I feel like Curseborne needs a book focused on establishing the setting/world.

[u/RuNoMai]

Let me preface this by saying that I like the systems I see in Curseborne, and the character types available. It seems like a pretty strong game and I can't wait to try it with my group. But the setting itself feels a bit thin to me.

I read through Chapter One and skimmed through the rest, but it seems like the setting essentially narrows down to "curses are real". This is repeated ad nauseam through the entire book, but little else seems to be. I don't even have a strong idea of what drives the different types of Accursed to work together, or what their greater goals would be.

I tried to avoid directly comparing it to Chronicles of Darkness as I read through, but honestly couldn't help myself. And my main thought was that compared to the settings established for that game, Curseborne feels like it needs a bit more work in that regard. With the CoD game lines, you knew what the tone and goals were supposed to be. Vampire is a game of politics. Demon is a spy thriller. Promethean is about becoming human and establishing your identity. Changeling is about finding and protecting your new family. Mage is Indiana Jones vs. Cthulhu. These are all very basic and reductive descriptions of the settings and themes, but the fact that they CAN be boiled down thusly shows how well those settings were established and how immediately clear it is what kind of stories best fit them.

I don't know how to boil down Curseborne, however. Aside from "Curses are real, and you're cursed," there seems to be very, very, very little guidance on what your characters are supposed to be doing and why. Perhaps this is intentional, perhaps I'm alone in disliking this, perhaps I just need to read things through again. There's every chance this is just a "me" problem. But I would love for Curseborne to get a book STRICTLY focused on better establishing the setting and giving clearer direction on what kind of world and stories these curses and characters exist in, and why they do what they do.

(And of course, if this book is already in the process of being developed and is flying under my radar, please tell me so I know to pick it up!)

[u/TheWaterIsASham]

I fully agree. I read the book and thought it was very cool with some great game play upgrades but did not come away with an idea of what a session, let alone a campaign would actually look like. You can say the word family a whole bunch, I need more than a few paragraphs of in charecter text to know how to place those groups in a world

[u/PencilBoy99]

It's funny you mentioned that I had the same chat on discord, with really the same issue. It wasn't clear to me what the player characters are doing, what the factions are conflicting over and why the player characters of the people doing the thing.

I think what I was told is that you're supposed to make player characters that want to rescue people from liminalities. There isn't really anything in the setting that explains why they would be doing that. For example, in werewolf, you're fighting the worm, and that's clearly your job.

A lot of the splats are presented as good guys. So it's not clear what you're pushing against.

[u/PencilBoy99 → u/PencilBoy99]

I did suggest that it seemed funny that each week, a different random relative or friend, was getting sucked into a liminality. Short of like, how, in the original call of cthulhu game, it was just a thing where everybody had an uncle. That was dying constantly and leaving them a cryptic message

[u/PencilBoy99]

Also, it just uses the word curses a lot of time, and I understand like your curse to be a werewolf or something. But it just wasn't even clear to me what that means.

Also a lot of the splats are presented as we use our cool powers to punish bad guys. This seems kind of ridiculous, because a group of curse born are going to steamroll any random, normal person. It's not as if your vampire is fighting werewolves or something. You're a bunch of superpowered people fighting one normal guy who's pushing homeless out of an encampment, or something. Not much of a challenge

[u/StaceyUK]

A setting book is being worked on.

[u/RuneKnight3]

My issue is that Curseborne doesn't seem to have a central conflict or theme of consequence. You have a bunch of different supernatural creatures, but we're all related and we're all friends, because anyone creating conflict is just a jerk. So what exactly are we supposed to do? Where's the adventure? Where's the grist in the mill? A game without any conflict isn't a game, and there's a multitude of bland games about exploration that have failed repeatedly because just going around looking at stuff and talking about it isn't quite enough.

I get the feeling Curseborne was made because Paradox screwed Onyx Path on the Chronicles of Darkness license and in their zeal to be "different" from World of Darkness they failed to keep any flavor.

But I could be wrong.

[u/Dataweaver_42]

Maybe it could use something like a detailed set of conspiracies that bring the Families together in various ways? Maybe something like the upcoming Curseborne Covenant?

[u/Konradleijon]

Yes

[u/PencilBoy99]

I was thinking one non canonical way to frame the game would be to say, regardless of what chapter one says nearly every faction is really ultimately bad guys. Because when you give people power and put them in an underground, it 's gonna corrupt some people, or it's going to attract the most corrupt into power. 

Those people are gonna wanna acquire or use supernatural resources, which means that the other equally corrupt families, are going to try to stop them and get them for themselves.

Now you can make people that are easier working for a family against other families or working against their own families

[u/-Godmouth]

I believe Covenant and Seattle will get more into the setting and world.

[u/Midnightdreary353]

So a bit late to respond, but I do feel the same way. To me anyways curseborn feels like it has a lot of content, but the content is shallow.

For the core I accepted this. Basically it establishes the setting, systems, and the families. But we should have something to help thicken things up with later books and im not sure if they are going to do that. Covenants is a good start, as we now get a view of the wider world from this, but with 16 conspiracies it feels like they are spreading things way too thin,  

There's also the issue that the themes of the game are curses and family. But it doesn't feel like they've added enough depths to that. if its a game of personal horror with curses then we need to build things so we can watch our characters tear it down, if its family then we need something to both hold us together and try to tear us apart. If we want to make it about politics and sect wars then we need to focus on that. 

I agree with trying to avoid comparison to white wolf properties. But to me it feels like they are trying to replicate the WoD and CoD with different splats, clans/tribes/ect, and factions within them; but in one line with only two major books, rather than the massive library built over the years that White Wolf properties have. 

[u/Eisbergmann]

Its the problem with newer products by Onyx. Its always just "assume that" and worldbuilding suffers greatly, because they don't want to limit their players, not understanding that people who tweak any setting to their own liking, but people who like dedicated worldbuilding will miss out if there isn't one.

[u/The-Magic-Sword]

The equivalent for Curseborne is the family politics + creepypasta/urban legends, each of the families is interested in the various paranormal occurrences, and they want their youngest members to pull their weight by investigating these things and laying claim to them, the members in question might be good little family soldiers, or they might be variously rebelling/estranged etc.

At the same time, the rebelling people care because this is still their neighborhood its happening in.

Navigating that family dynamic while solving mysteries is the core loop, but the lineages build onto that via torments to further detail it-- e.g. you're solving mysteries and navigating family politics, but you're also liable to lose control of yourself, or you might need to sacrifice something to fuel your magic, etc.

But when in doubt: family politics, paranormal mysteries.

[u/RuNoMai → u/The-Magic-Sword]

There's the problem, though. If the core focus of the game is Family dynamics and either working with or rebelling against them, the Families themselves need to be written about in far more detail than they are in the core book. In the Lineages chapter, each Family has only two pages dedicated to them after the writeup for their general Lineage, and it doesn't look like there's a lot more info on them in the rest of the book.

What are the individual Families trying to accomplish that would prompt a character to either cooperate or rebel against them? If they want to investigate / control / destroy a Liminality, why do they want to do that aside from "because it's there", and why would the players oppose any of those goals? Does the Get of Lyka have the same interest in a Liminality that the Furies have? Why would they conflict with or complement each other?

I would imagine that some of these questions are expanded upon in the Liminality-focused book, and it looks like the Player's Guide is going to be expanding on the Families a bit, but if they're the most important aspect of the game they need to be defined clearly and thoroughly in the core book. There shouldn't be this much confusion and ambiguity about what you're actually meant to be DOING in the game, or why.

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/RuNoMai]

Not exactly, the answer is that at this level of play, the players don't know everything, and the people who give them direction don't necessarily know either, because they're getting their directions from cryptic elders who aren't on the scene-- but some of the reasons are certainly self-evident or they're contained in the core book.

For example, all of the Outcasts are interested in gathering information on the Outside and Liminalities and they're interested in fighting or otherwise interacting with the Archons and Fae (in the case of the prenderghasts), and all of the Sorcerer families are interested in magical power and knowledge, the League of Hidden Crossroads wants their members to make more deals, the Archivists want their members to gather knowledge and secrets, and a bunch of the families are billed as brokers who would be interested in stuff or information from such realms, and might trade if they're brought offers, which means any given family might want something they can use as bargaining chips for something else they want or need.

Others are self-evidently useful realms, or present a direct threat, or they're things a particular member of the family would want-- like a door to a realm that a loved one was lost in, or a realm that is rumored to gain a cure for vampirism, or a realm that contains a further door to a loophole, or a beautiful otherworldly realm that would make an incredible venue for parties, giving the person who claims it clout (that one is from the short story antholology and i really enjoyed it)

There aren't one size fit all reasons for an accursed to hate or embrace their families, those are idiosyncratic and personal-- they might disagree with the families philosophy, or recruiting, they might be annoyed that they're the ones being asked to deal with dangerous things when their families have more powerful people, they might see their families as comrades, or as literal family relationships, or the family might be giving them a lavish life or other perks.

The book does outline all of this, but it makes a variety of activities and plotlines viable, so you aren't going to find a section that says "all curseborne games are x activity"

But again, when in doubt, family politics and paranormal investigations.

[u/Read2Fap]

"I don't even have a strong idea of what drives the different types of Accursed to work together, or what their greater goals would be."

the same thing as it does in dnd and other cofd games. you have something in common, you can't just live a life as a normal farmer/accountant, and you know if certain threats aren't looked into they can become big nasty problems. it's also fulfilling, being able to use your weird talents that you normally have to hide to fit in. depending on your character you could be the 'go to' problem solver, like john constantine, or you can have a patron who sends you out to do things like the caballistics crew

as stated there's a setting book in the process of being developed, it's called seattle: city of curses, it's currently in the last stages, art direction

there's also the covenant book coming to kickstarter to expand from street level to more larger-scale play

matthew dawkins has made a bunch of videos explaining the various groups and even recaps

(12) [Curseborne] Virgin Territory RPG Recap - Part 1 - YouTube - taking place in a fictional city in iowa

and building up the setting for his games here:

[Curseborne] The Gentleman's Guide to Junction City - Part 1

[u/Awe_I]

Late to the party, but I hope you still have some patience left. I’ve been having much the same judgement, and overall I feel that feedback like the OP’s, even here, tends not to receive reassuring answers and is often played down. I bought a few additional releases in good faith, hoping they would give me a better understanding of the world, but that has not really been the case, and I can see the same pattern repeating across other releases. The supplements have been light on setting substance and often feel disconnected. As an SG, it becomes a headache to build an adventure, let alone define credible NPCs and give them a clear place in world.

Onyx Path, please focus on a setting book that properly defines the foundations of the Curseborne world and sets the tone for future releases. For a core book of nearly 400 pages, I would have expected much of this to be there already, but I do hope it finds its way into the planned condensed core book or into a substantial stand alone supplement. For now, I’ve directed my attention away from Curseborne and don’t intend to invest further.

[u/MatthewDawkins]

Did you read the Storyguide chapter?

[u/tlenze → u/MatthewDawkins]

I have. It didn't really help me. It gives good high-level advice, but it didn't help me build the setting for my table.

PCs are supposed to have family obligations. Great. But who are the family members they have obligations to? What might those obligations be? How do those family members affect the social and power structures of the city? Wait, now I need to come up with social and power structures for the city. How does having the Bathorites in ascension make the city feel different from having Mavens with a lot of power instead? What does being "in ascension" or having "a lot of power" even mean in this setting? We've only seen the low-level characters. What might higher power SGCs be able to do?

It takes a lot more effort to worldbuild before a game starts for Curseborne than Vampire the Masquerade, for example. With Vampire, if I choose to have a city be a Camarilla city, I'm provided with a base structure. I have a Prince, primogen, a Sheriff, etc. Curseborne expects you to build all of that up from the bottom just so your players can have an idea of how their players fit into things and what their goals might be.

It sounds like the Seattle book will address a lot of that, but I feel like it would have been helpful for people picking up a new game to have that level of advice in the storyguide chapter.

[u/PencilBoy99 → u/tlenze]

So I think part of the confusion comes from the fact that everything you've learned about the splats comes from some in character narration, so we have no idea what the splat is actually like. so it seems like most of the splots, except for a handful, are super good guys. So I don't understand why you'd be rebelling against them. i'm not even sure what they'd be trying to pursue. That isn't involved with a liminality because there are all people with a crazy superpowers.

I mean, I guess the vibe is supposed to be : you're just a crew for no apparent reason other than being nice people resolving the liminality of the week. if that's the case, then I think we probably need some better structure for it. Like an explanation of maybe different groups that fight liminalities. and maybe some more robust system for dealing with liminality, some kind of like project system or something other than just stabbing it.

[u/butchtx → u/PencilBoy99]

Assuming by splat you mean the families, while I get that the in character narrators may be biased I'm not quite sure how a lot of people seem to be reading it as "this family seems super nice"? Even with the biased narrators all of them as presented in the core felt like you could at least see how they could be bad or otherwise fucked up

[u/PencilBoy99 → u/butchtx]

Not sure I agree. Most of them were like, hey, we're the family that gets justice and fights the bad guys. And you know how we like to possess people, to get cool experiences, while our family makes sure that we never do that to the people that don 't agree. I can get quotes, but it doesn't seem worth the effort.

Now, maybe that person in character in the book who wrote this is lying is lying. But really a ton of them come across as like, super good families. Maybe not the like vampire one

[u/butchtx → u/PencilBoy99]

Regarding the Maven example from a quick read over the narrator is speaking about contracts in general it seems and the importance of them to the family, I think the threat was more about breaking a contract in general? Though the narrator is also a modernist, meaning they do believe in the person they made a contract with being able to back out at anytime but both of the Maven factions generally seem to believe in punishing those who break the contracts regardless of their stance on continuous consent.

The Mavens though are perhaps one of the Dead families who are less easily read as sinister. Whereas you have the rage fueled Furies who are likely to just go after random friends and relatives of the person they started their crusade against, the Poltergeists who scare people to death, sometimes literally, and the Shades who like to say they're inflicting misery upon rich bastards and bad people even if one could easily object to their method of ruining their lives until they're hollowed depressed husks or driving them to the point of suicide with the excuse of it teaching a lesson that even their narrator admits many if not most Shades don't actually care about, they just like feeding off of misery they created.

I do think reading the entries with a more critical, or cynical, eye does make it easier to see the bad sides of the families. Especially since I found there was often a line or a few that lets slip a more sinister side than the narrator is presenting. There's also the "guide to the Accursed" videos that are on the gentleman gamer's channel that dive more into the nuances and lore of the families that can help though I do think hiding that stuff on youtube channels is disappointing since it means a whole lot of people will miss some interesting details.

Also for what it's worth going off the conspiracy entries they released prior to the upcoming Covenant Kickstarter it does seem like they heard about feedback for more explicitly evil groups for players to join since they have multiple conspiracies that are much more explicitly grey or evil

[u/PencilBoy99 → u/butchtx]

I feel like we're doing a lot of work here. Where the only thing you could be pushing back against is that the factions you work for are good, but maybe they go a little too far. that's a kind of weird thing to be pushing back against in a role playing game, i'm not sure if there's anything else in the game that supports that. As being your primary activity.

I think we're all just taking this rorscharch blot of a game and coming up with things to do with it, rather than being things that are in the text or designed to be things that you're doing

[u/butchtx → u/PencilBoy99]

I mean one of the things the game advertises is rebelling against your Family so I think it's keeping in that to go off the bad sides of the families that the narrators say many if not most of them do. Though of course the game is also meant to allow players to play Accursed who are a lot more willing to indulge in their monsterous side too for one reason or another.

[u/PencilBoy99 → u/butchtx]

So you're rebelling against them because they're too good (maybe go to far)

Even if that is what you're supposed to do in the game, why isn't there anything that supports that activity. It's not like there's some kind of reputation system or a seneshal or harpy, that's gonna get you in trouble. If you push back. What resource would the family have that you need that you couldn't be cut off from.

I'm not saying that the game couldn't be about that, but it's weird that there's none of what I just said above. If that's what it's supposed to be about.

Also I didn't mention that it seems like half the families or whatever they're called are about partying. And that 's the most important thing. We throw the best parties. At least for me, that's not really gamable. I don't wanna spend my time role playing having a party

[u/RuNoMai → u/MatthewDawkins]

As I said in the OP, I skimmed it earlier, but I gave it another look-through now. Unfortunately it seems built more as a "how to run games in general" chapter, and not one that's specifically built around fleshing out the Curseborne world and lore, which is what I want. It does have a pretty healthy section of set pieces but other than that it's just rules and advice.

Let me compare to another recent Onyx Path game line, The World Below. The opening chapters of this book are written fantastically, and right away as I was reading it I felt like I had an understanding of the setting and tone, and was already coming up with ideas for characters and storylines I could run. TWB establishes right away what kind of environment, people, and threats you're dealing with by telling the player about these things in detail and establishing them as canon elements.

Trinity Continuum's game lines do the same, with wonderful lore and timelines in the beginning of the books. Ditto for At the Gates, and They Came From also tell the player right away what they should shoot for when running the game, even if the nature of that one doesn't really have an established canon setting beyond "they're movies".

But Curseborne's setting feels really vague by comparison. We get a few set pieces, an antagonist section, and repeated use of the terms "curses are real", "family", and "liminalities", but that's about it. As I said before, if that vagueness is intentional, that's fine. But it's not really what I expect from an Onyx Path game that always does a great job of telling the player the specific, canon information about a setting while still leaving room for individual group flexibility.

[u/BerennErchamion → u/RuNoMai]

I agree. I think The World Below and At the Gates are way better at describing the world and providing hooks and interesting ideas than Curseborne.

[u/Awkward_GM]

Curseborne Covenant and the city book are announced to add more to the setting.

But you've also got the various supplements and fiction books that have come out. Accused Tales is an Anthony of short stories in Curseborne. You also have the Jumpstart, Ashland, and Accursed Adventures if you want to get more info.

I felt like the Storyguide section really fleshed out the game for me from a GM perspective as to the idea behind how players interact with the setting.