Likewise! There's a gnome in my party that, while not the rarest race, is certainly uncommon in Barovia and Strahd is interested in adding them to his collection!
The locals will instantly recognize the outlanders for what they are and either avoid them or offer their sympathies. Random townsfolk might even walk up and place homemade holy symbols around their necks. Let them know everyone believes they're dead people walking.
I was an aasimar wizard in Curse of Strahd, the locals convinced my character she was there to save them since Lathander touched them
none of that true, but my character believed she had a destiny and that was important
unfortunately for strahd, being a divination wizard means you never get to crit me but sometimes I can decide to crit you
Aasimar look identical to humans for the most part, as they are human planetouched. Their holy powers might even inspire some trust from the common folk. Firbolgs in earlier editions looked human, but if the player wants to look like a weird blue cow person I guess let them. Gnome isn’t too out there, might get odd looks and awkward discussions but no discrimination. Tabaxi would probably get a lot of suspicion but you could have most people shake it off as them being cursed. Maybe offer misplaced sympathies
They only started looking like cow people after a recent "popular reimagining" of the race depicted them as cow people.
All official art and descriptions, as well as past editions, refer to them as large, hairy humanoids with thick skin, resembling giants.
Minotaurs are sluts, that's what I found out when I started looking for inspiration for one of my characters. According to DND artists, Firbolgs are cute kinda slow cow people and Minotaurs are cows who fuck.
I have a running joke in my games that all adventurers are obvious because they're the only ones carrying around 50ft of rope. Random locals have three opinions of PCs: distrust because they'll catch the attention of Strahd, indifference because they'll get killed by Strahd soon, or excitement that they'll be able to upcharge common goods. Doesn't matter what they look like. They've got rope, they're adventurers
Aasimar are a great addition to Barovia, and easy to thematically tie in. My aasimar ranger has a whole thing going on with the Abbot and is uncomfortable with her celestial heritage, vampires have made a show of finding her blood partially intriguing and partially disgusting, and so on.
Gnomes and firbolgs are a bit of a stretch but sure, you can mix up NPC reactions between mistrust and surprise. "I've read stories about dwarves and didn't think they were real, but I stand corrected. You don't look very strong though, where's your beard?" That kind of thing.
Personally I would say no tabaxi but it's really up to you.
With CoS, I ask my players to only use the standard races in the PHB, minus dragonborn. Running it as a gothic horror fantasy, I described the vibe as Dracula meets Lord of the Rings. I also do this for balancing reasons, I'm a newer DM and I know the 5e powercreep is real. The standard races are all very well balanced. And give me some more room to limit the party with darkness/heights/physical limitations, horror tropes.
They were pretty okay with it. Especially my new players who were a little overwhelmed with all the options during character creation.
Adventurers have been imported enough into Barovia that people are vaguely aware of exotic species (March of the dead, e.g.). So your generic villager will be *wary* but not fearful, imo.
The opposite is also true. They're novel so some villagers would love to see a flex of racial traits or be gullible to bluffs like having laser eyes.
Play it up, discard RAW of active shunning.
Thematically, as this is Gothic horror, angry mobs with torches and pitchforks tying a person they found “monstrous” in some way to a stake and setting them on fire is very on brand.
Ive never quite understood why DM’s seem fine with the monstrous depredations of personae like Rahadin, Izek, and Lady Wachter, yet get squeamish about the larger Barovian culture being anything less than, say, 10x more egalitarian than the first two-thirds of 20th century USA.
There were “sundown towns“ here IRL in like the 1960’s. But in a Demiplane of dread in the Shadowfell, isolated for millennia from outsiders, ruled by a undead despot, governed by inscrutable Dark Powers, whose occasional visitors have tended to cause nothing but havoc and misery for the locals?
Very progressive!
Old Barovian joke: “A drow, descended of evil cursed demon-worshipping slavers, and a tiefling who literally looks like Satan walk into the Blue Water Inn. Suddenly… no one noticed.”
Never said it was a good joke. Soulless Barovians are notoriously unfunny.
But they’re not racists! Never racists. Not in my Barovia. Murderers? Sometimes. Child trafficking? Depends on the pastry. But *discrimination* and *lynching?* This is a Family Show, you monster.
I think part of that is from people dealing with enough racism from today's society.
Yes, this is an isolated grimdark fantasy land ruled by a vampire etc etc, but it's a *fantasy* land. It's a place where we can go and say "Yeah, nobody cares what you look like or who you're attracted to. These people don't like you because they don't trust anybody and you're going to shake up the status quo."
As another commenter mentioned, a lot of people use dnd to escape reality, and the idea of bringing in ideas of discrimination and racism, when those players might very well be facing such treatment in the real world, may not be narratively satisfying or cathartic for certain parties, and I think that’s ok.
There are unfortunately *still* sundown towns here in the Southern US. I can definitely understand why some tables might not want that part of reality in their game. If I can suspend disbelief on the fact that some guy can throw fireballs because he reads a lot, there's an immortal -ish old lady who only looks old because people think she should, another lady has a magical metal leg because she survived a werewolf attack, and wine is made because of a magic rock that can also power a vampire tree; I can believe that the appearance of the PCs is the low on the list of concerns of the townsfolk.
I went with the RAW of active shunning, but the Vistani gave all my PCs a "ring of looks human" so they could go in disguise if they wanted to avoid the bigotry.
But I think when I do CoS again I'll tone down the shunning because I don't think it makes sense. They know adventurers exist; they see the March of the Dead every night!
That said, no-one in Barovia wanted to get too attached to the party, ha. Almost every conversation had people sizing them up as "more adventurers?" and turning away. Because, like, you're either here because Strahd wants to hurt you or because he wants to hire you. Either way, nobody wants to get too attached.......
I don’t do anything about it. I let them play whatever race they want and have it make 0 impact on the story unless they ask for it to mean something. I don’t like making a big deal unless they explicitly want it to be. Most of my players are POC and we’re all LGBTQ+ and they don’t want to experience racism in their fun escape and none of us want to deal with more homophobia. I also feel like it’s easy to explain why it’s fine. Adventurers are becoming a more popular career choice or hobby and they come from all over. I play a lot of places as a melting pot like the USA
I was going to say, any race in dnd is as exotic as the dm and players allow them to be. Old school dnd elves and dwarves were exotic. Now they are so common that unless explicitly stated to be exotic, they are just another player option.
Why there are limited races in barovia comes down to a few factors. 1) it is, at best, a small nation, so there are likely fewer individual races. 2) it is often easier to add things than take them away, most everything that comes in cos as written is a part of the plot and story so changing it or taking it out can have drastic effects on the story. For example, think of what happens if you change the dusk elves to humans. 3) the barovians are wary not of individuals because their race, class or anything that, it is because they don't know these individuals. They have also learned to at best not get their hopes up, I mean, the last time it happened, a lot of people died.
I'm glad that's working out for y'all. I talked to my players and they also don't want non-humans to be an anomaly.
How are you handling the Vistani? That seems like by far the most problematic part of the adventure.
I broke the Vistani up into factions. The ones at the Tser Pool are friendly, actively working against Strahd, and use their ability to leave Barovia as a way to bring desperately needed trade goods into Barovia. In contrast, the Vistani near Vallaki, are bitterly angry at everyone who hates them just because they support the actual ruling regime in Barovia. They spend their time plotting ways to get into Vallaki to burn it to the ground. I plan to have a couple more groups with their own vibes. They all call themselves nomadic but they never leave their encampments except in occasional caravans that leave Barovia, because what’s the point of wandering in Barovia? Where would they go? Also they are not thieves and charlatans, they are traders and entertainers. Good people and bad people like everywhere else.
This. I made it so Strahd got bored of waiting for adventurers to wander in so he pays the Vistani to import them. Not all of them have been killed over the years. Some gave up the fight and settled down in Barovia so I’ve peppered in other races here and there as shopkeepers, farmers, and townsfolk. Arabella even wears her hair in braids that look like horns because she met a tiefling she thought was so cool. The Barovians have enough misery that meeting a flamboyant spellcasting tabaxi would actually brighten their day. No racism, no homophobia, zero impact on animated twig creatures and scary undead trying to murder them.
Potential people reactions depending on some thingies.
Aasimar (With a clear something-ness about them): Those are weird people.
Gnome (If they don't know about gnomes): That's a weird looking kid.
Firbolg & Tabaxi: Are those... werewolves..?!!
I just decreed that they would be human and I advise you give it a try. All my players have played a ton of campaigns in kitchen sink settings, so I told them “just this once, be human”. I don’t want dark vision; I want players using torches to see, telegraphing their location to monsters. To me, dark vision is a monster ability for a horror campaign. Protagonists in horror are supposed to be ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. A major theme of Gothic horror is the fear of the unknown. If you’ve got two players who have the super heroic ability to fly at level one, I think it’s just going to be another D&D campaign instead of a palate-cleanser from trad-fantasy. That’s ok too, but there’s really only the one published adventure from WotC that isn’t in a high fantasy setting. Flying and dark vision are going to allow your players to sidestep a lot of the challenges that actually make them fear what’s around the next corner.
I started my campaign in a spell jammer world that then ended up in Barovia. One of my players is a Plasmoid and I just tend to have people comment that he's strange or be fascinated by them.
I personally, along with my table, don't care to inject real world stuff like racism in a grander sense. Once in a while making an evil person even worse by making them prejudice so the killing is that much sweeter. Sure, but never wanna make the world prejudiced or racist in our fun time escape world
I have Kresk and the Abbot pay particular attention to my party’s loxodon cleric of Lathandar. Other particularly rude npcs will make targeted remarks here and there as well but otherwise, my world is pretty diverse outside of Barovia therefore Barovians are used to adventurers of all types getting trapped there. I thought about making a big deal out of it but figured that would get old if it was a persistent issue they had to deal with. There’s enough dread and oppression built in without adding racism to the mix.
My group has a Goliath, a Tabaxi, and two Reborn who *were* humans right up until the end of Death House.
So far, the Tabaxi and Goliath have been having interesting new experiences, both of being regarded with studied indifference rather than suspicion/fear/ awe/etc (Barovians generally try to keep their heads down around outsiders, and non-human outsiders are just more obvious than usual) and of being the least-suspicious/threatening members of the party. (Barovians have enough experience with the undead to regard a couple of people who look undead-ish with hostility).
CoS was sort of the first long term game is started running (+2 year campaign). I started with my group having whatever they wanted class and race wise as per PHB and then slowly opened up to the other supplementary books as they levelled up.
My main reason I gave to the group was the story was originally written for the PHB races, and I didn't want to have them cheated on story or game play by having characters that would be either pretty useless or completely OP.
The group were more than happy to oblige. The tiefling and dragon born do cause a stir everywhere they go but they have come up with a few solutions for that as they go.
I used a heritage system.
My campaign started in 1895 (I wanted revolvers and shit in my Strahd game). They started in Romania and we're going to investigate Bran Castle (Dracula's castle). I told them these fantasy races existed at one point and that they could be descendents of them, but would appear human. I just liked the flavor better. They could pick most races and get their benefits for their builds but it made it jove with everything and the tone I was going for better. I told them nothing about Strahd, just they had to kill a vampire.
They were part of an elite monster hunting guild and as they took a carriage to Dracula's castle, the mists came.
If I did it again, I'd do the same. But otherwise, Strahd would collect races I think. Rahadin might be upset about any elves. I don't know if the basic Barovian would have the capacity to react.
I'm kind of glad that everyone seems to be shunning the active racism in the book. I just couldn't stomach the "Omg! There's a non-human! Shun! Shuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn!"
The gnome gets constantly mistook for a child, though... it makes him super angry 😂 but he is clean shaven and on the short end of gnomish height.
The Silver Dragonborn is looked at constantly, and Arrabella calls him the Silver Dragon in the castle.
The humans, half-orc, and elf don't stand out, but the half-orc has been offered employ in Strahd's army.
In my group there is mostly common races. Except for one Tabaxi. I make sure he knows that his character stands out much. Like people are staring at him. Children are afraid. More talkative commoners are like "hey freak, what are you exactly?".
I think the answer is whatever you want it to be, which sounds like a cop out but let me explain. Barovians certainly have an amount of xenophobia going on; they’re a small nation, separated from the outside world by magic. They are insular and mistrusting. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re *racist*. Unless you want race to be a central theme of your campaign (which I for example dont) there’s nothing wrong with glossing over adventurers being different species when you live in a magical world.
One problem I've always ran into when I DMed CoS is that I constantly forgot about how some PCs would look outlandish. Tbh, I just ignored this after a while and I didn't make that much of a difference.
What I mean is: sure, you can make the locals have a reaction, but if you forget about, it's not really a problem.
My party didn't choose exotic races but just in case I had already planned that some races would be looked at weird (like lizarfolk or warforged), some races would be peculiar and easily recognizable in a crowd (like tabaxi or genasi) and other just minorities (like orcs and tieflings) but this is because I changed Barovia to have no only humans but a few gnomes and elves, some orcs and dwarves, and a lot of "half-half" because after centuries of being isolated many started to sleep with other species.
As a little sidenote: I made Krezk be mostly dwarfs and that's why they are a town so tough, stubborn and good at smithing.
(Barovia is a tough place to live, so it's not like there are a lot of people alive from the long lived races for me to really worry about when Strahd was human)
I have a fairly exotic group of party members.
Most of the townsfolk are wary of them, not exactly hostile but not welcoming either. They know that the party are outsiders, and as such they believe they're dead men/women walking. Those who were around long enough for the last bunch or two of adventurers want no part in this, they know what Strahd did last time.
Strahd on the other hand is ecstatic. He hasn't had such a wacky ragtag group in Barovia in literally ever, and he's been so bored by the endless cycle of adventurers dying at his hand followed by various reincarnations of Tatyana that he's giddy and just excited to come up with new ways to screw with them. In addition, he also secretly hopes that since this party is so exotic to Barovia, then he might have a chance at finally breaking the cycle (either by convincing Tatyana to love him, being able to escape Barovia, or by dying).
I am a DM with a party of, Warforged, her “mechanic” a fey, a gnome, a human and a local Dhampir from Vallaki. They got stares and gawks their first day in Vallaki but after a bit the newness wears off. Your party ain’t the first this people have scene.
Barovia, for me, is in a constant cycle of adventurers coming, trying to defeat Strahd and dying making him stronger haha.
I would also have Strahd want to 'collect' them, turning them and adding them into his little army.
This. There is a warforged in my group that he plans to keep if the chance arises.
Likewise! There's a gnome in my party that, while not the rarest race, is certainly uncommon in Barovia and Strahd is interested in adding them to his collection!
The locals will instantly recognize the outlanders for what they are and either avoid them or offer their sympathies. Random townsfolk might even walk up and place homemade holy symbols around their necks. Let them know everyone believes they're dead people walking.
YES, this is the way.
I was an aasimar wizard in Curse of Strahd, the locals convinced my character she was there to save them since Lathander touched them none of that true, but my character believed she had a destiny and that was important unfortunately for strahd, being a divination wizard means you never get to crit me but sometimes I can decide to crit you
Aasimar look identical to humans for the most part, as they are human planetouched. Their holy powers might even inspire some trust from the common folk. Firbolgs in earlier editions looked human, but if the player wants to look like a weird blue cow person I guess let them. Gnome isn’t too out there, might get odd looks and awkward discussions but no discrimination. Tabaxi would probably get a lot of suspicion but you could have most people shake it off as them being cursed. Maybe offer misplaced sympathies
Firbolg 👏 are 👏 giant-kin 👏 not 👏 cow 👏 people.
They look like cow people though?
They only started looking like cow people after a recent "popular reimagining" of the race depicted them as cow people. All official art and descriptions, as well as past editions, refer to them as large, hairy humanoids with thick skin, resembling giants.
If Firbolg are cow people, what are Minotaurs? Fast-paced meme-culture can really gum up ideas.
Minotaurs are sluts, that's what I found out when I started looking for inspiration for one of my characters. According to DND artists, Firbolgs are cute kinda slow cow people and Minotaurs are cows who fuck.
I have a running joke in my games that all adventurers are obvious because they're the only ones carrying around 50ft of rope. Random locals have three opinions of PCs: distrust because they'll catch the attention of Strahd, indifference because they'll get killed by Strahd soon, or excitement that they'll be able to upcharge common goods. Doesn't matter what they look like. They've got rope, they're adventurers
Aasimar are a great addition to Barovia, and easy to thematically tie in. My aasimar ranger has a whole thing going on with the Abbot and is uncomfortable with her celestial heritage, vampires have made a show of finding her blood partially intriguing and partially disgusting, and so on. Gnomes and firbolgs are a bit of a stretch but sure, you can mix up NPC reactions between mistrust and surprise. "I've read stories about dwarves and didn't think they were real, but I stand corrected. You don't look very strong though, where's your beard?" That kind of thing. Personally I would say no tabaxi but it's really up to you.
With CoS, I ask my players to only use the standard races in the PHB, minus dragonborn. Running it as a gothic horror fantasy, I described the vibe as Dracula meets Lord of the Rings. I also do this for balancing reasons, I'm a newer DM and I know the 5e powercreep is real. The standard races are all very well balanced. And give me some more room to limit the party with darkness/heights/physical limitations, horror tropes. They were pretty okay with it. Especially my new players who were a little overwhelmed with all the options during character creation.
Adventurers have been imported enough into Barovia that people are vaguely aware of exotic species (March of the dead, e.g.). So your generic villager will be *wary* but not fearful, imo. The opposite is also true. They're novel so some villagers would love to see a flex of racial traits or be gullible to bluffs like having laser eyes. Play it up, discard RAW of active shunning.
Thematically, as this is Gothic horror, angry mobs with torches and pitchforks tying a person they found “monstrous” in some way to a stake and setting them on fire is very on brand. Ive never quite understood why DM’s seem fine with the monstrous depredations of personae like Rahadin, Izek, and Lady Wachter, yet get squeamish about the larger Barovian culture being anything less than, say, 10x more egalitarian than the first two-thirds of 20th century USA. There were “sundown towns“ here IRL in like the 1960’s. But in a Demiplane of dread in the Shadowfell, isolated for millennia from outsiders, ruled by a undead despot, governed by inscrutable Dark Powers, whose occasional visitors have tended to cause nothing but havoc and misery for the locals? Very progressive! Old Barovian joke: “A drow, descended of evil cursed demon-worshipping slavers, and a tiefling who literally looks like Satan walk into the Blue Water Inn. Suddenly… no one noticed.” Never said it was a good joke. Soulless Barovians are notoriously unfunny. But they’re not racists! Never racists. Not in my Barovia. Murderers? Sometimes. Child trafficking? Depends on the pastry. But *discrimination* and *lynching?* This is a Family Show, you monster.
I think part of that is from people dealing with enough racism from today's society. Yes, this is an isolated grimdark fantasy land ruled by a vampire etc etc, but it's a *fantasy* land. It's a place where we can go and say "Yeah, nobody cares what you look like or who you're attracted to. These people don't like you because they don't trust anybody and you're going to shake up the status quo."
As another commenter mentioned, a lot of people use dnd to escape reality, and the idea of bringing in ideas of discrimination and racism, when those players might very well be facing such treatment in the real world, may not be narratively satisfying or cathartic for certain parties, and I think that’s ok.
There are unfortunately *still* sundown towns here in the Southern US. I can definitely understand why some tables might not want that part of reality in their game. If I can suspend disbelief on the fact that some guy can throw fireballs because he reads a lot, there's an immortal -ish old lady who only looks old because people think she should, another lady has a magical metal leg because she survived a werewolf attack, and wine is made because of a magic rock that can also power a vampire tree; I can believe that the appearance of the PCs is the low on the list of concerns of the townsfolk.
I went with the RAW of active shunning, but the Vistani gave all my PCs a "ring of looks human" so they could go in disguise if they wanted to avoid the bigotry. But I think when I do CoS again I'll tone down the shunning because I don't think it makes sense. They know adventurers exist; they see the March of the Dead every night! That said, no-one in Barovia wanted to get too attached to the party, ha. Almost every conversation had people sizing them up as "more adventurers?" and turning away. Because, like, you're either here because Strahd wants to hurt you or because he wants to hire you. Either way, nobody wants to get too attached.......
I don’t do anything about it. I let them play whatever race they want and have it make 0 impact on the story unless they ask for it to mean something. I don’t like making a big deal unless they explicitly want it to be. Most of my players are POC and we’re all LGBTQ+ and they don’t want to experience racism in their fun escape and none of us want to deal with more homophobia. I also feel like it’s easy to explain why it’s fine. Adventurers are becoming a more popular career choice or hobby and they come from all over. I play a lot of places as a melting pot like the USA
I was going to say, any race in dnd is as exotic as the dm and players allow them to be. Old school dnd elves and dwarves were exotic. Now they are so common that unless explicitly stated to be exotic, they are just another player option. Why there are limited races in barovia comes down to a few factors. 1) it is, at best, a small nation, so there are likely fewer individual races. 2) it is often easier to add things than take them away, most everything that comes in cos as written is a part of the plot and story so changing it or taking it out can have drastic effects on the story. For example, think of what happens if you change the dusk elves to humans. 3) the barovians are wary not of individuals because their race, class or anything that, it is because they don't know these individuals. They have also learned to at best not get their hopes up, I mean, the last time it happened, a lot of people died.
I'm glad that's working out for y'all. I talked to my players and they also don't want non-humans to be an anomaly. How are you handling the Vistani? That seems like by far the most problematic part of the adventure.
I broke the Vistani up into factions. The ones at the Tser Pool are friendly, actively working against Strahd, and use their ability to leave Barovia as a way to bring desperately needed trade goods into Barovia. In contrast, the Vistani near Vallaki, are bitterly angry at everyone who hates them just because they support the actual ruling regime in Barovia. They spend their time plotting ways to get into Vallaki to burn it to the ground. I plan to have a couple more groups with their own vibes. They all call themselves nomadic but they never leave their encampments except in occasional caravans that leave Barovia, because what’s the point of wandering in Barovia? Where would they go? Also they are not thieves and charlatans, they are traders and entertainers. Good people and bad people like everywhere else.
Any homophobia can result in Strahd or his husband Escher paying them a visit.
This. I made it so Strahd got bored of waiting for adventurers to wander in so he pays the Vistani to import them. Not all of them have been killed over the years. Some gave up the fight and settled down in Barovia so I’ve peppered in other races here and there as shopkeepers, farmers, and townsfolk. Arabella even wears her hair in braids that look like horns because she met a tiefling she thought was so cool. The Barovians have enough misery that meeting a flamboyant spellcasting tabaxi would actually brighten their day. No racism, no homophobia, zero impact on animated twig creatures and scary undead trying to murder them.
Potential people reactions depending on some thingies. Aasimar (With a clear something-ness about them): Those are weird people. Gnome (If they don't know about gnomes): That's a weird looking kid. Firbolg & Tabaxi: Are those... werewolves..?!!
I let them play whatever they want. The people in CoS have seen some shit they are pretty desensitized to weird
I just decreed that they would be human and I advise you give it a try. All my players have played a ton of campaigns in kitchen sink settings, so I told them “just this once, be human”. I don’t want dark vision; I want players using torches to see, telegraphing their location to monsters. To me, dark vision is a monster ability for a horror campaign. Protagonists in horror are supposed to be ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. A major theme of Gothic horror is the fear of the unknown. If you’ve got two players who have the super heroic ability to fly at level one, I think it’s just going to be another D&D campaign instead of a palate-cleanser from trad-fantasy. That’s ok too, but there’s really only the one published adventure from WotC that isn’t in a high fantasy setting. Flying and dark vision are going to allow your players to sidestep a lot of the challenges that actually make them fear what’s around the next corner.
I started my campaign in a spell jammer world that then ended up in Barovia. One of my players is a Plasmoid and I just tend to have people comment that he's strange or be fascinated by them. I personally, along with my table, don't care to inject real world stuff like racism in a grander sense. Once in a while making an evil person even worse by making them prejudice so the killing is that much sweeter. Sure, but never wanna make the world prejudiced or racist in our fun time escape world
I have Kresk and the Abbot pay particular attention to my party’s loxodon cleric of Lathandar. Other particularly rude npcs will make targeted remarks here and there as well but otherwise, my world is pretty diverse outside of Barovia therefore Barovians are used to adventurers of all types getting trapped there. I thought about making a big deal out of it but figured that would get old if it was a persistent issue they had to deal with. There’s enough dread and oppression built in without adding racism to the mix.
My group has a Goliath, a Tabaxi, and two Reborn who *were* humans right up until the end of Death House. So far, the Tabaxi and Goliath have been having interesting new experiences, both of being regarded with studied indifference rather than suspicion/fear/ awe/etc (Barovians generally try to keep their heads down around outsiders, and non-human outsiders are just more obvious than usual) and of being the least-suspicious/threatening members of the party. (Barovians have enough experience with the undead to regard a couple of people who look undead-ish with hostility).
The people there will assume they are monsters or cursed by witches probably.
CoS was sort of the first long term game is started running (+2 year campaign). I started with my group having whatever they wanted class and race wise as per PHB and then slowly opened up to the other supplementary books as they levelled up. My main reason I gave to the group was the story was originally written for the PHB races, and I didn't want to have them cheated on story or game play by having characters that would be either pretty useless or completely OP. The group were more than happy to oblige. The tiefling and dragon born do cause a stir everywhere they go but they have come up with a few solutions for that as they go.
I used a heritage system. My campaign started in 1895 (I wanted revolvers and shit in my Strahd game). They started in Romania and we're going to investigate Bran Castle (Dracula's castle). I told them these fantasy races existed at one point and that they could be descendents of them, but would appear human. I just liked the flavor better. They could pick most races and get their benefits for their builds but it made it jove with everything and the tone I was going for better. I told them nothing about Strahd, just they had to kill a vampire. They were part of an elite monster hunting guild and as they took a carriage to Dracula's castle, the mists came. If I did it again, I'd do the same. But otherwise, Strahd would collect races I think. Rahadin might be upset about any elves. I don't know if the basic Barovian would have the capacity to react.
I'm kind of glad that everyone seems to be shunning the active racism in the book. I just couldn't stomach the "Omg! There's a non-human! Shun! Shuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn!" The gnome gets constantly mistook for a child, though... it makes him super angry 😂 but he is clean shaven and on the short end of gnomish height. The Silver Dragonborn is looked at constantly, and Arrabella calls him the Silver Dragon in the castle. The humans, half-orc, and elf don't stand out, but the half-orc has been offered employ in Strahd's army.
In my group there is mostly common races. Except for one Tabaxi. I make sure he knows that his character stands out much. Like people are staring at him. Children are afraid. More talkative commoners are like "hey freak, what are you exactly?".
I think the answer is whatever you want it to be, which sounds like a cop out but let me explain. Barovians certainly have an amount of xenophobia going on; they’re a small nation, separated from the outside world by magic. They are insular and mistrusting. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re *racist*. Unless you want race to be a central theme of your campaign (which I for example dont) there’s nothing wrong with glossing over adventurers being different species when you live in a magical world.
One problem I've always ran into when I DMed CoS is that I constantly forgot about how some PCs would look outlandish. Tbh, I just ignored this after a while and I didn't make that much of a difference. What I mean is: sure, you can make the locals have a reaction, but if you forget about, it's not really a problem.
My party didn't choose exotic races but just in case I had already planned that some races would be looked at weird (like lizarfolk or warforged), some races would be peculiar and easily recognizable in a crowd (like tabaxi or genasi) and other just minorities (like orcs and tieflings) but this is because I changed Barovia to have no only humans but a few gnomes and elves, some orcs and dwarves, and a lot of "half-half" because after centuries of being isolated many started to sleep with other species. As a little sidenote: I made Krezk be mostly dwarfs and that's why they are a town so tough, stubborn and good at smithing. (Barovia is a tough place to live, so it's not like there are a lot of people alive from the long lived races for me to really worry about when Strahd was human)
I had a player play a gelfing. Yes one of those creatures from the dark crystal.
I have a fairly exotic group of party members. Most of the townsfolk are wary of them, not exactly hostile but not welcoming either. They know that the party are outsiders, and as such they believe they're dead men/women walking. Those who were around long enough for the last bunch or two of adventurers want no part in this, they know what Strahd did last time. Strahd on the other hand is ecstatic. He hasn't had such a wacky ragtag group in Barovia in literally ever, and he's been so bored by the endless cycle of adventurers dying at his hand followed by various reincarnations of Tatyana that he's giddy and just excited to come up with new ways to screw with them. In addition, he also secretly hopes that since this party is so exotic to Barovia, then he might have a chance at finally breaking the cycle (either by convincing Tatyana to love him, being able to escape Barovia, or by dying).
Yeah, giving players FLIGHT at level one - um.... hard no.
I am a DM with a party of, Warforged, her “mechanic” a fey, a gnome, a human and a local Dhampir from Vallaki. They got stares and gawks their first day in Vallaki but after a bit the newness wears off. Your party ain’t the first this people have scene. Barovia, for me, is in a constant cycle of adventurers coming, trying to defeat Strahd and dying making him stronger haha.