I’m finding that Bonds aren’t quite clicking with my players, and I’m not really sure how to address it at this point.
Our last session was almost entirely character driven, featuring stuff like the Wizard (who stayed back at the inn due to his injuries) telepathically bickering with the Fighter, the Fighter flagrantly trying to seduce one of the villains rather than following the party’s actual plan to rescue the children she had kidnapped, and the Bard putting some moves on the Ranger’s ex- only to be dramatically interrupted by said Ranger. Oh, and thanks to some memory-rewriting magic, the Wizard recalls his first experiences with the Fighter and the Bard as going dramatically different (and worse) than they actually did.
And then we get to the End of Session and every single one of ’em goes “Eh, I don’t think my Bonds changed.” WHAT.
After some pointed reminders of all the insanity that had actually transpired — much of which was structured specifically because I had their bonds & backstory in mind — a few of them made some updates, but it’s clear everyone still feels a little shaky on the idea, especially when “resolving” the bond means writing something that may not seem at all related to the previous bond. Any suggestions on how to address the subject without just throwing XP on everyone? I can come at this from the player side as well — we have two campaigns with different DMs being run on alternate weeks, so I’m trying to lead by example in the one I’m a PC for.
.
I’m real interested in seeing good advice from the Tavern here, but your end-of-session wrap-up combined with OOC commenting on your bond completion during your other game should do the trick.
.
When writing my own bonds, I write them very intentionally so that they 1) are a flag to the GM that I want this relationship to be important to play or 2) a challenge to the other player – will they uphold or defy this bond – or 3) a more firmly worded version of a previous bond – you upheld that bond but will you still uphold it if I intensify my expectations. My goal is always to write bonds that will resolve by being broken or proven true so that they are no longer in question.
Examples:
1. ______ and I work best as a team.
2. ______ has my best interests at heart.
3. ______ always has my back, no matter what.
In short, sometimes I write the bond my character thinks they have rather than the bond we players agree they have – a prescriptive rather than descriptive bond, perhaps.
The way I do it, a bond can be as simple as how you feel about another character. When you show it in play once or twice, it’s resolved. A resolved bond can still be true! But like any long story, you want to show some other aspects of the relationship as well. Expand and introduce new things! That’s the “completely explored” bit.
Another way to do it is to make sure a bond says “…and here’s what I’m gonna do about it” implicitly or explicitly. The Fighter is a cool dude, I want to learn more about her. The Cleric smells more like prey than hunter, I’m going to show where he’s weak. If you do it or try to do it, resolved, done.
Basically if it shows up at all I’m happy to call it resolved and write a new bond, but by all means continue playing it up! Maybe it can come back as a formal bond in modified form after a couple sessions. In the meantime don’t fall into a rut.
In one PBP game I ran, I let people also get the XP if at least one bond simply came into play–either they rolled it to help/hinder, or they interacted around it. This worked fine in a context where things moved a little slower so that “resolving” bonds didn’t come up so much.
Hmm. Another way to hack this might be to take a page from the Shadow of Yesterday and treat Bonds a bit like Keys. You get 1 XP if it came up in play, but you get 2 XP if you resolved it so that it’s no longer really true in some fashion. So if you have “I like Byakuren”, you get 1 XP for every game in which you express that somehow, but you get 2 XP if you stop liking him for some reason.