Bad Curses are Good Curses

Yep, that right there looks like a curse to me. For those of you tuning into Magical Sarcasm 101, we just witnessed my disdain for "curses" in roleplaying games. We'll inspect vampires with our patent-pending Hexometer in a second, but first we need to scrutinize what curses have been in religion, folklore, legends, and the like before we can address what curses could and should be in roleplaying games like our beloved Dungeons and Dragons.

After a discussion with one of my Twitter pals, Litza (@litzabronwyn), I decided to delve into what makes a curse just that- a curse.

Good Curse = Suffering

(Beauty and the Beast, Disney 2017)

Let's take a look at one curse, the subject of a well-known fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. A young man is cursed to become a beast as he is cruel to a disguised enchantress. She curses him to have to learn to love, which he did not know how to. His servants are then by association cursed into becoming living furniture, dishes, utensils, etc. This inclusion is interesting because it is not so much a punishment for those people, but a reflection of how the Beast sees them and a reminder of it- To the Beast, they are part of the commodities of the castle! They aren't people to him, they are objects that he has complete sovereignty over. His life becomes a prison tailored to his heartlessness.

We are familiar with the rest of the story, but this curse is still interesting. It is a punishment of a personal nature. Beast's curse only fosters his beastly behavior, but it is still clearly an injury to him. There is an interesting caveat that makes it different from most curses we see in legends and folklore, but we see in many fairy tales: there is a way to break the curse. This clause creates the central plot of the whole story, it creates a mission, a plot hook, for the story to exist. If there wasn't the story ends at the curse, much like such characters as the Bible's Cain and Greek mythology's Arachne. The story would simply say, "The Beast lived miserably ever after, the end." Though we know that Belle comes along, she and Beast fall in love, he goes back to being a prince, and then the credits roll. This curse is more of an ordeal, or a trial. I would still be inclined to say this is a good example of a curse. Granted, the reward at the end of the tunnel is being attractive and getting to date Emma Watson, but that's after the curse. A good curse afflicts the person! Keyword: Afflict.

In this definition, we find the key to what makes a good curse: the affliction.

Good Trade-offs; Bad Curses

(Twilight is a curse in itself.)

By the simple inclusion of the above image, most of you have already wished that this article was at its end. My top of the list example of a bad curse, as in, this is hardly a curse is the following circumstance: A character becomes a ______________ which grants them ______________, _______________, and ________________ but they _______________. In this little mad-lib, you can fill in vampire, werewolf, Imhotep style mummy, or in Olivia Moore's (iZombie) case, zombie. These horror tropes and others have had their proverbial short end of the stick lengthened depending on the on the modern iteration of our telling. For anyone who has seen Dracula Untold, being a vampire looks cool as hell, especially if your name is Vlad Tepes. These existences, despite however much brooding, whining, or complaining they do are not examples of good curses. They may have a sizable trade-off, but a lot of stories in which these creatures occupy the roles of main characters and then promote the idea to tabletop RPG players that these characters are cool, are not curses. All of these are, in the end, manageable. Bella Swan and Edward un-live a happy little life together with a daughter, Lestat de Lioncourt is the world's poster-child badass, Liv Moore leads a pretty reasonable, but albeit complicated un-life. Vampire: The Masquerade, and World of Darkness are games where you take the role of these sorts of creatures and be your own inhuman selves. These characters are closer to being superheroes than being curse-ridden monsters.

Though I have met one vampire with a reasonable curse. (Slight Curse of Strahd Spoiler) Strahd Von Zarovich is a vampire with a good curse. He is cursed to constantly lose the woman he loves, that he initially caused the death of. He is a ball of self-loathing megalomania that can never have what he wants. Strahd wants a few things: a successor, the woman he loves, and control of Barovia. He is cursed to never have either of the first two. His control of the demi-plane of Barovia is entirely what brands him a monster and creates his own enemies. Any person who defeats him is erased from history in Barovia, as if it never happened, but he never forgets. Strahd's curse is not his powers; it's that he is doomed to be miserable and the most feared person in Barovia. Strahd got his powers through an ambiguous entreating of dark powers (this is important to us later). However, like when one screws with dark powers, there is usually a twist or a consequence. If you're thinking it already, good, you're one step ahead. Strahd's cost is deeply personal. In fact, when I encountered Strahd, I was part of the curse. In a split second decision, I, or rather as my genius detective, Sebastian Hargrave, attempted to end the life of the woman he so "loved". I, in fact, unknowingly was part of the cycle. In a kind of cool way, I temporarily became the curse incarnate... right up to the point where Strahd murdered me and turned me into a vampire spawn. (Spoilers end here)

(Strahd, Wizards of the Coast)

The key ingredient to understanding these horror-trope curse bearing characters is not their abilities. If Strahd, who is based on Dracula, is any indication, their powers are not their curse. Their curse is the heavy price of their powers. Without a discernibly personal curse attached to those powers, the argument that vampirism, or lycanthropy, or what-have-you is a curse is severely weakened. These principles aren't the curse. They are simply a matter of being a Dark Gift.

Using Dark Gifts and Curses

I won't deny it, countless players want to play vampires, werewolves, and the like. Then the feeble argument is, "it is a curse, you can't, they're evil" is made. If your game can handle it, here is my advice: If your player wants their character to receive one of these Dark Gifts, follow Strahd's example. Show them what the curse really is. If they think it will be fun to be a vampire, let them become a vampire. Every character who wants that in fiction is short-sighted. They do not anticipate the cost, and neither do players. If, as a game master, your answer is, "these creatures are evil and the result of a curse" but your character insists they will be a "good" one, you can take them down the road that will only make you correct. The D&D answer is to just take the character sheet and make them an evil NPC. That might be an easy response, but it also fails to illustrate your point. If your player has wanted again, and again, to do this, you take them down that road. You create their cursed castle for them and show them where they are. Dark powers are tempting. Play a force-user in a Star Wars game for a second, and you'll learn that pretty quick. The Dark Side is the path of least resistance. When your players are in the thick of realizing how terrible their character's new curse-power tandem bike is, they will realize the hell they created for themselves. It is not the powers that make the monster but the lack of humanity. Alternatively, if you are fine with vampires and the like being misunderstood Fall Out Boy fans with a different set of problems, don't use the word curse, because they clearly aren't. Curses without said Dark Gifts attached are harder to dole out, not because a "trade-off" is fair, but as a GM, you don't want your players thinking you are being vin-dick-tive. See what I did there? If you are to use a curse in your game, weigh the value of a player's actions warranting a curse. Should you make it an ordeal, like our example of Beauty and the Beast, make the way out something meaningful, make them earn it. However, if you want a little more old-school biblical curse, make it almost unbreakable, but make sure it is worth it. Don't make their character unplayable, but make it tailored to them. Remember, curses are personal.