[CURSEBORNE] What is Curseborne?

We’ve been asking this question for several months, and now it’s time to answer it. Curseborne is a game about modern frights, supernatural entities, found family, struggling to just make a life, pushing back against outdated traditions, and accepting that you’ll always be a monster even if you don’t act like one.

The World and Curses

We’ve talked around it a lot, but the world of Curseborne is like our world if all the weird things you read about in gas station tabloids, on creepypasta sites, and spoken of in urban legend were actually real, but most people just kept on believing they’re made up. It’s like our world, but instead of random circumstances making your day bad, you were literally cursed. And instead of the luck of the draw, or the randomness of the world causing catastrophic problems in your life, it was a curse’s whiplash. There’s still all the consequences of your own actions, and there’s still all the bad people doing bad things, but there’s also curses, which makes random stuff happen. It probably wouldn’t change anything about how most people live their lives, rather than random stuff happening, a curse is affecting them. Who cares what you call it? A tree limb still fell on the roof of their car.

Here’s Claudia (one of our Outcasts) describing the world in her own words:

The world is cursed. That isn’t pithy commentary about the state of things; it’s a fact of life. That’s been true since the first beings dragged themselves from water to dry land. Indiscriminate, unfeeling, uncaring, and worst of all, ever-present, curses are woven into the fabric of the world. As Accursed, we’ve been hit hardest by the curse hammer. You see, there are basically two kinds of curses. There’s little curses — everyday bullshit, like getting your shoelace caught in the people mover at the airport — and then there are big curses: the Damnations. These big curses are life-changing affairs. Where little curses hang around waiting for someone — anyone — to trip over them, Damnations are directed and personal. You don’t just accidentally trip into a Damnation; someone bestows it on you like the worst fucking inheritance you can imagine. That someone could be your father because your grandpappy got cursed to high hell and back for pissing off someone extremely powerful. Sins of the father and all that. Or it could be someone you bumped into on the subway who decided you looked like a good target to pass their Damnation on to. 

We don’t know the origins of Damnations, but we know they come in a few distinct flavors. I’m not a scholar, so I’m just going to tell you what my mom told me. Way back at the start of history, there were these fuck-off powerful beings who could warp the very fabric of the world. Meaning they could manipulate and wield curses, both big and little. They created Damnations to punish people for crossing them. You don’t even have to know you’re crossing them to get one. Ain’t that some shit?

We don’t know their names; we don’t even know which humans first interacted with them. We do know the results. Being Damned opens your eyes, for good and for ill. You have magic running through your veins. You might be thinking, it’s fucking cool to be able to manipulate the very essence of the world. And yeah, it’s pretty cool, but understand this: You can’t reach your hand into a pile of shit without getting covered in it. Sure, growing wicked claws is awesome, but it always comes with a cost. Your curse is still connected to that web, and everything you do pulls a string. Your curse hangs around you, manipulates you, and makes your life a living hell. Each Damnation is different, so how the curse affects you is different — but it’s always bad. You might have a monster lurking under your skin, or you might have to eat human flesh to survive, or you might be hunted by creatures from the Outside. (Put a pin in that, it’ll be important later.)

Lore vs Metaplot

We’ve seen a lot of discussion about how much lore Curseborne will contain and if there will be a metaplot. There’s a lot of curiosity around the game, and we’re done being coy about it, so I’m going to try to comprehensively explain both the current book’s content and our plan with future content.

Our plan is to fill Curseborne with lore. I’m using lore in this case to mean deep setting story, named characters, secret motives, conspiracies, slowly revealed stories, and shocking twists. 

We do not plan to have a metaplot. I’m using metaplot in this case to mean a narrative that actively changes as real world time goes on. For example, we will not be advancing the story of a family head who wants to kill his brother, who is very much alive in the setting, to a place where she has killed said brother, removing him from the narrative.

This doesn’t mean we won’t reveal more information about a narrative or story as we release new products. We may reveal that the same family head who wants to kill her brother has a secret love affair with his wife, and her stated reasons for wanting him dead are all a manipulation to steal his bride. We may reveal that secretly a family head who hasn’t been seen for years is masquerading as someone else in the family, and abdicated their duties long ago. (None of these things are actually in the book, they’re just examples of lore we could share.)

So when we talk about the lore, what characters know, and whom they have dealings with (as described above), we aren’t going to change that, even if we reveal that a character has an ulterior motive or secret that hasn’t been revealed yet. Rest assured, anytime we want to reveal something like that, we will have built in some lampshades and foreshadowing so you don’t feel like we are pulling the rug out from under you.

And with that in mind. Have this bit of lore from the Wardens family:

Community is key, and Wardens stick together. We celebrate what brings us together and our parties are monthly communals. Our cousins might liken them to religious affairs as we share the word of Mother, share news of those who need aid, and rededicate ourselves to our siblings and our cause. Mother doesn’t always show up to our parties. I’ve never actually met her myself. They say she doesn’t have a body anymore, which makes it harder to know. Many see this as a sign of her dedication to never cause harm to others, and try to emulate her. It doesn’t go well for them. Mother is the only one of us powerful enough to stave off the effects of being without a body. I’ve heard rumors that some believe Mother is lost to us, but that’s ridiculous thinking.