When you or your players end up writing new bonds, how closely do you follow the procedure in the book? Specifically the bold part below?
From Playing the Game > Bonds > Writing New Bonds:
Pick something relevant to the last session—maybe a place you traveled together or a treasure you discovered. Choose a thought or belief your character holds that ties the two together and an action, something you’re going to do about it.
I don’t follow that at all. On balance, you should plan on resolving one of your bonds every session, every other session at worst; having every bond tied to a specific action is going to lead to a lot of dead sessions from a bond perspective.
Besides, plenty of core bonds aren’t explicitly action-oriented. So long as whatever you write says something about your relationship, I think it’s fine.
I stick to it. I find that it helps me preface what type of character I want to be, and then helps remind me who I am during gameplay. I will usually go out of my way to make sure that my bonds are met, which always seems to add a layer to the story.
Those non-action-oriented bonds always feel problematic to me as many players won’t work to make it happen. I feel like it needs to almost be more of a goal than a bond.
I stick to it – wimpy, no-objective bonds are useless for creating drama. Make an objective, make it matter.
I’m glad you posted this, because I admit I had never really processed it before seeing this post. Very interesting…
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