D&D 5E Curse of Strahd - What if Vistani were Teiflings?

Just throwing this out there. What if I made the Vistani into Teiflings?

Rationale:1 - To diversify the setting - Hey, its 5E! Might as well go whole-hog! A 10-level campaign where all the NPC personalities are human might get a bit dull, no? Given the Vistanis history as both servants and deceivers of Strahd I think Teiflings might be thematically appropriate.

2- The Vistani Teiflings would seem more dangerous to the players, and they'd be more obviously distinct from Borovian peasants.

3 - Their corrupted demonic bloodline would help explain why Strahd has no desire to feed upon them

4 - Political - As a Europeam with a mix of players for across the continent, I am sensitive to the racial implications of the Vistani as Roma stereotypes. This might seem extreme to Americans but if you live in Europe you will have witnessed a lot of outright racism toward Romanian migrants in recent years. Making the Vistani into Teiflings is at least slightly more removed from real world implications. (I mean, you can find latent and symbolic racism in any archetypal fantasy if you look for it.)

5 - TBH I've never used Teiflings in a setting before, so... novelty!

I realise this is a huge break from Ravenloft orthodoxy and there will probably be people who hate the idea. I'm more interested to hear if anyone thinks its a good idea and if anyone has advise for how best to implement such a change.

Sorry don't know what happened to the paragraph breaks in the post above!

edit: fixed!

Tieflings certainly seem like they would fit in with the general vibe of Curse of Strahd. Plus Tieflings tend to be dis-trustful and self-reliant, so there would be a big disconnect between the villagers and players. However, they may feel some empathy towards other feared/outcast races like Half-orcs. In general I'm not too familiar with Tieflings or Ravenloft lore, but hopefully some others here have some better recommendations than my extremely general stuff. It does seem like a cool idea though!

Don't see why not!

Bruce Vistani said:

Just throwing this out there. What if I made the Vistani into Teiflings?

Click to expand...

Sure, go for it.

Although I am not sure that making Gypsies into Devil-blooded Tieflings is less racist.

Really, the reason you need Roma stereotypes is to have someone read the party's fortune. It's a mood-setting thing. But yeah, I've thought about the racism issue recently myself.

A storyline around mainly humans is not boring at all imo, but you do what you do.

Single-race games put a heavier burden on diversifying culture groups through speech, action, dress and traditions. If you're not going to change those, then I don't see how making Roma-stereotyped humans into Roma-stereotyped tieflings is actually changing anything. The larger Ravenloft setting has both good and bad stereotypical portrayals of the Roma via the Vistani. I think that is more important than their physical appearance. Since you're not writing on essay on culture, some things are going to get glossed over about ALL the cultures and races in D&D.

I would suggest that regardless if you choose to replace the Vistani with Tieflings, you see if you can portray the good of their stereotypical Roma culture (which you are apparently not changing) along with the bad.