You’ve nailed the fundamental dissonance between narrative gravitas and roll-for-effect. A curse in a story is a story, while in a game it’s often just another box to tick before tea time. Which is perfectly sensible. After all, players tend to object when their characters are cursed with a tragic destiny and have to spend three sessions metaphorically limping through their emotional arc when what they really wanted was to hit things.
But you’re right: a good curse should weigh like ancestral guilt, smell faintly of burning rosemary, and make the cows nervous. It should linger. It should mean something. And most importantly, it should be just unfair enough to be interesting.
Thank you for this piece. It made me think, which is always suspicious.
I mean, a curse in RPG terms can be anything you want it to be. Even when playing with book mechanisms, you're not limited to the iteration of spells and items the books provide.
Besides making the actual effect larger than a -1 penalty to whatever rolls, the DM/GM can also just keep the mechanical effect *secret* from the players.
Game mechanisms can produce emergent stories if you kind of keep them under the hood and let people visualize the events. I can't recall ever running a game that involved any sort of personal curse, but I can imagine a formerly competent fighter finding their strikes going awry, over and over, and *without knowing the numbers involved,* they're really feeling it.
I agree with what you said here about curses in games versus stories. Though I should add that I've seen attempts at making curses both more potent and more of a long-term story element in some tabletop RPGs. I remember one from Pathfinder that was basically 'You will forever remember every single regret and mistake and unjust injury you have dealt those you love, and you will feel them ALL as intensely as you did the first moment the realization sunk in.' It was stated in both game terms and story ones that this was something that could spiritually and psychologically cripple someone for the rest of their life. You could get rid of it, but it was going to take some effort.
I'm going to use this as a basis for my own curses in my tabletop system, if you don't mind. I want more narrative around curses, rather than the standard of easy curse and ease break.
You’ve nailed the fundamental dissonance between narrative gravitas and roll-for-effect. A curse in a story is a story, while in a game it’s often just another box to tick before tea time. Which is perfectly sensible. After all, players tend to object when their characters are cursed with a tragic destiny and have to spend three sessions metaphorically limping through their emotional arc when what they really wanted was to hit things.
But you’re right: a good curse should weigh like ancestral guilt, smell faintly of burning rosemary, and make the cows nervous. It should linger. It should mean something. And most importantly, it should be just unfair enough to be interesting.
Thank you for this piece. It made me think, which is always suspicious.
Thank you! You may enjoy my other DM vs Writer pieces (They're under "Genre")
It's probably an inexhaustible source of topics
I mean, a curse in RPG terms can be anything you want it to be. Even when playing with book mechanisms, you're not limited to the iteration of spells and items the books provide.
Besides making the actual effect larger than a -1 penalty to whatever rolls, the DM/GM can also just keep the mechanical effect *secret* from the players.
Well, yes. In theory.
Most games tend to mechanical curses because they are easier to manage. Skill in both the DM and the players are needed for a more story-like curse.
Sandbox games are the ones where it would be the most trouble, because story-like ones tend to steer events.
Game mechanisms can produce emergent stories if you kind of keep them under the hood and let people visualize the events. I can't recall ever running a game that involved any sort of personal curse, but I can imagine a formerly competent fighter finding their strikes going awry, over and over, and *without knowing the numbers involved,* they're really feeling it.
That's one where the DM and players have to work together on it. If they like that kind of story-telling plot.
I agree with what you said here about curses in games versus stories. Though I should add that I've seen attempts at making curses both more potent and more of a long-term story element in some tabletop RPGs. I remember one from Pathfinder that was basically 'You will forever remember every single regret and mistake and unjust injury you have dealt those you love, and you will feel them ALL as intensely as you did the first moment the realization sunk in.' It was stated in both game terms and story ones that this was something that could spiritually and psychologically cripple someone for the rest of their life. You could get rid of it, but it was going to take some effort.
Then, the player has to cooperate with that, in role-playing.
The authors admit that does help considerably.
I'm going to use this as a basis for my own curses in my tabletop system, if you don't mind. I want more narrative around curses, rather than the standard of easy curse and ease break.
Feel free! Hope your players like it!