As PLAYERS familiar with The Curse of Strahd (aka Ravenloft), you should all be familiar with the Vistani, a mystical group of nomadic gypsy’s that typically travel in covered wagons, have a flair for the dramatic, dress flamboyantly, and can appear or disappear at will via a mysterious fog or mist. As players, you are also aware that the Vistani are planeswalkers, capable of traveling through various planes of existence freely as they choose. Some Vistani are known to be good, some known to be evil, and others known to be indifferent. Whatever the true motivation your particular Vistani visitor may have, your character will start their adventure after having encountered a Vistani traveler with an offer too good to refuse.
You will be playing a level one character to start this campaign of a race and class of your choosing. You will not need an elaborate background but you should at least have a basic idea about your unusual birth circumstances (see below) as well as a basic description of the encounter you had with your Vistani traveler. Your character should also have a primary motivation in life. It may be obtaining riches, it may be obtaining fame, it may be a simple desire for adventure, or it may even be something like revenge. Whatever YOUR reason may be, the Vistani visitor you encounter will show you something that will help you achieve your wildest desires. This will be something so wonderous that you simply MUST know how they acquired it and how to get it for yourself. Your Vistani visitor will then explain to your character that you can have anything you desire but only if you pledge to become one of them, a Vistani nomad and planeswalker.
You will, of course, accept their terms. The reward is simply too good to pass up. And, with a new pledge to learn the ways of the Vistani, you will climb aboard their traveling wagon and vanish into the mist….
- Pick a race from any of these playable races from the Player’s Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, Volo’s Guide to Monsters, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, Mordenkainen Monsters of the Multiverse, or Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
- Come up with an “unusual birth”. Your character should have had an unusual birth of some sort. Perhaps you had a strange and unexplainable birth mark, or perhaps there was a total eclipse at the moment you were born. Maybe some “miracle” happened upon your birth. Whatever it is, it is up to you but try to find some sort of supernatural or paranormal type event that marked your birth and made you unusual in some way.
- Come up with a primary motivation. Wealth, fame, revenge, etc, and tell me what your Vistani traveler showed you that convinced you to become one of them.
- When you are ready with the basics above, let me know the details you have selected and we can proceed to character creation.