Ravnos and Appropriation of GRT Communities
A Note
As Storytellers, the V:tM IP and setting holds a very important place in our hearts. The universe, and lore, is expansive, and does a wonderful job of incorporating the world we live in, and all it’s history, into a supernatural world.
The gritty nature of the setting, along with the focus on moral quandaries facilitate a unique play experience when it comes to exploring meaningful themes.
We hope to create a game that encompasses this, and allows for rewarding interpersonal experiences, whilst also ensuring that the community we hope to foster remains loving, respectful and safe.
It is worth speaking to the elephant(s) in the room, and we feel as if we would be doing our players a disservice if we didn’t. It is no small secret amongst the tabletop, and live-action scenes, that Vampire the Masquerade has a storied history when it comes to dealing with sensitive issues in an altogether damaging manner, that has often perpetuated harmful and appropriative world views in the setting.
It has always been an unacceptable facet of the game, and the most recent edition, V5, has done a lot of the heavy lifting for us when it comes to making the game much more acceptable. We are aware of the ways the writing can, and has, impacted various marginalised and oppressed communities. This isn’t to say it was a deliberate decision in previous editions - but ignorance in this regard is just as damaging.
As such, we have taken the decision to alter some of the source material at our game, in order to rectify these problems, in keeping with our stance on these matters (as outlined in our EDI statement).
In particular order, the following are a list of ways we hope to actively remove the possibility for harmful representation in our game going forward.
Roleplaying Advice
Previous editions depicted the Ravnos as a clan of vampires compelled by vices, made up of charlatans and tricksters, as well as thieves. Along with this, the lore and writing tied them inherently to the GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) communities. This inevitably led to a depiction of a community that already faces oppression and prejudices, as harmful and inherently untrustworthy.
Not only did this serve to perpetuate disgusting rhetoric and stereotypes that foster harm and hate in the real world, but it served to silence the voices of members of the GRT community when it came to engaging with V:tM at tabletop games and LARP games. Whilst the V5 source material attempted to rectify this by altering the weakness of the Ravnos, and attempting to remove the connections to harmful representation, we still found it maintained similar problematic elements. After talking at length with people who belong to the GRT community, we have made the design decision to alter the clan weakness entirely, focusing instead on the nightmarish events of The Week of Nightmares (an in-universe event that affected the clan) and diverge entirely from the problematic codification of the clan.
It goes without saying, but we do not want players who do not have the lived experience of belonging to the GRT community playing Ravnos characters that belong to the community at all.
We believe that this story should fundamentally only be played, and told, by the people that have lived it. This isn’t to say that Ravnos as a clan are reserved for members of this group, but that players who wish to play a Ravnos should make a concerted effort to not play them in this manner, if they are not GRT themselves.