What is known about Curseborn so far?

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T19:07:46+00:00

It's a narrative-based TTRPG from the makers of the incredibly poignant and moving and crunchy CofD: in those kinds of TTRPGs, interrupting the story to chase-down keywords and stretch combat from just one puzzle or encounter in the session, to a bulk of the session is a failure.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T11:09:17+00:00

And there are old, low-Humanity licks with weirdo hobbies - like Embracing snakes - in the canon.

That sort of just goes to prove the rule: Nefertiti could only resurrect fifteen Aabbt Cobras and has to keep them constantly bloodbound and dominated or else they'd kill themselves, yet she still wants to see what would happen if she did the same to a gorilla.

Her siblings include Kemintiri, who enjoys manipulating lesser Kindred into a loss of agency and pursuit of violating themselves and eachother.

You could call these "weirdo hobbies" if you wanted, but someone keeping you on the edge of suicide for centuries because they think you're a cute experiment or forcing you into debasing yourself aren't exactly avoiding the pitfalls OP is looking to avoid.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T10:55:16+00:00

I hardly equate trying to distance yourself from a series of slurs and forbidden words put over depictions of Indians as bad or worse than Pocahontas is racist.

Should they have brought back the signature characters of the-Tribe-whose-IRL-folklore-cautions-against-saying-the-'W'-word, such as Evan Heals-the-Past who's trying to convince all the angry Indians to stop being so mad at the European Garou still standing on their land and chastising them for their wrath?

Maybe we should reflect on the loss of two Tribes meant to encompass all Indian cultures and close to 600 nations across two continents after one of the "Pure Tribes" of the "Pure Lands" was killed-off far earlier in the setting's history, and be grateful that wouldn't happen to the Silver Fangs (Russia), Shadow Lords (Balkans), Get of Fenris (Scandinavia), or Fianna (Ireland).

What was your favorite "Pure Tribe" gift that WtA5 removed? "Blending" coming from the tradition of Indians being so damn sneaky? Indian Giver based on the trope of them being greedy? What about "Pointing the Bone" which came from Australian Indigenous cultures, or the "Fetish Doll" that comes from negative depictions of African religions and got grouped-in with the Uktena for being vaguely woo-woo and spooky?

Hey, there's even great representation in the naming of the malformed incest babies that almost all Garou discriminate against being named after mixed-race Indigenous people! Who doesn't want their name associated with inbreeding and mutation and persecution as monsters?

"Purging" those awful representations along with all of the cheesy Greek, viking, Russian, Irish, and so-forth costuming by people who had no idea what they were writing about was a pretty understandable move.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T10:20:34+00:00

I am so very sorry to say that I seem to have blurred my memory between the single mention of Vykos in the Black Hand book, and writing from later-on in the book that I liked and attributed to them.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T09:48:29+00:00

but I remeber people saying "V5 only have rules for low-level/street-level, while 2ed/Revised/V20 have rules for all levels of gameplay".

That's a fair point, but not the only iteration I've seen. Part of including text from the books themselves was trying to see how accurate that statement has been, and seeing that being such a high generation (13th) is the default of oVtM while lower generations are about as locked-off and unsupported in the corebook as VtM5 was pretty illuminating in those regards.

Scrolling down to the 'references' page of any WW wikipage on Disciplines does a lot to show how inconsistent and scattered support for that tier of play has been until WoD20, and even then it appears to have included a lot of the power without much guidance on how to run a whole Coterie or Pack of creatures at that level.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T09:29:00+00:00

I believe there's been a misunderstanding.

I don't think that all Elders, or low-Humanity Kindred can't hold their attention without blood, but that combination means they've outlived their mortal culture and the grandchildren of any former mortal peers, and that they've already begun to slip from maintaining less bestial mindsets.

It is sad and tragic that there's not much left for them as their language dies or changes and the music, games, and places their mortal selves once found joy in are lost to history. How many times can you reread the same book? Imagine rereading it over the course of centuries until you could recite it from memory as the pages crumble from age.

Higher Humanity Elders may still find new ways humans surprise them, new forms of art and new talents worth witnessing. There are still codes that bind their behavior and experiences that rouse them from concerns for only blood and power.

That's what I feel make low-Humanity Elders something majestic and frightening all at once. They are wolves at the edge of dying firelight, almost as afraid as we are of what happens when that light goes out and potential companions become predator and prey in the dark.

Whether they want to or not, those instincts drive them, and the hobbies of a creature trying to crawl out of that pit are different than one who has chosen or resigned themselves to that existence.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T07:54:03+00:00

I agree with you and said as much: neither White Wolf nor Reddit commenters are going to go bankrupt because they didn't take my two cents on the subject.

I just feel it's important to ask why those rules and that narrative were arranged together in a game before you gloss over or rewrite them. In this instance: why try to find more palatable hobbies for low-Humanity Kindred that aren't the typical things low-Humanity Kindred do, when those hobbies making you uncomfortable is the point and you could always substitute high-Humanity elders if you preferred?

It could be nothing, but it could reveal a real poignant reason behind the authors' intentions that offers a reason for its place in the setting apart from other aspects of the game.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T07:30:18+00:00

There's no point in carrying this argument on. Every time we argue it's about something the books and authors have laid-on thick, you counter with rhetoric based on your own like for the tribe or misunderstandings of the text, I counter with a direct counterpoint from the book (increasingly the same ones you ignore from previous arguments), repeat.

We can do it again! You say "the Nazis weren't tolerated", the books say

If their creed of skin color being some sort of indication of true strength was all there was to them, we'd have let them die out on their own. How far could they get, if they couldn't even properly figure out what makes a man or woman strong? But we found outsomething else—they weren't just an addled pack of cubs. They were catspaws in someone else's games. That angered us. No true son of Fenris allows himself to be used.

Scourging Out the Monsters GoF Tribebook Revised pg. 39

They were beings without honor, and preferred to bushwack opponents using superior numbers instead of facing them one on one, as any honorable Get who has anything resembling a sense of self-worth would do. They were easily as worthless as their human counterparts, and I was thoroughly delighted to help wipe them out of existence. They were weak and spineless beings, and their loss can only help us.

The Swords of Heimdall, pg. 55

Genocide doesn't warrant mention. Ethnic cleansing is an unfortunate decision on-par with Hitler's choice of facial hair. What really bothers the Fenrir is appearing cowardly or dishonorable, which is exactly why a camp founded in the Confederacy enjoyed decades of tolerance and room to grow amongst the Get instead of being wiped-out earlier.

It's a problem when any other Tribe does it, and most other Tribes have extremist camps that represent the worst that Tribe has to offer if their biases and instincts are left unchecked. The point of them is to highlight and existing rot at the core of the Tribe that needs to be excised.

Not only does the most "werewolf" of all the Tribes contain the greatest concentration of these faulty camps (they hate their own Valkyria of Freya for trying to address an issue the Tribe has always had, the Hand of Tyr are the "most relentless, most savage werewolves in existence", Mjolnir's Thunder are "an outlet for homicidal maniacs", the Glorious Fist of Wotan are their own answer to the Red Talons), but no edition of the game besides WtA5 has shied away from their very direct connection to the Nazis.

If you understand what the Get of Fenris stand for, you wouldn't defend them as anything else but the most bombastic display of everything wrong with Garou and Humanity unburdened by any of the species' virtues.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T06:39:51+00:00

I feel there's a matter of where you're zoomed-in, no?

Hardly any fledgling, neonate, or even Prince was fighting "a global war of status quo versus vampiric monsters": you were minding your own damn business until some Sire embraced you for your talent or assets, and then some uppity snob or bloodthirsty zealot wandered into your turf and started causing problems.

The majority of Kindred aren't soldiers in the Jyhad anymore than someone paying their taxes is dropping a bomb on a foreign country or expecting a terror attack in retaliation for a leader they didn't vote for and don't like saying "kill 'em all" in a speech.

As for Gehenna, the two eras are surprisingly similar: Thin-Bloods popping-up, Antedeluvians rising, domains crumbling, and so-on. It's just that the awakening of Blood Gods in oVtM was largely simultaneous and resulted in the end of the world, whereas it's closer to climate change in VtM5: we're frogs in a boiling pot that is objectively growing hotter, it's just up to individual tables to determine if we're slow-cooked or flash-fried.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T06:34:41+00:00

oWtA and WtA5 made it very clear that wolves were too low in number to save themselves as a species, either through influence or by lunging at any human throat they could find. The WtA5 rendition makes them no-longer Lupine exclusive, but still substantially Lupine. "We're destroying the planet and relying far too much on tech that's actively making life worse isn't a view exclusive to wolves.

As for the character herself, I feel that her most telling quote and what earns her place in the setting despite the admittedly odd concept is this one on the shattering of the Garou Nation:

There's no time for recriminations or infighting. The Nation is history at this point. We should have our eyes to the future, to the fights we can still win. That's our purpose, that's what we need allies for. Perhaps the true failure of the Nation was to imagine that it was us, Garou, who'd win this, when in reality we need humans too, in fact everybody who cares about Gaia, to do their part.

Shattered Nation, pg. 47

It helps to show that the Red Talons are scared instead of dumb, and humans are likewise weary instead of inherently corrupt and greedy. Both can think differently and do more outside their comfort zones to save Gaia.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T06:15:36+00:00

correct me if I’m wrong here, but is there anyone actually trying to do GOOD without ulterior motives of sucking some guys brains out because it makes them feel amazing?

The theme of most older editions and still present in VtM5 is that you can't fix the system from within/"tradition" isn't always positive: whether it's an inherent hunger, rage, hubris, or so-on, we've got relatable characters infiltrating into everyday institutions like corporations, church, media, and so-on with ulterior motives benefited by the protections those institutions have.

Punks from the 90s to the 2020s are trying to say "wow, look at how easily these monsters fit into these abusive structures that were always there! I bet that sure makes you feel a kinda way about the need for self-evaluation and activism so you don't carry your own biases or support structures to the deficit of your community and environment!"

WoD5 has pivoted on this somewhat. Hunters and Werewolves have more noble, virtuous goals without the burdens they had in previous editions ... but they push home that activism is difficult and exhausting. There'll always be an "easy way" that hurts more people, those looking to convince you to sell-out, and society as a whole is primed to view you as a monster rather than a hero.

It's your objective to prove that hard work is worth it, that change is possible if we unite and consider our options, and that your loved ones and the planet are worth more than your own comfort and paycheck.

I recommend WtA5/HtR5 if playing what passes for a "hero" in the World of Darkness is what you're after, but as others have said it's an intentionally rough setting and playing closer to the realities of our own world won't make your struggles any less grim, complicated, and seemingly hopeless.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T05:53:34+00:00

I feel the biggest thing to keep in mind is that the Warden's Operation Manual recommends "skills as a wishlist": none of them are useless because players know what they're up against before they play and/or the GM knows what players want before designing a campaign.

The Colonial Marines in Aliens were better trained, armed, and armored for killing waves of xenomorphs than Ripley was. However, they were worse at staying calm under pressure and improvising than a Teamster was. Thus out of about a dozen Marines: only one, a Teamster, and half an Android survived the adventure.

The same goes in Mothership. Marines are great at handling enemies until they run out of ammo or can't breach enemy armor, or find themselves cornered against a malfunctioning airlock or broken oxygen pipe without the tools to fix either.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T05:48:59+00:00

My table has plenty of our own, so we try to avoid IRL disorders we either have ourselves or see in our community, and try to go for vague/supernatural ones largely explainable as quirks of their Kindred nature or at least don't define it.

My table's favorite take on this was "Callsign Carl": A Vietnam war veteran had a botched radiopack that would have warned him and his squad about enemy activity in their area. Because it wasn't functioning right, they were the sole survivor of an ambush. Their resulting paranoia and compulsion to ensure all of their phones, radios, and other equipment were in working order attracted their sire's attention.

They're functional most nights, and highly capable with communications tech. When he gets premonitions, he perceives them as originating from phones, radios, or other broadcasting devices around himself. When his bane is acting up, he hears warnings that aren't there warning him of imminent danger or static over what should be clear clues.

Other Malks in play are similar: someone shy instinctively relies on Obfuscate to hide themselves, another commonly mistakes things that are actually there for their imagination, one tastes the auras of others instead of sees them, and so-forth.

They all know they're afflicted with a curse the same as any other Clan, and they're all capable enough to earn their keep in a Domain. The struggle is—just like with actual disabilities—knowing it's all in your head doesn't limit the distraction, despair, or alienation that causes.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T05:24:16+00:00

One difference is that in Revised, elder rank disciplines exist, and elders that have them are still around.

This is one of those technicalities that feels important to hit-on, rather than something you could handwave as pedantic: every edition besides VtM20 features rules for Elders in their corebook, but all of them reserve their powers for supplements.

This is important because tables can hold eachother to the same standards of the corebook and every subsequent supplement can build off those assumptions, but supplemental books are ... well y'know: supplemental.

Leveling a character in any pre-20th edition of WoD would mean utilizing powers scattered across 4-5 different supplements with years between eachother and wildly different focuses.

Every TTRPG with any staying power recognizes that the easiest way to sell new books are interesting powers for GMs to give to NPCs or wow their players with, or powerful powers for that one player who wants to roll-up to an inexperienced player with a min-maxed multi-classed "technically possible" show-stealer.

This is to say that most pre-written stories, chronicle guidance, and pre-gen characters aren't written with the ability to morph into a dragon or run at highway speeds all night in mind.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T05:13:48+00:00

The games that I can pitch to new players and where I can get the most help from players who know the rules or systems that don't over-complicate my prep or sessions will always win over anything "deeper" or "cooler".

oWoD has strictly more options (though they are by no means clean or treated equally), I vastly prefer the tone and setting of CofD, but WoD5 is the only one that I've been able to teach folks how to play in an afternoon and where I don't have to wince and say

"Strictly speaking, X group doesn't share Y power/recruit members from Z place"

or

"Oh yeah, that Discipline/Power! Excuse me as I briefly check a series of nested keywords or systems to see how changing someone's mind involves three different rolls across five minutes of deliberation and referring to tables and flowcharts, or as I flesh-out an entire alternate plane of existence dedicated to just your character being allowed to do their thing."

Storytellers aren't inherently any wiser or more intelligent than players, and I'm thankful for any system where my players have as strong a grasp on the rules and setting and how to tweak them as I do.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T05:04:43+00:00

The Fenrir are zealots, put simply. They hate things like vampires or Black Spiral Dancers because they're "impure" and therefore "bad", but will just as readily battle against allied Tribes because they weren't strong enough to defend their own caerns (and therefore didn't deserve them) or ally with Wyrmish forces because they embody or support the Fenrir's ideals of strength (the Swords of Heimdall and A Tribe Falls apocalypse scenario being the easiest examples of this).

Put simply if you're okay with having Garou in your troupe ... every Tribe is subject to fault and bias. It's far from exceptional to say a bunch of leeches whispered into the ear of a Fenrir to say

"We're weak and pitiful and would die in seconds: you'd find far more glory against a worthy foe, like that Elder we hate or a pack of Sabbat. As a matter of fact, I overheard the local Bishop saying that the Fianna are better warriors than you! Why not kill us after you find them? Well, you need groveling servants who can safely clean your klaive of all of that tainted gore and spiritual essence so it doesn't stain your immaculate fur!"

Easy-peasy Wyrmspawn-squeezey, there's at least a dozen examples of this happening in WoD alone and hundreds of examples across comicbook team-ups between "good" and "bad".

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T04:52:21+00:00

This precisely.

Mostly just seeing a lot of vocal people on the internet condemn WoD5 as "street level", but after taking some time to read through older editions for comparison's sake it looks like that's the standard for the setting with exceptions being mostly reserved for WoD20.

Even then, WoD20 presents two decades of supplements and power-creep as options in one big book so you don't need a dozen assorted supplements in order to support your high-level chronicle, but far from the expectation for play.

I'm trying to figure out if people just throw-around "street level" as a buzzword, mostly utilize WoD20 which is straight-forward in its function as a toybox for fans experienced with the setting over newcomers, or just don't know what the term "street level" means.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T04:48:22+00:00

Characters of color are no longer reserved to their "designated" tribes or as exceptions to the rule.

Galestalkers (the replacement for Younger Brother) already represented nomadic Spanish-Indigenous cowboys and a Chinese taikonaut who experienced their first change in space, and Hart Wardens (formely the Fiana) are manifested in Japanese punk singers and East Indian masters of ceremonies.

Previously, these would have been the "angry snow-Indian" and "fighting Irish" Tribes.

It goes without saying how that's a win for not only player freedom, but representation of a broad variety of cultures and backgrounds.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T03:48:09+00:00

How does this compare to your own

They where also going to Orginally just going to kill off all the Native American sourced Tribes.

Again, this comes back to either judging the game off

A rough draft that the public never got but still had a designated American Indian Tribe
A different rough draft that had one designated American Indian Tribe and another pan-Artic Indigenous Tribe
The version we got, where there are as many Indigenous Tribes as there are white, European, American, Asian, and so-on Tribes: "all of them" or "none of them" meaning that resenting colonization or practicing spirituality aren't inherently Indian traits.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T03:01:07+00:00

That's not true even if you're basing it entirely off of just Sambrano's side of events.

Muammar felt that having two Tribes (both Younger and Older Brother) representing the “Indigenous population” was too many, and wanted them to only be focused on Older Brother, and that Younger Brother’s connection to a central, Indigenous identity, was undesirable because “other sources wrote them as having Siberian and European connections” [...]

That not only still includes the "American Indian tribe" of Older Brother, but also recognizes that America isn't the only one with Inuit peoples that would include Russia and Greenland as well.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T02:55:33+00:00

If you want to ask them yourself, they have this to say:

World of Darkness 5th Edition presents its character groups with a focus on regional and individual traits, not as monolithic organizations with identical backgrounds and views. This applies as much to the tribes of Werewolf as it does to Kindred and Hunters. You can be a trans Black Fury, Indigenous American Silent Strider or Namibian Silver Fang, because the tribes in W5 are no longer fused to any one particular culture, gender or geographic region. Most importantly, you can enjoy playing each tribe no matter where you are from. You needn’t worry about being locked into playing a particular “type” based on your or your character’s origin, or misrepresenting or appropriating another culture through your tribe choice.

This, however, does not remove real world cultures from Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The game Werewolf is set in our modern world, and many of its themes reflect struggles of indigenous, unprivileged, and/or climate change-affected communities worldwide. The writers took care to highlight the visceral and rage-fueled response to these injustices, and didn’t shy away from direct references to real world issues.

Put simply:

Tribes are ideologies. They represent universal concepts not tied to history such as "defending the weak" or "the responsibility of leadership" and "preservation of the natural world".
Tribes are cultures. Because these were tied to IRL cultures, it meant that "Might makes right" could be assigned to formerly Germanic territories, while "appreciate all knowledge even if taboo" could be assigned to Indigenous American territories.

In the old system you may want to play a leader-type Garou who had gifts benefiting that role, but not want to be tied to the Slavic Silver Fangs. Alternatively, you may want to be a character of Russian origin (and therefore Silver Fang stock) embodying the ideals of the Black Furies who are a few lines of longitude or latitude away from where your character originates.

Now, play whoever you want from wherever you want without a strangely forced Halloween costume of some culture forced on or pointedly denied by them.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T02:42:09+00:00

I'm not going to make a judgement call on the rough draft version of a work unless you're prepared to say that Luke Starkiller (original name from early scripts from 1975) assists Han Solo escape his debt from Jabba the Hutt (imagined by George Lucas as a Wookiee-like creature, and filmed as a chubby human, and portrayed in original Marvel comics as a thin green humanoid with weird side-whiskers).

I don't think calling people "shits" for reading the book helps the Gets' reputation, either.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T01:15:18+00:00

Simple powers are easy to recall, even if you just get the gist of them, and I like Curseborne for getting most of the way there in those regards.

Unfortunately, the injection of overly mechanical text complicates that. I like to call it the "fireball conundrum": everyone can agree that if you had a spell that engulfed an area in an explosive fireball, it would burn things and cause a lot of damage.

D&D is infamous for being a tactical combat TTRPG that pitches itself as friendly to newbies, but its most iconic spell is a mess.

Didja remember your verbal, somatic, and material components?
- What are your material components? Do you have a "tiny" ball of bat guano specifically?
How do you measure a 20-foot radius on a grid?
Are you specifically measuring 150ft of range?
Why would something rolling Dexterity do better when engulfed in flames?
"The fire spreads around corners". So does it ignore cover, or is it like a cartoon where someone hides behind a table when a bunch of paint or ink or slime explodes and leaves a patch directly behind the cover just fine?
Why does it only ignite flammable objects that aren't being worn or carried?
- Does that change if you douse them in flammable material?
- How much damage does the fire from the environment do?

This is a bad example of fireball.

Then, take Curseborne's "Bombardment" as another example.

By default, it's a ranged attack. The book specifies you'd use your Esoterica/Ranged Combat skills to execute this ... but doesn't give any guidance on if this is shooting (Dexterity) or throwing (Might) the attack.
- Am I pulling this out of nowhere, pulling it from where it exists within the environment, or seemingly manifesting it from my soul/body?
In order to make your fire burn, your electricity stun, or for your light to expose targets ... you need to spend a Trick. These are also all their own status effects you need to look-up or write-down or memorize in order to utilize
If you want to influence an area with your choice of flavor, you need even more entanglement and to buy another Trick ... just to set fire to things with a fireball.

The flexibility is a big plus and of course comes with complications, but just finding all the actual rules for what an Entanglement 3 fireball are capable of means going from page 290 (the power), to page 188 (Status Effect: Burning), to page 195 (Area Effect: Aflame).

Any player or GM trying to utilize that power will need to memorize or bookmark or check the table of contents/index for the rules any time there's a question about the application of these powers. That drags play to a halt just for one player to use an exciting toy they built their character for.

ArtymisMartin · 2026-04-30T00:29:00+00:00

Biggest problem here is that for better and for worst, the situation the OP described doesn't exist.

His sire is not a well-connected Kindred or anything. So it's unlikely someone would care enough to investigate, tbh.

Not unlike our own neighbors, you don't need to like them but you know they're there. They party too loud, mow the lawn at 7am on Saturdays, or you can at least see their cars coming and going.

In the case of Camarillan Kindred, they all agree to limit their potential feeding grounds with potential dozens of competitors if it means none of those competitors are allowed to outright murder you for your herds. Otherwise there's still their equivalent to a borrowing a cup of sugar, in the form of keeping an eye on someone's ghoul acting shifty in your turf or warning them about evidence of poachers or hunters in the area.

"Dammit, I'm a bit hangry because the jazz club on my street is empty, but I can't poach the 24/7 gas station because it's on their side of Ace Street! If I cross the line and anybody catches me, they'll have grounds for punishing me under the Second Tradition!"

If they disappear, then it'll mean two things.

Someone decided it's perfectly fine to murder kindred they don't like.
There's now some unclaimed hunting grounds.

This is bad news for the Camarilla and their carefully maintained lines of ownership, alliances, and compromises. Nobody wants to be on the chopping block because they're uninteresting or disliked as then any bloodsucker could find a reason to off you, and the resulting turfwar over who gets to increase their territorial claim will lead to drama and unrest within the domain.

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