The Ravnos are among the three most butchered clans in
Vampire, the other two being the Assamites and Followers of Set. The clan has gone from one unimaginative, two-dimensional stereotype to another and then, just when they were getting interesting and being fleshed out properly, they were largely axed from the setting. I was eagerly awaiting the clanbook, hoping for a real look at the Ravnos, and finally I have it. Of the revised clanbooks I’ve read, only Dean Shomshak’s
Clanbook: Followers of Set is better.
We get all the standard stuff that we’ve come to expect from White Wolf splatbooks. There’s a big chapter on history followed by some culture and a quick tour of Ravnos around the world, along with a bunch of new powers and templates (complete with more excellent Leif Jones artwork). All of that has become pretty standard, but it’s of much better quality here. The history chapter includes an alternate tale for the creation of the clan, containing no mention of Caine at all, something that is always welcome. Plus it loosely ties in with other legends scattered around the World of Darkness, including that of the Kuei-jin and the rivalry with the Gangrel. It even admits how silly it is, and driven more by competition over food than any real righteous war. There is also something of an explanation as to why Ravnos have been assumed to by “Gypsy vampires,” despite being a clan that predates that culture by untold millennia. I’m not entirely sold on it, however, and I wonder if just retconning and ignoring the pervious stereotypes wouldn’t have been better.
In the culture sections, we get a look at castes of Ravnos in India, which are almost a carbon copy of those within India itself. The castes provide a concern for lineage and “proper place” that loosely mirrors the clan’s obsession with bloodline, lineage and family in Vampire: the Dark Ages (the clanbook for which was also written by the same author, incidentally). That concern for family and stratified organization was an addition to the clan I really liked, although it seems less overt in the modern day, making for a noticeable difference between the modern clan and its predecessors. Differences are good, I should note.
Moving along, the tour of Ravnos around the world again contained a number of gems. Beyond just giving run-downs of Ravnos activity and hints of elders that survived the Week of Nightmares, it also did an excellent job of showing how much the clan differs from one region to another and it provides enough hints and allusions to imagine one or two unique bloodlines of the clan surviving in remote locations. Sure, I admit it, I’m a goob for strange bloodlines and offshoots of a clan, even if they don’t actually have any specialty kewl powerz.
Speaking of kewl powerz, the book has those as well, providing examples of high level Chimerstry powers, as well as some neat multidiscipline powers (though I don’t quite get how Animalism and Chimerstry combine to allow a Ravnos to appear like a Cathayan…). The superior Chimerstry powers didn’t really excite me that much, but I was overjoyed to see a frank look at just how damn useful the clan’s other disciplines are. Animalism is such a damn useful, versatile and overlooked power. There is also a long discussion of just what Chimerstry is and what it can and cannot do, thankfully. This won’t end every argument about the troublesome discipline, but it’ll be a big help.
As for the templates, it’s a nice surprise to see Chimerstry have such an understated presence. Several of them don’t even have it at all. Imagine, a Ravnos without Chimerstry! The sample coterie further breaks the clan cliché by being an association of scholars driven to search for the “truth” about the Week of Nightmares. Returning to the templates for a minute, one of them is a Ravnos antitribu who noticed that the problems the Ravnos faced during the Week of Nightmares apparently never happened to either the Lasombra or the Tzimisce, the two clans that supposedly destroyed their own founders. Now she’s on a jihad of her own to reveal the lies that the Sword of Caine has been built on.
Those two elements together (providing an excuse for globe-trotting Noddist adventure and shaking the foundation of the Sabbat) provide more incentive for me to actually use the whole “Ravnos goes boomy!” metaplot than all of the previous material combined. It’s a perfect example of what I’ve always loved to do with White Wolf products – taking something that either doesn’t make any sense or simply isn’t interesting and doing something really worthwhile with it. It’s also one of the reasons that the clanbook is so good.
There are two other primary reasons as well: the section on the clan weakness and the look at Paths of Enlightenment, and that of Paradox in particular. The Ravnos weakness has been a thorn in their side for quite a while, as it often plays right into their “roguish thief” stereotype. Building on the material in the Dark Ages clanbook, we are shown a Beast that is somewhat more cunning and refined than the average Cainite’s. Not only does the Beast in a Ravnos drive that basic fight or flight instinct of frenzy and Rotschreck, it drives them to fulfill their particular vice or crime. As nebulous and vague as the Ventrue weakness, simple theft is the most common and easy choice, but we are given a number of examples and descriptions that should help people rise beyond the typical Ravnos. The information on the Paths does the same thing, providing both yet another look at the various Paths of Paradox (and more information is always good for those confusing moralities) and a look at that Ravnos association with various other “common” Paths. Unfortunately, the biggest flaw of both the section on the clan weakness and the Paths (and of the book as a whole) is their brevity. The Paths of Paradox really do need another several pages to be fully laid out and understandable (so that not every Ravnos character is bent on a holy jihad to destroy the rest of the coterie).
If either the Ravnos or the general metaplot have a central role in your chronicle, you will find the Ravnos clanbook an nearly indispensable resource. It takes a clichéd and two-dimensional clan and works them into an intriguing lineage of vampires. It takes a lukewarm and questionable metaplot and does something interesting with it. Unfortunately, it also leaves you wanting a whole hell of a lot more: more Ravnos culture, more philosophy and morality, more information on India and the Kindred within. With any luck, that’s coming soon.
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