Instead of coming up with some TTRPG pablum for an introduction, I’m going to cut right to the chase: At first I thought it was really weird that Onyx Path Publishing released Curseborne. If you don’t look too closely, the game appears to ape World of Darkness, an entire fork of which Onyx Path is the licensee. The five lineages are clearly aligned to Vampire (Hungry), Werewolf (Primal), Mage (Sorcerer), Demon (Outcasts), and Wraith (Dead). And even if the game is in fact different, why did Onyx Path decide to make their own supernatural horror game now?

Although White Wolf Publishing was at one point the most influential TTRPG publisher extant, it is not 1991 any more. The company, having gone through two ownership changes, only got back to designing RPGs in 2018 and that was a rough start; the Fifth Edition of Vampire: the Masquerade caused enough of a scandal due to some of its content that owner Paradox Interactive pulled the plug, ceasing internal development until 2020 and farming out publishing to third parties, first Modiphius and then Renegade Game Studios.

As much as the Paradox/White Wolf relationship has been rocky, Paradox at least intended to make tabletop games with the brand. Previous owner CCP Games, another video game developer, had bought the somewhat beleaguered company in 2006 and by 2011 had stopped producing TTRPGs entirely. This is where Onyx Path Publishing comes in. Founded by White Wolf creative director Rich Thomas, the company licensed the World of Darkness and White Wolf’s wuxia fantasy game Exalted, as well as purchasing a few other game lines outright, most notably Scion and the Trinity Continuum. From 2011 to 2015, Onyx Path was the sole publisher of World of Darkness games. When Paradox came into the picture, they made some name changes to reduce confusion; what had previously been known as ‘new World of Darkness’ or to acronym-loving nerds (me, I was the acronym-loving nerd) nWoD, was changed to Chronicles of Darkness to distinguish it from the original game line. In this way, Paradox left Onyx Path to keep publishing Chronicles of Darkness games and supplements even as they worked on a new edition; it was a bit of a consolation prize considering that Onyx Path themselves had announced a new edition of Vampire: the Masquerade only months before Paradox bought White Wolf and put a kibosh on the plan. Onyx Path did capitalize on the opportunity though, writing supplements and entirely new Chronicles of Darkness games like Beast: the Primordial and Deviant: The Renegades.

So where does Curseborne fit into all of this? Well, after getting past the rocky start and getting White Wolf back in order, Paradox opted to cease approvals of Chronicles of Darkness publications (as was their right as the licensor). As such, in 2024 Chronicles of Darkness suddenly and unceremoniously ended. On Paradox’s end, they relaunched White Wolf as a subsidiary in May of 2025, both to make more tabletop games but also to finally exploit the IP as originally intended with the October 2025 release of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Onyx Path, having been spurned in favor of a video game, set out to make their own supernatural horror RPG.

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Curseborne is built off of the Storypath system, an evolution of the World of Darkness Storyteller system developed by Onyx Path to, among other things, accommodate broader power levels and character types consistently within one game. The two main mechanics added to Storyteller to accomplish this were Momentum, a narrative meta-currency explicitly meant to support player-character protagonism, and Scale, a mechanic intended to model the increased impact of larger, more powerful, or otherwise more-than-human characters without just giving them more dice and breaking the statistical model. That statistical model is the same as it has been: Assemble a dice pool of d10s based on ratings in an attribute and skill added together. The attributes are also basically the same, nine ratings in a matrix between physical, mental, and social on one axis and power, finesse, and resilience on the other. As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. One part of the Storypath system I particularly like (an unsurprising one considering how much Genesys I’ve played) is the use of Tricks. Tricks are abilities that you can trigger by spending extra successes on a die roll, and they allow for a whole palette of options for players who are rolling well. While certain Tricks are permissioned by specific character abilities and by Curse Dice (part of the magic system), there’s a number of so-called ‘universal’ Tricks for three different arenas: combat, investigation, and influence. I do appreciate that these are mechanized, though investigation and influence are less formally delineated than combat. This version of Storypath is known as Storypath Ultra, and in addition to a number of revisions to older Storypath games it’ll be the first version released standalone as a generic system. I’m interested to see that once it’s out, but it’s clear that a lot of the ‘juice’ in Curseborne comes from the Lineages and Families which are specific to this game.

As I mentioned upfront, the Lineages in Curseborne resemble the ‘Big Three’ World of Darkness games (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) plus two (Demon, Wraith). That said, the intent ends up being different, at least in comparison to the major games. While the World of Darkness was always supposed to resemble our world, the way that the games were positioned were usually looking inward. Vampire concerned itself with the organizations and politics of Vampires, Mage with Mages, and so forth. That you existed in the real world was a source of challenge and a reason not to use your powers in an unrestrained manner; Vampire was of course about the eponymous Masquerade, and the Paradox mechanic in Mage was a central consideration in how you would use magic and what sort of risks you were willing to take. Curseborne changes this positioning rather dramatically because the implied intent of the game is to get these Lineages to mix and the old ways didn’t work well for that. Instead of positioning supernatural characters as members of a shadow world that exists alongside the ‘real world’, Curseborne positions the Accursed as existing between the mundane world and the Outside, where the horrors beyond comprehension come from. The character Lineages are (obviously, given the title) portrayed as curses, but beyond the specifics of each Lineage the overarching curse of the game is knowledge of and connection to the Outside and having to protect humanity in order to keep existing. The Family aspect of each Lineage has some of the elements of Clans from Vampire or Werewolf, though with a lot more breadth in terms of what each Lineage represents. Hungry Families could differentiate themselves by, instead of drinking blood, eating hearts or stealing human souls. Primal Families could be werewolves, or giant spiders, or even werefish. There’s also an option given for how much each player wants to emphasize their Family; at character creation a player chooses whether their Family or their Lineage is their Major Path, with the other being Minor. If the Family is the Major Path then the specifics of that Family are more important to the character, and if the Minor Path the broader Lineage instead. There is a sensible setting reason why every character needs a Family; Accursed don’t survive on their own very long and, more importantly, it tends to be the Families who mentor newly Accursed and teach them what they’re capable of. That said, the Major/Minor decision lets a player decide whether to directly engage or put the Family at a remove, which is going to be an important distinction for the rest of their Crew.

The Crew is Curseborne’s name for a PC party, and while the book provides good guidance into how and why crews form (pushing players specifically to consider if they’re a ‘Social Crew’ or a ‘Tasked Crew’ and what that means for their relationships), the question about how/why a mixed group of Accursed is working together is a primary one for character and campaign creation in this system. The game is pretty good at offering suggestions here, but regardless of the suggestion you take the implied game of Curseborne is one about your characters fighting to survive in a world you can’t take on alone. Whether your Crew comes together for a job or ends up all being friends, there’s a found family aspect to how the game wants you to think about “the party”. It extends through a lot of the writing in Curseborne; although most of the in-game writing is the same sort of faux-edgy profanity-inflected flavor text that the World of Darkness has been infamous for, there is a constant theme of trying to make the world a better place and choosing to help the mortal world instead of letting your Damnation consume you or cast yourself to the Outside and oblivion forever. The way this optimism avoids becoming too saccharine is by, in part, reminding you that even if your character isn’t choosing oblivion, others have and others will. World of darkness indeed.

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It stands to reason that Onyx Path would be in the position to thread the needle of writing a new Storypath supernatural horror game. Curseborne takes many of the thematic beats of the World of Darkness and gives them a more personal twist: “The horrors persist, but so do I.” In addition to giving World of Darkness a more intimate streak, I think Curseborne could also be seen as a less grim approach to some of the themes seen in Unknown Armies; both the world elements of the Outside and a lot of the conceits of the Sorcerer Lineage align fairly well there. This is probably a good thing for what’s likely to be a keystone game for Onyx Path: I’m seeing a lot of different ways to engage with the game’s setting and themes as they’ve been presented, and that means that there’s more than enough material to build out the Lineages and the world in continuing supplements. That may sound cynical, but for the gamble being made on a game so close to its predecessor to make sense, it does need to pay off as a game line, not just a singular product.

Reading Curseborne makes me want to play it, which is about the highest rating one can give with this type of review. More important to the game itself, I was able to read Curseborne and understand how this game can exist alongside the World of Darkness and capture its own audience, though I’m sure there will be plenty of people who end up owning both. The framing of all characters as Accursed is a good platform from which to universalize the power/magic mechanics; while I didn’t go into depth on the magic system, the use of Curse Dice as the main magic power currency means that all magic abilities end up tied back to each character’s specific curse, forcing them to engage with the downsides. There isn’t a huge amount of mechanical change here from earlier games, which is why I focused on the framing.

The shift in framing is what enables Curseborne to nestle into what I think is a notably different horror niche than its predecessor. What’s going to make Curseborne succeed in spite of following the World of Darkness, though, is focus. The Lineages can’t be the only source of focus, that would impinge further on an experience that’s already being offered by games like Vampire and Werewolf. Personally, I’d want to see more focus on the setting. I want to know more about the Outside, about liminalities, and about why the world works this way. Curseborne is perhaps a bit overpowered for what people traditionally think of as liminal horror, but I do think it could incorporate it quite well and make that element its signature. I’m looking forward to seeing what Onyx Path does with this game. Curseborne doesn’t mess up any of the things that are largely the same in its own Lineage, but I think the future holds big opportunities for more Entanglement.

Curseborne is available from DriveThruRPG.

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