The-Magic-Sword
Small Ball Archmage
Lately I've been getting more into and excited about the Curseborne RPG and its parent generic system Storypath Ultra. Over the last few months I've played some of it, the core book actually came out, the first major supplement funded and the manuscript dropped, and the manual for the generic-rpg parent system dropped and it feels like a great time to write something up about it for the forums here.
The Base System
Storypath Ultra is a game engine that succeeds previous iterations of Storypath and Storyteller, of World of Darkness/Scion fame. It's a game where you add up stats on your sheet (attribute and skill), then roll that many d10s, every die that comes up as an 8 or 9 is a success, every 10 is two successes (there's a variant in the core manual where you can make 7 also a success). Each check has a difficulty, you need that many successes to meet it, but a check may also have a major/minor complication, which you can use extra successes to buy off, otherwise something bad happens set by either the system or the GM prior to the rule (you know what you're buying off.) Finally you can also use extra successes to buy tricks, like critical hits in combat that do an extra point of damage, gaining extra evidence, or unique things given by powers.
The game also has momentum, which you get both for allowing yourself to endure a complication when you fail (a disastrous failure) and for certain actions that make roleplay sense the system wants to encourage but inconvenience the group. Momentum goes into a party wide pool and can be used for a few things, including as a means to produce extra successes on checks or with Storyguide discretion, modify the fiction. You can also get it from a trick that allows you to bank successes from rolls into the party pool.
One of the things that I feel is most important about the core system, is that these elements work together to produce a very fun 'economy' there's something distinctly satisfying about the ways momentum is produced, and the strategic decisions you can make regarding it. It also facilitates a unique kind of play where an incompetent or dramatic character might be farming momentum with their antics, and then a more serious character in the same group can juice themselves with that, helping to overcome the inertia some groups feel toward interparty sandbagging or drama via roleplay.
Another thing is that the game is more firm about what it wants to be than prior iterations-- the mix of narrative timings and simulationist timings are gone, you're no longer mixing days/months/hour resources against the possibility of skipping time for narrative reasons, and everything is neatly cordoned into session/story(arc)/campaign. It also has bespoke systems for investigations and social maneuvering. The investigation system is especially intriguing as it feels like a somewhat flexible toolset that maps well to different expectations for what mystery gameplay should look like with minimal fuss.
Equipment is simplified to a system of tags, some of which are game-unique, but it works really well-- it was nice to have the flexibility since our first game shifted curseborne from a modern day setting to the old west.
Curseborne
The killer app (from my perspective) for the system at the moment is onyx path's new spiritual successor to the World of Darkness/ Chronicle of Darkness, Curseborne. I call it a spiritual successor, but be advised that it very much a new IP that riffs on the same basic concepts. This produces a world that feels similar in some of the details, but has huge structural changes. The world presented is firmly interconnected, with Vampires (Hungry), Shapeshifters (Primal), Ghosts (Dead), Mages (Sorcerers), People-Touched-or-Cast-Out-Of-the-Outside (Outcasts), and Venators (Hunters) all knowing about each other and, except for Hunters, presented as playable in the core book (Hunters are currently in the Player Guide Manuscript.)
They all use the same unified systems, but have their own features and practices (powers) mostly unique to them (with some limited crossover based on subtype, where getting a particular cross lineage power is something a particular family gets.) The player crew are by default, a monster mish-mash who all find each other useful for mutual protection and as connections to work on their respective interests, but single-monster-type games are possible and will gain additional future guidance and supporting lore. Individual families for each type of monster actually get the same or more page space than they did in the Chronicles days, as the book's layout does it a lot of favors in saving on page space.
The lore suggests that the world is full of curses, and the nastiest curses are the 'damnations' like becoming a vampire or a sorcerer or whatever, which is why their power systems are interconnected, since they're actually learning to manipulate a network of overlapping curses. Designers have promised that there's detailed lore for what that means and why it works that way, but that it's coming in future supplements that reach to a higher level of power and a larger scale (Curseborne's core is local, and has 'entanglement' 1-4, which is a power level stat the game promises goes up to 10, like blood potency in vampire the requiem or gnosis in mage the awakening.)
My Sessions
My group has managed to squeeze in a few sessions of a Curseborne campaign, which has been fairly enjoyable. We're throwing back to Colorado in the 1880s for a game grounded in real world history and a 'weird west' feel. The group came together as our experienced socialite sphinx (charismatic cat-shifters) and her bodyguard (Zed, Dead zombie assassin type) picked up a new accursed from a contact (Nephilim, wandering travel oriented information broker fallen angels) in Leedsville to show her the ropes and have her help them investigate something happening in the mining towns, like Silverton. They're currently investigating cult activity, after tussling with some wild life to get used to the combat system and there's some implication that supernatural entities may be involved.
As mentioned the equipment is interesting and flexibly adjusted from assault rifles and handguns to period revolvers and such. We realized the implications of momentum pretty fast, since only one of the three characters built themselves around conventional combat, and so momentum was generated rapidly, but let that character go absolutely ham which actually felt pretty good since my players recognized where the juice was coming from. The rate of success and the potential for tricks and buying off complications was just much better than expected from the base dice pool system and my expectations from chronicles, the double success on a 10, and extra successes from the equipment tags, played a big role in that too.
Since Momentum resets at end of session, we did notice they felt very pressured to use it up, they actually picked up a bunch of extra evidence at the end of last session, which will probably arm them fairly heavily for the upcoming investigation section. We also found out contacts, which are intended to provide a way for players to ask an NPC for a favor and use their dice pool once per story, are indeed intended to have a combat application, which excited my non-combatant characters as well, since they had an option for bringing firepower without compromising on concept, and it doesn't seem like it'll be overly degenerate.
My Thoughts
The players were very excited about the worldbuilding for their supernatural character types, and I noted character creation was smoother because of the prefab stat buildup from path selection (there is an option to turn that off, and move to something more traditionally player driven.)
The game is an exceptionally good blend of narrative and crunch, those two sides seem to be very complementary in this game, with it remaining much lighter than DND, but feeling stronger on the character build front somehow as well-- there's an efficiency where the bonuses that are used speak very loudly in defining the character that takes them, I suppose. There are tight incentives to roleplay that yield resources that convert to power-- torments, which produce curse die, which let you cast spells, are smartly designed to offer options between
1. Bad Urge Your Character Gives Into.
2. Bad Thing Happens Outside of Your Character's Control, but Because of Their Curse, At Player Behest.
3. Your Character Deals With A Penalty.
Which actually seemed to ameliorate some of the friction one of my players experienced when it came to the concept of being rewarded for their character being dramatic, because they could choose a variation they're comfortable with or found fun.
I want a superhero game in this system, complications scream superhero dilemmas to me, I also want a monster taming game, ever since I found out contacts can be used in combat.
Curseborne sticks in my craw as reminding me of the Cultivation Fantasy genre, despite the lack of chinese cultural elements, due to the way they emphasize growing into your curse and mastery of it, and the potential of the powers. So i keep going back to the idea of stipulating our entanglement progression (which is normally handled by mutual player agreement, seperate from buying things with exp) be revolved around the acquisition of resources which could plausibly swell and metastatize curses, like rare objects from strange mystical places, or territory for feeding and etc for vampires and the like.
That's mainly a me thing, though the book highlights the families do compete for 'haunted places' and planar gates and the like as if they are resources, so who knows where that worldbuilding thread actually goes.
Ultimately, its much more of a comfortable fit for my group and its semi neo-trad playstyle than other narrative games, so that's got me really excited.
The Base System
Storypath Ultra is a game engine that succeeds previous iterations of Storypath and Storyteller, of World of Darkness/Scion fame. It's a game where you add up stats on your sheet (attribute and skill), then roll that many d10s, every die that comes up as an 8 or 9 is a success, every 10 is two successes (there's a variant in the core manual where you can make 7 also a success). Each check has a difficulty, you need that many successes to meet it, but a check may also have a major/minor complication, which you can use extra successes to buy off, otherwise something bad happens set by either the system or the GM prior to the rule (you know what you're buying off.) Finally you can also use extra successes to buy tricks, like critical hits in combat that do an extra point of damage, gaining extra evidence, or unique things given by powers.
The game also has momentum, which you get both for allowing yourself to endure a complication when you fail (a disastrous failure) and for certain actions that make roleplay sense the system wants to encourage but inconvenience the group. Momentum goes into a party wide pool and can be used for a few things, including as a means to produce extra successes on checks or with Storyguide discretion, modify the fiction. You can also get it from a trick that allows you to bank successes from rolls into the party pool.
One of the things that I feel is most important about the core system, is that these elements work together to produce a very fun 'economy' there's something distinctly satisfying about the ways momentum is produced, and the strategic decisions you can make regarding it. It also facilitates a unique kind of play where an incompetent or dramatic character might be farming momentum with their antics, and then a more serious character in the same group can juice themselves with that, helping to overcome the inertia some groups feel toward interparty sandbagging or drama via roleplay.
Another thing is that the game is more firm about what it wants to be than prior iterations-- the mix of narrative timings and simulationist timings are gone, you're no longer mixing days/months/hour resources against the possibility of skipping time for narrative reasons, and everything is neatly cordoned into session/story(arc)/campaign. It also has bespoke systems for investigations and social maneuvering. The investigation system is especially intriguing as it feels like a somewhat flexible toolset that maps well to different expectations for what mystery gameplay should look like with minimal fuss.
Equipment is simplified to a system of tags, some of which are game-unique, but it works really well-- it was nice to have the flexibility since our first game shifted curseborne from a modern day setting to the old west.
Curseborne
The killer app (from my perspective) for the system at the moment is onyx path's new spiritual successor to the World of Darkness/ Chronicle of Darkness, Curseborne. I call it a spiritual successor, but be advised that it very much a new IP that riffs on the same basic concepts. This produces a world that feels similar in some of the details, but has huge structural changes. The world presented is firmly interconnected, with Vampires (Hungry), Shapeshifters (Primal), Ghosts (Dead), Mages (Sorcerers), People-Touched-or-Cast-Out-Of-the-Outside (Outcasts), and Venators (Hunters) all knowing about each other and, except for Hunters, presented as playable in the core book (Hunters are currently in the Player Guide Manuscript.)
They all use the same unified systems, but have their own features and practices (powers) mostly unique to them (with some limited crossover based on subtype, where getting a particular cross lineage power is something a particular family gets.) The player crew are by default, a monster mish-mash who all find each other useful for mutual protection and as connections to work on their respective interests, but single-monster-type games are possible and will gain additional future guidance and supporting lore. Individual families for each type of monster actually get the same or more page space than they did in the Chronicles days, as the book's layout does it a lot of favors in saving on page space.
The lore suggests that the world is full of curses, and the nastiest curses are the 'damnations' like becoming a vampire or a sorcerer or whatever, which is why their power systems are interconnected, since they're actually learning to manipulate a network of overlapping curses. Designers have promised that there's detailed lore for what that means and why it works that way, but that it's coming in future supplements that reach to a higher level of power and a larger scale (Curseborne's core is local, and has 'entanglement' 1-4, which is a power level stat the game promises goes up to 10, like blood potency in vampire the requiem or gnosis in mage the awakening.)
My Sessions
My group has managed to squeeze in a few sessions of a Curseborne campaign, which has been fairly enjoyable. We're throwing back to Colorado in the 1880s for a game grounded in real world history and a 'weird west' feel. The group came together as our experienced socialite sphinx (charismatic cat-shifters) and her bodyguard (Zed, Dead zombie assassin type) picked up a new accursed from a contact (Nephilim, wandering travel oriented information broker fallen angels) in Leedsville to show her the ropes and have her help them investigate something happening in the mining towns, like Silverton. They're currently investigating cult activity, after tussling with some wild life to get used to the combat system and there's some implication that supernatural entities may be involved.
As mentioned the equipment is interesting and flexibly adjusted from assault rifles and handguns to period revolvers and such. We realized the implications of momentum pretty fast, since only one of the three characters built themselves around conventional combat, and so momentum was generated rapidly, but let that character go absolutely ham which actually felt pretty good since my players recognized where the juice was coming from. The rate of success and the potential for tricks and buying off complications was just much better than expected from the base dice pool system and my expectations from chronicles, the double success on a 10, and extra successes from the equipment tags, played a big role in that too.
Since Momentum resets at end of session, we did notice they felt very pressured to use it up, they actually picked up a bunch of extra evidence at the end of last session, which will probably arm them fairly heavily for the upcoming investigation section. We also found out contacts, which are intended to provide a way for players to ask an NPC for a favor and use their dice pool once per story, are indeed intended to have a combat application, which excited my non-combatant characters as well, since they had an option for bringing firepower without compromising on concept, and it doesn't seem like it'll be overly degenerate.
My Thoughts
The players were very excited about the worldbuilding for their supernatural character types, and I noted character creation was smoother because of the prefab stat buildup from path selection (there is an option to turn that off, and move to something more traditionally player driven.)
The game is an exceptionally good blend of narrative and crunch, those two sides seem to be very complementary in this game, with it remaining much lighter than DND, but feeling stronger on the character build front somehow as well-- there's an efficiency where the bonuses that are used speak very loudly in defining the character that takes them, I suppose. There are tight incentives to roleplay that yield resources that convert to power-- torments, which produce curse die, which let you cast spells, are smartly designed to offer options between
1. Bad Urge Your Character Gives Into.
2. Bad Thing Happens Outside of Your Character's Control, but Because of Their Curse, At Player Behest.
3. Your Character Deals With A Penalty.
Which actually seemed to ameliorate some of the friction one of my players experienced when it came to the concept of being rewarded for their character being dramatic, because they could choose a variation they're comfortable with or found fun.
I want a superhero game in this system, complications scream superhero dilemmas to me, I also want a monster taming game, ever since I found out contacts can be used in combat.
Curseborne sticks in my craw as reminding me of the Cultivation Fantasy genre, despite the lack of chinese cultural elements, due to the way they emphasize growing into your curse and mastery of it, and the potential of the powers. So i keep going back to the idea of stipulating our entanglement progression (which is normally handled by mutual player agreement, seperate from buying things with exp) be revolved around the acquisition of resources which could plausibly swell and metastatize curses, like rare objects from strange mystical places, or territory for feeding and etc for vampires and the like.
That's mainly a me thing, though the book highlights the families do compete for 'haunted places' and planar gates and the like as if they are resources, so who knows where that worldbuilding thread actually goes.
Ultimately, its much more of a comfortable fit for my group and its semi neo-trad playstyle than other narrative games, so that's got me really excited.
