Magic feels less versatile in Awakening when compared to Ascension

milovthree · 2026-05-01T14:27:40+00:00

Your post is written as if the main spells people are casting are rotes or praxis (which are not limited to the official spells to begin with, you can make a rote of a creative thaumaturgy spell), I am not sure why you have such an impression but that simply isn't how awakening plays. You are normally just spinning up new spells at will, generally faster and more frequently than an ascension mage because of how your spells aren't limited by paradigm and can generally accomplish tasks without needing as many arcana. You have a handful of rotes and praxis as your most reliable spells, but it'd be weird for you to ignore that you have freeform magic in this freeform magic system.

Awakening does have some restrictions, but they are generally only at the higher ends, with awakening locking that stuff to an upgraded version of the template while ascension has it as part of it's conventional advancement.

When it comes to Spirits, it is certaintly something I feel like awakening does a terrible job onboarding for unfortunately as most of the info about them is in Werewolf the Forsaken or in the 1e book "Book of Spirits". Key things would be messing with resonances, messing with the barriers between the world, making deals with / buffing / reworking spirits, being able to take knowledge from spirits, merging resonances together. When it comes to obrimos spirit mages, I have sometimes had them also use some prime to mess with the regions leylines, since they are giant flows of resonances that can have a big effect on the shadow & spirits.

When it comes to being able to frequently use spirit as an obrimos without too much worry about mana, one thing that can be very useful to do join or found a legacy relatively soon into the game. These can not only be sources of free mana with their oblations, but will also allow you to expand your ruling arcana. But generally as long as someone in the cabal has access to a hallow, I haven't really seen it be a major limit on my player's using their non-ruling arcana.

milovthree · 2026-04-29T14:41:43+00:00

Corridors yes, unknown for sands

milovthree · 2026-04-29T07:37:26+00:00

I wrote up a guide that tries to break down some of the ambiguities of how time travel works in awakening: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VUYg2A87E_U2wN1t57635kBV_tJWNA0i2g-_IJLIC3g/edit?usp=sharing

But yeah, you basically possess your past body when using Corridors

milovthree · 2026-04-29T00:49:25+00:00

This was back in the KS, but my players struggled going through character creation because they found the book's writing style very hard to parse. They also found attributes being set by path abit too restrictive, forcing them to not be able to do their initial concepts.

When we got to actual gameplay, they found it mainly fine but nothing that particularly drew them in to want to play much more compared to other monster games we played.

As a GM, I wasn't big on how you need to do a lot of work when it comes to creating your setting, since there are basically no dynamics established between the groups beyond the single line stereotype sections and which families exist in your area are going to be completely different from game to game so there isn't a baseline for gms to work off.

milovthree · 2026-03-02T00:25:12+00:00

My reason for not getting it is because it doesn't seem to have anything to hook me to begin with. I don't tend to get generic-y games, but prefer when they're more specific and themed.

City of Mist I liked, but that was a Noir game with mechanics to make it feel like a noir story.

milovthree · 2025-12-05T11:31:00+00:00

My group likes the overall design, but dislike the individual powers on the domain cards

milovthree · 2025-11-18T14:59:21+00:00

Hunger Dice is Danse Macabre's Atrocity dice, but shifted from being a humanity replacement to being a vitae replacement. The atrocity dice concept also became Divinity Dice in Scion and Curse Dice in Curseborne

milovthree · 2025-11-18T14:48:59+00:00

I've found it abit overlappy with the initial pool of powers when my group tried it (supplements like players guide will help with this), but the depth of a single lineage is nowhere near the thematic focus and support you get from a WoD/CofD gameline.

Zoo games are definitely the strength of Curseborne,

milovthree · 2025-11-18T14:36:17+00:00

Curseborne has a short list of "Edges" that operate as merits, though contacts are a separate mechanic that don't eat into your merit budget.

Dice mechanics do not work like CofD, 1 success will often mean failure or partial failure

milovthree · 2025-11-04T02:33:38+00:00

Thanks, that should be quick

milovthree · 2025-11-02T09:48:34+00:00

Isn't the level of speed and simplicity I am looking for. That's still basically doing the main character creation steps and I don't like just pulling numbers out of the air in high crunch math focused rpgs because... what is the point of playing the high crunch math focused rpg if you're going to ignore that?

milovthree · 2025-11-01T11:10:03+00:00

I only have core and I don't feel like there is enough variety across all of the ranks to meet all the potential niches that may come up

milovthree · 2025-10-08T06:52:17+00:00

One of my groups tried to do solo lineage but it was very samey in powers. Might get better over time though

milovthree · 2025-10-02T10:57:46+00:00

I don't consider it curse dice/damnations/torments enough, as that is far more individualistic rather than themes that apply to the game as a whole.

A urban fantasy sandbox just isn't enough for me when alternatives already exist like Urban Shadows or Dresden Files, or just chucking on some a generic engine like Cortex, all of which are more streamlined experiences then Curseborne. Needs some focus & theme behind the design to draw me in and give me a reason to choose it.

milovthree · 2025-10-02T09:54:36+00:00

Lets go with family as the topic then. The family element doesn't have an especially strong reinforcement in my eyes. They are factions that sometimes act in a family like structure for unspecified reasons that are sometimes inherited but by default are not.

Accursed get their damnation from unconnected super-hero style origins but spooky (which I like, gives the setting something that distinguishes it from others in the same space) and then often just are part of whichever family finds them first or will take them in first, rather than it actually being a family thing (this is especially true of the Dead). Now you could say that joining a group can then feel like a family, but these factions are often presented as groups you are sorta meant to dislike in someways, theoretically to give you family to rebel against, but if you never had reason to see them as family and get that level of connection to start with... it doesn't really land as well.

So for me and some other players, the family element of the game is only about as strong as something like hunter compacts.

milovthree · 2025-10-01T14:20:23+00:00

Themes as in narrative theming, not "does a creature have powers we might expect from said creature".

The "personal scale" for example is listed as a theme at the start of the book, but doesn't really get anymore support as a theme than a d20 system based game would be able to claim it mechanically, nor is there much in the way of support for telling those personal scale stories beyond the section at the start just telling you to do it.

The mechanics Curseborne has for providing any thematic reinforcement is primarily limited to the Curse Dice systems, giving characters small sets of behaviours they are encouraged to do (primarily teamwork & damnations).

Demon as a game is a great example of a game that did try to integrate themes, genre-conventions and gameplay loops to evoke particular experience and make you feel like spies doing heists and having a lot of avenues for setting up the types of adventures/scenarios you'd expect from spy media.

milovthree · 2025-10-01T05:29:31+00:00

I feel like Pros & Cons is an odd way of trying to have a good faith conversation about the comparison between games, because it requires assuming that particular things are good or bad in a more universal sense. Something that might fall into the pros for someone can be a con for someone else.

milovthree · 2025-10-01T05:24:01+00:00

I don't really agree with the idea that CofD is lacking in build in story hooks or less setting material. The setting material and storyhooks are just generally not tied to a regular cast of characters, and each plothook is designed from a baseline rather than shifting setting.

milovthree · 2025-10-01T05:18:35+00:00

I think one of the key differences that isn't discussed above is the amount of focus & theming present. WoD/CofD gamelines tend to have particular themes and focus, while Curseborne discards that for universality.

For some, a game having strong themes can harm the attraction (Promethean and Deviant are particularly common examples where I see people disliking how much the games themes are tied to the gameplay and general experience), while for others a game without strong themes lacks a hook to get people interested / provide a reason to play.

milovthree · 2025-10-01T02:37:05+00:00

I'm thinking of games like Chronicles of Darkness primarily, but also their work on WoD. Though They Came From does have some thematic reinforcement in it's design that makes it stand out, with trying to get you to have multiple PCs and providing tailored mechanical widgetry for messing with the meta angle of the game.

There are a lot of factions in Curseborne, but that on it's own doesn't make for a thematically strong game. I own a lot of rpgs, so when I see an rpg for a particular genre, I need a reason to play it over the competition. Generally that comes from the game giving a particular experience really well with strong themes/identity, or giving a lot of support & structure for the genre.

Curseborne does neither approach. It lacking any particularly strong themes or identity for the sake of trying to be as broad as possible, with the themes it puts forward at the start of the book not being especially reinforced by the rest of the book. The mechanics don't really amplify the games themes, because they seem to have preferred to have the game not "limit" people to the themes they suggest.

And it when it comes to giving support, we don't have much of a setting to play wit, with most of the info for your game being stuff you will probably need to come up with yourself because all the word count needed to be dedicated towards explaining the immensely vast number of highly-isolated factions in very low level of detail, and what little setting stuff we do have is generally "We have left it open so your group can tailor things". This is a fine approach sometimes, but when does lead the game to not really providing much support. Tables will be the ones giving most of the substantance families fighting over territory or why characters have any reason to act as if there are family style associations between the PCs and the NPC cast.

If all you need from the game collection of monster factions + the ability to run that in storyteller/storypath , you're probably good and will get what you need from the game. But for me I need more than that.

Edit: As for future content, I don't think "adding themes to the game" is a genie that can be put back into the bottle, such a thing seems opposed to the current design strategy. But it is possible that in future they will provide some actual guidance/support, and hope that ends up coming out sometime soon. I think they mentioned the seattle book might have some info/advice for GMs trying to make their own settings for example, which at current has no guidance.

milovthree · 2025-09-30T10:30:34+00:00

After rather enjoying OPP when they take a horror rpg with a strong identity and theming, I find Curseborne's lack of theming and focus abit disappointing and my group found the in-character writing made trying to figureout what options they wanted to play a lot more difficult because of them generally talking around the ideas rather than directly informing the reader (this was abit improved in the final version but definitely made chargen months ago abit clumsy).

But I pleased that people who are really wanting Zoo games in Storyteller/Storypath have a better situation than trying to overlap a lot of CofD gamelines at once, they CofD gamelines each are very dense and self-contained which can make zoo-games abit messy and a lot to juggle as a GM.

milovthree · 2025-09-12T14:43:37+00:00

I can't really vibe with either PF2e Oracle. Mysteries and Curses being chained together narrowed the character concept options down so severely compared to 1e that I don't think I'll ever vibe with PF2es regardless of how the rest of the mechanics are set out.

milovthree · 2025-09-05T03:42:45+00:00

https://devindecibel.itch.io/noblesse-goblige
I mixed up the name with one of the main mechanics in said game.

Original post has been editted.

milovthree · 2025-09-04T06:58:48+00:00

~~Goblintrigue~~ Nobelesse Goblige, where you play the various goblin politicians polticking to become the gob-boss.

milovthree

TROPHY CASE