The DM vs. The Writer -- Curses!

How they differ

In nothing does the medium make the difference between writing a novel and running a game (particularly a sandbox game) more clear than in any issue where the RPG mechanics rule.

And perhaps the region in which the mechanics most militate against effects you get in writing is that of curses.

A typical curse in D&D comes from a bestow curse spell, inflicts a -1 penalty on something, and is removed with a remove curse spell as tidily as a cure light wounds heals the stabs. The game curse can be an incidental thing, picked up in play, endured until morning and the remove curse spell.

A curse in a work of fiction is an effect of mysterious and enormous import. Conceivably lasting for generations as it wreaks its havoc.

Well, more or less enormous. A curse can dictate the plot of a short story or a subplot of a novel, or just be a subordinate plot device of a series, but those roles are still more dramatic.

What the writer wants is a curse that will intrigue the reader, affect the plot, have symbolic resonance, and determine the character arc. The last of which is probably the one the player would hate most -- because it shoves the character around. A writer should generally choose things that the character would hate, because that way lies character growth or at least difficulty. Plus it adds conflict.

Hence, you do not want a mechanical curse, but an evocative one. Even if the effect would be equivalent to a mechanical curse, "May your strength fail you!" is more evocative than a -1 penalty. It probably should have more consequences than the penalty, too. Your bones break, your arms fail, you have to be carried -- or --

Transformation into another form, a vague miasma of misfortune, sheep dying or cows going dry or hens stop laying, a wound that will not heal -- there's a lot of choices. Which one is vastly important because it will determine plot, and also, often enough, character development.

(And, of course, genre. Curse a girl to have toads and snakes falling from her mouth when she speaks, curse a boy to never marry until he finds the three golden citrons, and you put yourself in a fairy tale. Other curses fit other genres.)

The fictional difference from games starts with even the laying of the curse. Anyone, fictionally, can lay a curse. Though it often takes a deep injury, it does not always; a girl in a fairy tale suffering under a wicked stepmother can curse her father to be unable to return without the gift she asked for.

Still, the wrongs help enlarge a curse. Especially when dying, the wronged person can curse the perpetrator, and often enough his family for untold generations. Or perhaps the house he lives in, or his ill-gotten gains.

(Even when the curse is deliberately laid on a particular character for his actual ill deeds, it may not be well-suited as a punishment, let alone a learning experience. If, of course, that serves the story.)

Or perhaps the laying of a curse requires a long and elaborate magical ritual, with strange and exotic ingredients, worked with esoteric knowledge, and then you have a potion that you pour into the pool where your victim will bathe, and thus you turn your rival into a monster.

Or a valuable item was protected by a curse, and its theft left it cursed. Even if you had no connection to the original theft.

Ill-aimed curses can stem from everything from the pride of the evil curse-layer, to misjudgments. A cursed object may be an attempt to force the new owner to return the object, without considering whether there is a way to do it, or a way to determine how to do it, or whether returning the object to the owner may cause problems because of the owner's corruption.

Breaking curses is not a matter of just going to Wizard Street in the Big City and finding a powerful enough wizard to hire, let alone just waiting for morning so your wizard can prepare the right spell. You must figure out the original wrong and set it right. You must work a powerful spell in a long and elaborate magical ritual, with strange and exotic ingredients, worked with esoteric knowledge, thus breaking the unjust imposition of the original wizard. You must fulfill whatever condition was imposed, such as finding those three golden citrons.

Or perhaps you could find a wizard. Maybe. And learn whether he could break the curse, and what it would take. That would be a dramatic quest.

Unless, of course, you have a character continually running into trifling wizards who curse him so he has to trudge back two or three times a week to his friendly neighborhood wizard for a curse breaking and a cup of tea -- which would be comic.

I went for dramatic in Winter's Curse, where the heroine insists on at least trying to break the curse on the hero, though all the others cursed died soon after and seldom alone, and the hero, though more aware of the difficulty, attempts to at least try to protect her from the danger. It had its interesting aspects.

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