D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[Paul Farquhar]

If their goal is to make Ravenloft work better for new audiences, then why revive these old, problematic domains at all?

I think the answer to that is pretty clear: in order to blow up the old version.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Honestly, it's probably just more a lack of knowledge of horror tropes for non-European societies coupled with it being the 90s. So, insensitive, but more out of laziness than any cruelty.

Indeed. I think one of the problems with Old Ravenloft this thread highlights is a lot of the domains where very samey. And I think this is because they are drawing on the same narrow pool of 19th century English-language literature and 20th century Universal and Hammer horror movies. Not drawing more on other cultures was a major missed opportunity to tell unfamiliar and surprising stories.

But that does require a lot more work to do the research.

 

[humble minion]

Yeah, and to be fair, it was quite a lot harder back in the 90s to do the research. Unless you had access to some really unusually good bookshops, or a high quality academic library, or direct contact to someone from the culture in question, then info was really hard to come by. Lots of the original Ravenloft material was written pre-Amazon, or pre-Google even. It's easy to forget how much less connected the world was back then, and how much harder it was to find information on, and connect with people from, cultures different to one's own.

 

[Remathilis]

Honestly, it's probably just more a lack of knowledge of horror tropes for non-European societies coupled with it being the 90s. So, insensitive, but more out of laziness than any cruelty.

I don't believe any insensitivity was intentional. I think the treatment of Vistani as literal g*psies is a good example of a mix of cultural ignorance plus limited access to resources creating a product that was fine then but doesn't meet standards now. WotC has basically decided (for better or worse) to no longer eembrace problematic elements just because it's part of tradition.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah, and to be fair, it was quite a lot harder back in the 90s to do the research. Unless you had access to some really unusually good bookshops, or a high quality academic library, or direct contact to someone from the culture in question, then info was really hard to come by. Lots of the original Ravenloft material was written pre-Amazon, or pre-Google even. It's easy to forget how much less connected the world was back then, and how much harder it was to find information on, and connect with people from, cultures different to one's own.

It didn't help that many of the tropes of the genre Ravenloft emulates have these associations baked in. I mean Tracey and Laura Hickman weren't trying to besmirch the already suspect reputation of g*psies when they added them as Strahd's servants, they were pulling from the end of Dracula which has the same thing. Which if why I think it's good that Ravenloft is moving towards "inspired by" rather than "genre emulation"

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, and to be fair, it was quite a lot harder back in the 90s to do the research. Unless you had access to some really unusually good bookshops, or a high quality academic library, or direct contact to someone from the culture in question, then info was really hard to come by. Lots of the original Ravenloft material was written pre-Amazon, or pre-Google even. It's easy to forget how much less connected the world was back then, and how much harder it was to find information on, and connect with people from, cultures different to one's own.

This is not well understood by people today. It wasn't the age of google and a lot o f times you were stuck with the books available in your area. If you lived near a major city, for example I am near Boston, you could get to a nice public library. But even something like that means you are commuting an hour there and back just to get the information you need (in most instances I was using my small local library and book store when I wrote papers for school at that time). Also there were not as many translations of things. Right now I can obtain five or six different translations of Pu Songling's Tales from a Chinese Studio, and a number of books describing that genre in great depth. Back in 1991, I am not 100% sure what translations were available but it wouldn't surprise me if the only one was Herbert Giles, which is fine, but it isn't the same as having multiple translations with a wide variety of explanations and commentary available so that you understand what Giles means when he chooses a particular word (like "demon" for example). And like you say, there is google. When I see a lot of people today critique information that was in older RPG books, they often mention how quickly they were able to debunk that info with google (and I think they just assume pre-internet this would have maybe taken longer but still been relatively easy). It wasn't. This is one of the reasons why the three source rule exists: because there was always a very good chance one of your sources, even a reliable one, had an error in it. And that error tended to get repeated in books working off that as a source. We are in an age of instant correction.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It didn't help that many of the tropes of the genre Ravenloft emulates have these associations baked in. I mean Tracey and Laura Hickman weren't trying to besmirch the already suspect reputation of g*psies when they added them as Strahd's servants, they were pulling from the end of Dracula which has the same thing. Which if why I think it's good that Ravenloft is moving towards "inspired by" rather than "genre emulation"

I don't think most Americans at that time would have even have met a gypsy. I didn't encounter them until I went outside of the country for the first time to Italy (my only time leaving the US except for visits to Mexico as a kid---which I was honestly too young to appreciate so it wasn't the same experience as when I was in Italy as an adult).

Also there is something to consider here: the presentation of Vistani was done in that way because they were considered cool. This especially became the case as the 90s war on and we romanticized vagabonds. I think a lot of the details people read as negatives now, were originally intended as things that made the vistani appealing (not saying they are accurate, just those were some of the reasons people were drawn to the trope).

 

[Remathilis]

I don't think most Americans at that time would have even have met a gypsy. I didn't encounter them until I went outside of the country for the first time to Italy (my only time leaving the US except for visits to Mexico as a kid---which I was honestly too young to appreciate so it wasn't the same experience as when I was in Italy as an adult).

Also there is something to consider here: the presentation of Vistani was done in that way because they were considered cool. This especially became the case as the 90s war on and we romanticized vagabonds. I think a lot of the details people read as negatives now, were originally intended as things that made the vistani appealing (not saying they are accurate, just those were some of the reasons people were drawn to the trope).

I think while there is definitely some positive elements to how g*psies were regarded (Esmeralda from Disney's Notre Dame being a more positive spin) I think a lot of people still would have considered the Cher song (along with Tramps and Thieves) to be more the typical connotation.

My general opinion isn't that the old stuff is wrong or bad, merely a product of the time. We didn't have the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips in 1890 or 1990, but we do now so let's do better.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think while there is definitely some positive elements to how g*psies were regarded (Esmeralda from Disney's Notre Dame being a more positive spin) I think a lot of people still would have considered the Cher song (along with Tramps and Thieves) to be more the typical connotation.

What I am saying is things read as a negative today, would have been a positive in some instances in the 90s (especially for Generation X). We valued being transgressive, not playing by the rules, being a drifter, being artistic and expressive. I am not saying these things are accurate. But even something like the stereotype of the 'gypsy thief' could have been a positive depending on context for us (again not defending the stereotype, I am just trying to explain the context of what the symbol of the gypsy represented to us was different: it represented a bohemian and free way of life for us). For example when I saw the image of the celebratory vistani in the black box, that is what resonated with me about it. Clearly these could also have bad connotations too (it isn't the 90s but Leonard Cohen has a line about a 'thin gypsy thief' in one of his songs that is used to paint someone negatively). I used to be a musician and in the mid-90s I wrote music with my cousin that was inspired by Gypsy music and Jewish Gypsy Music (we were both emulating the style of music because we had some records of it that we listened to, we also were inspired by classical music inspired by the music, and we were interested in what gypsies signified to us: which again probably doesn't match the reality but when you are dealing with art and literature you reference things to convey ideas, celebrate ideas, etc). This didn't go anywhere, it was used for someone's college art project. But it was about 12 minutes of music. Today it would probably be read very differently if it were still around. My point is placing intent in context matters. There is a lot about the 90s, in terms of context, I think gets lost in these discussions

 

[Bedrockgames]

My general opinion isn't that the old stuff is wrong or bad, merely a product of the time. We didn't have the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips in 1890 or 1990, but we do now so let's do better.

Definitely but I think it is also important to understand what the time actually was, what was meant by something. You need to be able to distinguish between a novel in the 1890s that is a diatribe against gypsies and one that is celebrating them or using them in a way to indicate some other concept (even if it isn't accurate or would be considered insensitive today). That distinction is incredibly important.