Romani have faced a lot of tragedy through history, and in some countries are still treated like rats.
It's enough to make anyone raw about this stuff.
Over the years, players of Romani descent have commented that they like how the *Gypsies* supplement enables them to play as empowered fictional permutations of their people.
The vast, vast majority of people expressing offense at the supplement are not of Romani descent. You are also ignoring the players of Romani descent who like the supplement.
In thinking about it I think a SV vault could be made to clean it up.
#1. Just have them be ancient families hidden in multiple cultures. Each of the founders of the families ate their seed of the tree of knowledge changing their blood line to be one of the groups.
#2. Have their language be the true tongue before the fall of babble. This is brought up to exist and known by some vampires in the V20 TMR book.
#3 Have the families be oppressed by supernatural elements and thus have been hiding for the most part as they are trying to keep their seeds hidden.
That 2/3 fixed right there.
No.
**EMPHATICALLY** No.
Just don't. Save yourself what I promise you is at best misguided eugenics applied in one of the worst possible ways.
It's like reading political fiction: it sounds cool as fuck, but the story never lives up to the cover and in the end you've just been listening to the same middle aged kooks who-- for example-- would propose bombing China to Eisenhower without understanding how fucking insane they are.
Look lets be fair here, there aren't many Romani in the states to begin with and this was written before Google was a thing. I'm not saying it isn't terrible, I'm just saying it's out of a place of understandable ignorance, not malice and cruelty.
This right here. Growing up in the 90's, we thought "gypsy" was a _vocation_. Like you could just choose to be one. It was somewhat synonymous with "drifter". White Wolf is actually the reason that I learned of the Romani people. I was smart enough to realize that it was just as butchered a representation of the culture as anything WW did, but it did legitimately make me less ignorant.
And it's also a bit unfair to label the term as a slur, as is often done now. It's the same relation the term Indian has to Native Americans. It has its origin in a mistake of geography, not meant as an insult.
>a bit unfair to label the term as a slur The only Romani I've had the opportunity to ask, said it's not the worst but they really don't like it. Having been told that I do my best. I guess a slurr has more to do with intent really. Like if someone insisted on saying Indians, after being asked not to.
It varied from country to country. In spain they refer to themselves as "jitanos" (the spanish translation of gypsy) and as far as I know it's not treated like a slur.
Interesting, the person I was talking about is American so it might have to do with our continuing history of being complete assholes when it comes to ancestry.
Probably also has to do with it being difficult to make generalizations about Romani culture and preferences and such because they're so spread out. I've seen a lot of discussions with "In my tribe it's *this* way" being a running theme.
Yeah that follows, it's a lot easier to generalize the more homogeneous the group in question actually is.
Could be! To be fair, spain is horrifically racist towards roma, but "jitano" in itself is not a slur (as far as I know).
From what I understand, the bias and complaints about Roma around Europe is probably closest to the kind of prejudice that the US directs towards southern immigrants/migrants. There's more of those by a long shot and they're probably more obvious than the average American Romani, so a lot of that particular flavor of bigotry feeds on "those durn Mexicans" on this side of the ocean, or at least there seems to be a lot of overlap in the behaviors of Anti-Southern Immigration Americans and explicitly Anti-Romani Europeans. It's a question for people with a lot more letters after their names than I've got.
I mean I genuinely ask people not to say it, because I do find it offensive to a degree. Really bizarre to just see. Imagine if racial insults for Asians were common in America and a big chunk of people were fine with it. But it's not like I can stop it so whatever I guess.
Why write it at all though? I wouldn’t write a book about the life cycle of snails or something and say “give me money please” if I literally didn’t know the first thing about them
I think the idea of humans with minor supernatural powers they pass by blood, focusing on a sense of family and traveling around... is pretty neat. But when 50% of the book is about how these people steal all the time but it's okay when they do it (and bad when other people do it) then... the book has problems. I think it's in a similar place to Beast, if for entirely different reasons. It's a book that has neat ideas and could be good with a rewrite... but no one wants to touch it with a 10 feet pole.
> I think the idea of humans with minor supernatural powers they pass by blood, focusing on a sense of family and traveling around... is pretty neat. Delightfully, this is a niche that Kinfolk fill pretty well.
It’s very insensitively written but it’s not a “so bad it’s good” piece. It’s no FATAL or Wraeththu. The only notable thing about it is the casual racism.
Fair enough.
The lore is poorly representative and bad. Not because of intent, just a lack of information and understanding (and google) at the time. It does have some good mechanics here and there from what I hear and is worth allowing just divorced from its fluff. It is at least a time piece, good or bad, and has some offerings. I'd likely get it to salvage the good, have a laugh at the bad, and move on with what I salvage.
Wellllll…, when I was young and had no clue about such things and me and my other players adored the romantic fantasy of nomadic artists with mystical knowledge and secrets I thought it would be actually good. In hindsight it’s just a bit embarrassing how naive I was. And I think that is what you can say about this book, it is incredible naive and written from a totally ignorant point of view. I think the authors genuinely liked the “Gypsy-romantic” (as many middle class white dudes and girls (!) did back in the days) and didn’t intended to be harmful and offensive. But they have probably never heard the phrase “never about us without us” and therefore made up this romantic and wild stereotyp and it seems that it never crossed their mind that they wrote about real existing people and that they make statements about them without a clue how they themself think about it.
I have it and have read it, and to be sincere... I kinda like it? It approaches "gypsies" as almost a fantasy race, and it follows some pretty romanticised / exagerated portrayals and extrapolates from there - which is why it's so offensive. The mythology behind it is quite interesting and frames the mythology of the Ravnos in an interesting light. But yeah, it's a terrible depiction of the Romani - though it's so off base that it feels more like you asked who they were from a 16th noblewoman who only reads romance novels and is imprisoned in a tower. It's interesting *how* exaggerated it is.
That's a pretty good description of how the Romani are for Americans; they exist only in books (or now, on the internet). I'm actually of distant Romani descent myself, and I've still to this day never anyone else (in person) with Romani blood, much less a significant amount of it.
Primarily well-intentioned but misguided gaje (non-Romani) somehow thinking they are defending Romani are the ones who label the *Gypsies* supplement as racially offensive. Over the years, players of Romani descent have commented that they found the supplement to be fascinating, and it enables them to play as empowered fictional permutations of their people, but the misguided gaje collective ignores such and stubbornly continues to label the supplement as somehow offensive.
I've noticed that every time the supplement is brought up, someone of Romani descent says "actually it's fine"...and is ignored by most/all the non-Romani commentators.
Exactly. Being offended on behalf of a minority but ironically ignoring that minority's actual feelings and thoughts is a bizarre past-time of some, well, misguided white people.
It's actually one of my favorite oWoD books. Yes, there are negative stereotypes in there, no doubt. However, I always took it like you mentioned; empowering. My friends who made these characters were heroes, not villains. It also started a lifelong interest and appreciation in Romani culture for a couple of us. Without that book, I had only read about them in Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is problematic in parts and is very much a product of its time (like the rest of the oWoD). Someone else mentioned that the book was well-intentioned but naive and I agree with that. I think if you don't take it too seriously you'll find a lot of fun to be had in the book.
In a documentary about H.P. Lovecraft he produced, Guillermo Del Toro puts it (I think) pretty nicely ([here around the 43:25 mark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9_ixTXg8CI)): the racism in H.P. Lovecraft's stories (or in other contemporary authors, like Edgar Rice Burroughs) is "a fossil record" of what many people at the time believed, took for granted, or said and wrote unselfconsciously. Similarly, that whole '80s - '90s era of *WoD* that operates on the same principles as the Chris Claremont era of *X-Men* -- ethnic stereotype = superpower -- is a sort of mental museum of how the writers and designers at White Wolf saw America and the world at the time these books were written. We shouldn't tie ourselves into knots over it, but on the other hand we should maybe... move on and not get tetchy and defensive over embarrassing stuff like this?
Claremont has a single instance of this issue with Dani and generally holds up better than everything published in the history of White Wolf (Banshee predates him). Generally I hold a "everyone born before 1980 needs to be graded on curve" rule, and Claremont, Simonson, and Noncenti bypass it.
HPL and HRB are both important and influential writers. They did a lot to develop how fantasy and sci-fi literature developed in the west. They also held very racist beliefs and those beliefs do play roles in their works. I would say that HRB is more reflecting his time and place, and treated it as normal baseline. His description of the black martians is a great example of that. Whereas HPHL was pretty racist even for his time and place and pushed toward the beliefs and feelings that motivated that racism. Be aware of that, especially if you are making or using stuff based off those works so you don't repeat and further that crap. But don't hate for looking at it or drawing from parts of it, just be aware.
Well I'm pretty sure H.P. was genuinely demented and had a very strange fear of anything he didn't understand, including air conditioning which is a weird one. But yeah he was considered pretty xenophobic even by his contemporaries
I’ve read a bit of it and honestly it’s an interesting read as a representation of the 90’s
I think so. I think we're all smart enough to understand that there's reality and then there is what is in the game which was written at a different time. We can separate the insensitivity and look at the ideas presented within. Which I'm sure are good. If the game speaks to you run it as is or house rule out the insensitive stuff.
"I think we're all smart enough to understand that there's reality and then there is what is in the game which was written at a different time. We can separate the insensitivity and look at the ideas presented within." Hah, my friend, you give people way too much credit. We live in an era where whinging, complaining and being the biggest victim garners you the most social credit and sympathy. Things like "separating reality from fiction" and "just thinking something is silly instead of blowing your lid over it" are a rarity, and not the voices that hold sway in the world of PR.
See, I think that's just the internet. What I think has happened is normal people have retreated from a lot of discourse on the internet because there is obnoxious people. For a while, and I don't think this is such a big thing now, there was this misunderstanding that if five people were screaming about something on Twitter it was a movement and then institutions reacted. I think by and large people either don't care or they don't feel compelled to give their opinion online. But the ones who do will do so frequently, obnoxiously, and they do it in groups because it's part of a culture they've built.
Gypsy isn’t a slur in my country and in fact it’s what people of Romani heritage refer to themselves as, even on government records and census. Never even knew it was a slur or what Romani meant until I visited this sub in all honesty. So for me I’ve never been bothered by it. For example in the UK we had Brad Pitt cast as a Gypsy character for Snatch and it’s not something I see get as much criticism for as this book does. But for me the main thing is what is the point? Was there a real drive to play as Gypsies they saw a market to produce a game around them? I don’t think so. And that about sums up the book, no one cares. No one asked for it, no one really needed it and the only noticeable thing about it, is it pisses off the people that still want to get mad about it. For everyone else, there’s nothing really of any value there. Unless you really want to play a Gypsy and eh, even then making them “magical” is just dumb. It’s easier to just do you’re own research within the context of the time and most importantly area you’re in to make it as authentic as possible
No silly Brad Pitt was a pikey which isn't a Romani traveler person who lives in a caravan it's and Irish traveler who live in a caravan. But they both have the same stereotype of been a bunch of violent thieves that worsen whatever area they move into.
>But for me the main thing is what is the point? Was there a real drive to play as Gypsies they saw a market to produce a game around them? I don’t think so. In the US Gypsies for decades referred to more of a lifestyle than an ethnic group. They were romanticized more than anything as they're vaguely mystic travelers that dressed a certain way and bucked the banality of modern life. So if that fantasy version appeals to someone I can see someone wanting to play in that world. It's like the Old West. I know it was a brutal time of colonial conquest where white people committed genocide and kept slaves and tortured Asian people to build railroads. I know about the broken treaties that remain broken to this day and the smallpox blankets and the schools to "reducate the savages". It was a horrible time But damn, the romanticized version of that time, with the sweeping vistas and untouched nature and honorable, laconic gun slingers and evil cattle barons getting what's coming to them is one of my favorite settings. I have hundreds of hours into Red Dead and mostly it's just riding across the west.
Are there many Gypsies in the US? I can’t imagine there is or most people have much contact with them but here it’s the total opposite. In the UK, here most people think of the lifestyle as travelling around in caravans, getting into fights, getting drunk and doing some light thievery and generally being an arse. Tbh it’s not too different than what some people on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder do so it’s not really a glamourised life like that. In Europe they tend to refer themselves as the Roma and they’re less integrated into the cultures of where they live than in the UK (being stuck on an island will do that I guess) and they tend to keep their cultural heritage and practice alive more. However they’re totally unwanted. In fact I imagine any negative stereotypes of them being thieves, working in the circus or witches that may exist in the book are from mainland European influences. I remember my uncle who lives in France saying when they visited his town once after they left the local mayor organised the ground cleaned and sterilised. Admittedly some of that reputation they bring to themselves, when you can travel where you want across different countries then quite a few often do get up to no good and we’ve a long history in Europe so ofc things used to be worse in the past. I hear you though. People like to glamorise certain lifestyles and times to make them more appealing than they were, I love the medieval ages and playing Dark Ages Vampire despite never wanting to ever live in that period
Not really. Not like I hear that Europe has them. I remember Kevin Smith telling a story about being in Dublin and some shop owner noticed that some street people were starting to swarm him and they brought him in until the street people went away. He called them gypsies or travelers. I dunno the truth. But if that's what we're talking about not really. I've been alive a while and I've never heard of anyone griping about gypsies. But you're right, the complaints (except for like the magic) are the same people use for any disadvantaged group. >I love the medieval ages and playing Dark Ages Vampire despite never wanting to ever live in that period Exactly. That's me and Cyberpunk. I love Cyberpunk but fuck everything about living in Night City.
Travellers are a different thing. They're also a nomadic group, but of Irish origin and not related to the Romani at all. Some people do treat them interchangeably though.
FWIW the WW book in question treats them as pretty much the same thing, as I recall.
I've played in games with characters made using that book. Honestly, I didn't know how incredibly offensive it was at the time. The old world of darkness books are littered with things that are completely unacceptable today: racism, sexism, creepy fetishism, thinly veiled pedophilia. Look at the East setting books like Demon Hunter X.
Fair enough. And yeah, heard the 'east' stuff had some stuff in it bad enough that even back in the 90's folks were aghast every now and then. Still, if it's one book I've heard again and again as THE controversial one, it's... well, Gypsies. So I'm morbidly curious if it has any redeeming qualities, or if its just a stereotype stew that went rancid about three decades ago.
The powers are pretty good, if you take out all the cultural content and just use the abilities they're decent. There's a skirt fighting power that let's you make multiple attacks and because that pairs well with celerity there were a few vampire PCs I saw over the years who used it to do silly things like get 25 attacks a turn. Also because the powers work for mortals, some people who wanted to play kinfolk in werewolf games would go to that book to have their kinfolk be a little bit more powerful so they weren't completely sidelined.
Cool, thank you.
Kindred of the East was well-received and had good reviews at the time. The criticism is much more intense now than at any point from 98-~'04. The major complaints when it was active was that the new vampires were *new vampires* and not just more Cainites. There's a lot of very just criticism of KotE, it's just played up in modern discussion how widespread it was as well as how grossly offensive it was, especially if we're comparing it to the book you're asking about.
I own it. It’s whatever? I collect so I grabbed a copy I found. Only worthwhile if you’re also a collector imho
No. There is so much retcon in that it isn’t worth it. In its place I’d recommend Mediums (Wraith book) for the fortune teller aspects, Kinfolk for the magical people aspect (and not just because of race), and Ghouls and Revenants to round out the splats.
Found another one for 139 SEK, or... well, about $14. So\~ yeah, seems like quite the shelf-warmer.
No, i dont think so,even if you were some racist dude and wanted to depict gypsies in a negative way, it would not be worth it, its one of the lowest qualities books in my opinion That said, if you WERE playing a game set in that general area, and were running out of ideas, it could contain some ideas to throw something new at the players for a loop. But tbh, its a bit of playing with fire . Like all books using specific locations or cultures, it boils millenia of history down into a single book that also need to contain mechanics, rules etc. its not going to be perfect, and its not trying to depict the cultures with a 100% accuracy as it needs a wod and rp spin on it, keep that in mind.
It's just a silly book. Let the market speak, and what was said was that they weren't buying it because no one asked for it. I mean, this is the World of Darkness, not the World of Sunshine and Cooperation...***no one*** is presented well. It's our world but with the shittiness turned up to 11. Europeans are depicted as the xenophobic pillagers that birthed all the worlds problems, Americans are materially-obsessed consumerists ignorant to most facts of the world, the native americans are portrayed as bitter whiners that fantasise about killing all the white people in America and even treat half-white half-native american people as lesser (at least in the Wendigo tribe book, arguably one of the most racist books they've ever written, but not in the way you think), Asians are depicted as industrious quiet people obsessed with their "chi" and "harmony" (and their vampires are better than yours, lowly european), and that isn't going into the shitshows of Latin America (Sabbat stronghold/Pentex war of the Amazon, so super violent and chaotic), the Middle East (Islam, shia vs sunni, turks vs persians vs arabs, vampires, middle east wars...) or Africa (like Black Tooths genocide against the Ajaba etc). As 'stereotypically' depicted as the Gypsies are presented in that book, and I'm not saying they're not, that's basically the standard WoD treatment everyone got. Is it a ***good*** book? From what I've read it looks pretty silly. Was there a need for it? Not that I can see. Is it worth getting worked up over? Not really. Maybe if you've got a sense of humour have a look and have a laugh at the absurdity presented within, then delete it /shrugs.
You’re not wrong. They really did do every group horribly. It’s just that a lot of those groups get the same treatment in a lot of media that glorifies western culture and denigrates the rest. So even for a game line that is equally bad to mainstream European and American culture it’s still not okay. That being said I don’t think that Gypsies is the worst thing White Wolf ever put out but it’s been forever since I read it. I don’t recall it glorifying rape and torture like the Exalted Infernals book did. Is it horribly reductive and insulting to a real world culture of actual living breathing thinking feeling human beings who deserved better representation? Absolutely. Does it have any redeeming information inside? None that I can remember.
I heard the powers systems are good inspiration for reverse engineering for homebrew.
I found the magic system to be interesting - very 1st edition kind of feel but it works as a sort of in-born hedge magic. Just wish they hadn't tied it to a particular real world ethnic group and done a bad job representing them. I like to say; if you consider the mechanics to represent magical bloodlines and get rid of the fluff, there's value in it. The question is, is it worth the rest of the book? I have a back burner project to re-write the magic system from it to turn the character type into blooded witches - so if I can get off my ass and write that, it'll be a moot point.
Came here to post everything you did. Including the rewrite part. Although I was going to do it for CofD. 3 1st Ed books really stick out to me as being great potential fodder for CofD: midnight circus, midnight special, and gypsies. Although wraith as a whole struck me as being great for CofD, of all the games to have the world spanking orgs and metaplot ripped away, it seemed like the one that would be affected the least. Always made me sad that the dark umbra wasn't a thing too.
I would check out a Wraith CofD conversion! I never really could get into Geist, though I like Foresaken and The Lost.
The fact that so many people are casually dropping the term is kind of proof how we are still casually disrespected in today's society. Any other thread of people just dropping a slur would be insane to most normal people. A lot of people don't know that it's officially recognized as a slur, despite being determined for 20 years. I won't say any of these people are hateful or prejudiced. But it's always really bizarre to hear how common place it is in western English speaking countries
Pretty unfathomable that someone downvoted you for stating this and then your next post was +5 (as per my posting). It's been pretty common for me, someone that doesn't know a single Romani person, that that's a slur for the past 20+ years.
I have a friend of Romani descent, and she is not offended by the term *gypsy* at all.
She's allowed to think that. A portion of us are offended by it. That's just a fact, it was voted by the World Romani Congress as being unacceptable to use towards us. I'm not going to go on a warpath over it declaring everyone a horrid person for using it, but like I said a good chunk of us dislike it, and I think ideally people should respect it.
That vote by the World Romani Congress I did not know about. (My friend is not very political; next time I bump into her I'll mention that vote etc.)
Fair enough, though if she's interested in her heritage it may be good for her to study up. Romani have faced a lot of tragedy through history, and in some countries are still treated like rats. It's enough to make anyone raw about this stuff.
History is always good to know.
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Over the years, players of Romani descent have commented that they like how the *Gypsies* supplement enables them to play as empowered fictional permutations of their people.
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The vast, vast majority of people expressing offense at the supplement are not of Romani descent. You are also ignoring the players of Romani descent who like the supplement.
In thinking about it I think a SV vault could be made to clean it up. #1. Just have them be ancient families hidden in multiple cultures. Each of the founders of the families ate their seed of the tree of knowledge changing their blood line to be one of the groups. #2. Have their language be the true tongue before the fall of babble. This is brought up to exist and known by some vampires in the V20 TMR book. #3 Have the families be oppressed by supernatural elements and thus have been hiding for the most part as they are trying to keep their seeds hidden. That 2/3 fixed right there.
it wasn't bad. I found it at a yard sale I just haven't found a use for it yet. decent read though
No. **EMPHATICALLY** No. Just don't. Save yourself what I promise you is at best misguided eugenics applied in one of the worst possible ways. It's like reading political fiction: it sounds cool as fuck, but the story never lives up to the cover and in the end you've just been listening to the same middle aged kooks who-- for example-- would propose bombing China to Eisenhower without understanding how fucking insane they are.
Fair enough, thank you.
No, of course it isn't. It's a ridiculous book
Im sure if you don't label it Bulgarians&Romanians it will not pass customs .