I agree with basically everything you said, Flathead.
One of the most difficult design problems for this game has been getting the balance right between co-operative play and competitive play. In most versions, including the most recent, the cooperative aspect tends to feel very shoehorned in and isn't fleshed out very well.
The reworking of the Event system into the Curse system is one way I am addressing this problem. Curses will have a variety of conditions that must be met in order to remove them. They won't all simply be about spending enough Energy on them. They could be things like "overthrow the Captain", "get someone to -3 Clout", "Everyone sacrifices 4 Life to the Evil Spirits", "One player must sacrifice 3 Loot", etc. All sorts of crazy removal conditions could exist on curses to torment players. Things like "one player must sacrifice 3 Loot" really puts a selfless act into the game - someone must make the noble stand to lose their own loot for the sake of removing a curse. Note too that curses have other effects while they're active. For example, that curse may cause everyone to lose 2 Life per turn until someone sacrifices 3 Loot or something.
That may or may not be an actual Curse card yet, I don't know, but that's kind of the idea.
The problem I had with events is that almost all of them felt like they weren't worth the energy to contribute and I would rather spend them upgrading the ship or my ability (especially knowing Jordy was probably going to just sabotage anyways 
).
I completely agree and this is one of the major reasons that I'm reworking the Events. Yes, I could just make the numbers bigger on the events but the decisions around them still weren't very interesting. They devolved into a simple calculation: "Are the numbers on the event big enough to be worth investing energy into, yes or no?" If yes, everyone invested. If no, nobody invested. It wasn't exactly an interesting decision.
I will still be keeping the concept of immediate events, but in a somewhat different form. Every so often, an immediate event can take place will likely be designed to reward anyone who contributes to it, harm everyone who doesn't, give ways for a powerful player to use their advantage at the moment, give everyone else ways to reel in someone who's running away with the game a little bit, etc.
The "Event on every space" is being removed though, and being replaced with a system that spawns Curses and triggers immediate events every-so-often.
Why is this better? This means we can have clearer LOSE conditions that will obviously come about if players do not work together on removing curses. It becomes much clearer that it will be necessary to remove most curses.
What about the problem of trolling? Couldn't a losing player simply refuse to help and cause everyone to lose?Well, yes they can...but you do have one option: KILL THE TROLL! If the troll dies, they can't be part of the curse removal equation anymore and this problem goes away. If someone's trolling, focus on killing them, which will be much easier to do now.
Now for your questions:
1) For the basic spending energy actions, will certain modifier/conditional cards work with/against them or will that be not an interesting enough card to include in the decks?
I am removing MODIFIER cards. They're too similar to conditional cards and I can simply combine the mechanic into conditional cards. The intention of MODIFIER cards was to clarify what the card was for but this is really unnecessary.
I will be keeping conditional cards as a concept, yes. Being able to play cards when it's not your turn, or in response to something happening, opens up so much flexibility and can be so rewarding and satisfying that there's no way I'm removing this feature.
2) You mention that everyone loses in the event 3 curses are applied. Does that include ghosts since they involve using curses? That could create a bit of a balancing act, though I have no idea on how it will all play out at the moment obviously and that could be too easy for a victory condition.
In the event that 3 Curses are applied, all living players lose and all Ghosts win. As such, there is always a very clear relationship between curses, living players and ghosts:
For a living player, curses are basically always bad. They want to get rid of curses.
For a ghost, curses are basically always good. They want to pile on the curses.
3) Ghost victory conditions are either the captain or everyone dies and also the game is now themed around curses. So will ship durability still be in the game?
Ship durability will remain in the game since it can be a very handy target for ghosts and curses. It can also be useful as a resource that players can spend to do selfish actions.
For example "I get angry and the ship loses 1 Durability but all opponents lose 3 Life" or something.
So Ship durability can still be a useful mechanic. I'll leave it in for now. If it turns out to be redundant I may remove it but at the moment I'm seeing a lot of ways it can still be utilized.
With that said, I am changing the WIN/LOSS conditions around Ship Durability. If the Ship sinks, living players LOSE and Ghosts WIN. This further makes it clear what the relationship between living players and Ghosts is. This also eliminates the problem of "oh, the ghosts are going to win. let's just sink the ship so they can't."
It will indeed be a nasty game design balancing act to get this to work well.
My ultimate goal is for the game to feel like this:- Surviving the entire trip is quite hard. There will be at least 1 or 2 deaths every game, with most games having a handful of deaths.
- A living player will win about 33-50% of the time. The ghosts will win 50-66% of the time. I would like it to feel more rewarding to win as a player than to win as a ghost because I want to REWARD players for AVOIDING death and making it to the end alive. I definitely want ghosts to be able to win, but I want the ultimate feeling of accomplishment in the game to come from winning while also being alive!
- Even Surviving to the end should be hard. Being the WINNER at the end while also surviving should be a big accomplishment.
PS: Where's Reginald? 
He'll be in the next game!
