Bonds. Can you have more than one bond with another character? In my family game the two characters have awesome bonds that can drive play. But at the same time I don’t ever see them getting resolved. How have others resolved this lack of resolve? Or if something else becomes more defining in their relationship does it supersede their existing bonds and the old ones go away with the resolution (it isn’t that important anymore, our differences, we have been to hell and back together who gives a care about Jonah being woefully misguided about the world).
Thoughts? How have you dealt with this in your game?
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Keep in mind that the three given reasons for resolving a bond in the Level Up move are to check if the bond is:
1. completely explored
2. no longer relevant
3. or otherwise
Remember, all it really takes to resolve a bond is for both players to decide that the bond is over. If the bond is no longer interesting, or isn’t adding to the game, resolve and replace it!
Personally, for a small game that I run (2 players), I simply asked the players at character creation how strong the relationship between their two characters were. They decided that they wanted to play characters with some decent history, so I had them create two bonds. If they had wanted their relationship to be relatively new, then they would have had one bond.
keep in mind that the number of starting bonds of each class is relevant. Wizard has three and ranger four, if I recall correctly. That number is the maximum number of bonds they can have. If the wizard has just one bond he/she can add two bonds anytime. I mean, if something during the game could lead to another bond, write it down, you can (and should) add more bonds even if the old one are not resolved, as long as you have “free slots” for bonds (that is, three for the wizard, four for the ranger, six for the bard and so on…)
Nikitas Thlimmenos I massively disagree(the rules are on your side but I wont let that stop me :p ). If something is a significant part of the relationship between 2 PCs then it should be a bond. If your interparty relationships are complex enough that everyone has 9 bonds(unlikely unless your PCs are gaming the system) then so be it
I have heard about the number of bonds on the character sheet, but I find that after a few sessions those bonds aren’t as exciting as the ones that come out in play. Is the rule about number of. Ones on the character sheet in the book somewhere? If I recall correctly, players can write their own Bonds that aren’t on the sheet. The only rule I have is that you can’t get more than 1 xp for resolving a bond.
Thanks
yes, you can and should write your own bonds if you have ideas
Daniel Kellett of course you should play as it makes the most sense to you. I’m running three campaigns at the moment, and in two of them we’re resolving bonds by the half dozen, if the fiction dictates so. In the third campaign we are stuck with the “max one XP per session by bond” rule.
We asked the authors, they told us their reasons and we made our own choice, simple as that.
I don’t think I’ve seen this addressed: “Can you have more than one bond with another character?” Absolutely yes. Poor Bard is going to have hard time filling 6 bonds if they’re limited to 1 per PC.
Something else to consider: you can “resolve” a bond to replace it with a change in interpretation. “I trust X to protect me” can become “X has saved my life; I owe them one” to “X has saved my life repeatedly, I would do anything for them” or “X has saved my life repeatedly, and I resent it.” Many long running bonds can be resolved and replaced in this way.
I like to take the view that “resolving a bond” can be an extremely minor change. Lets say you have the druid bond “Such and such is more prey than hunter” then you can >resolve< that to, "Such and such has given me more reason to believe they are prey" or "such and such has some instincts of hunter but still acts like a prey".