Does anybody have a guide or some good tips for writing good bonds? This is something I’ve seen players struggle with, and the best advice I can think to give them is:
‘think of what might cause conflict in your relationship’.
Does anybody have a guide or some good tips for writing good bonds?
Does anybody have a guide or some good tips for writing good bonds?
I try to take a page from The Burning Wheel. I tell them that the best structure has a belief about the person, e.g. “I believe Balgruff is ballin'” followed by a statement of action that you will take to act upon that belief: “so I will serve him faithfully.”
“Conflict’ is too narrow, I think. Think more like “if I had to say one thing about our relationship, that would be it”. So “I owe him my life” is perfectly fine, even if it does not immediately means conflict. A better advice, I think, would be “think of what alludes to past drama”.
I would also avoid being too specific, just to leave room for exploration of during the game.
“He knew my brother better than I did” is nice; “I can’t understand how he plans, but it usually works well” is also good; “She’s the best archer I’ve ever met” is also perfectly fine. All of those things allude to something that happened in the past, but still leave a lot to be fleshed out during play. Don’t overthink this : pretty much anything can become interesting once you start to puzzle out what it means.
And remember : crossing a Bond does not mean that thing never happened, or that you cannot see the other PC through that lens at all anymore; it just means that it’s not the most important way to describe our relationship.
Hope that helped!
As Jordan Raymond says above, it isn’t just about complication. A bond simply should be a feeling about a person that can evolve through the course of play. How that might happen is a mystery, but that’s why we play to find out what happens.
Write bonds that you can easily visualize resolving in a fun and interesting way during the upcoming session.
To steal a page from DramaSystem “Galdren what do you want from Ephima?” “Ephima why can’t Galdren get what he wants?” use the answer to write a bond.