I definitely don’t want the game to lose its strong grounding in the classic Gothic archetypes. That’s the whole reason for it to exist! But, I would also like to expand the possibilities of character creation. “A Ghastly Potpourri” actually already includes guidelines for swapping out Special Abilities and Weaknesses to customize the Classes. So, we’re going to see if we can have the best of both worlds here. If we can’t make it work, it doesn’t get published!

The “Gypsy” Class seems to be the most controversial part of Ghastly Affair, and I do understand why. For starters, the Class is almost certainly being renamed something like “Itinerant”. “Outsider”, as you suggest, is another possibility. Also, the Class’s Special Abilities will be reconfigured slightly to ameliorate implicitly racist tropes, but in a way that still keeps the strong Gothic archetype intact. Playing the Class should be about sympathy with the outcast “Other”. Confronting racism – not contributing to it.

My only hesitation surrounds the potential move from classes. See, in Ghastly Affair, more than in many games, the classes truly represent genre archetypes beyond just their class abilities. The archetypes look like they will still be heavily encouraged but I’d still love to see them as the system default. Perhaps an option to swap class abilities with some cost, such giving up two of your class abilities or taking on an additional weakness for one ability of another class, may work? I have all the confidence that your play testing will show the best path, but I just had to cast my vote for keeping tight genre emulation.

Any further thoughts about the gypsy class? While one could argue that even the name is part of the genre archetype, it is certainly problematic (and I’m three generations removed from my Hungarian roots!) I’ve played with renaming it Outsider to step further away from the Romany stereotype and to speak to the class’s outsider status not just culturally but in their connection to the spirit world.

Thanks again for sharing your progress! I look forward to the next update.