Bonds represent the feelings, opinions, desires and shared history that make the player characters a party of adventurers and not just a random assortment of people. Each bond is a simple statement that relates your character to a party member. A few "fill in the blank" standard bonds are found in each core class playbook with the idea that you can create your own even during character creation and will gain new ones through play.
As a systems component , bonds are intended to facilitate building immediate backstory between two player characters. They also reward XP by encouraging the player to resolve the bond by acting upon changing circumstances to create narratives which establish that the bond- for better or worse- is gone and replaced with something else.
Resolving Bonds[]
A bond is resolved when it no longer describes how you relate to the other party member. In other words: the bond statement was true when the game session began but it isn't by the time the game session is over- and the other player and the GM both agree. This is handled during End of Session.
Writing New Bonds[]
Whenever an old bond is resolved, you can pick a new one. It may be with the same new character but it doesn't have to be. In addition, something could have happened during the fiction of the game session to make you feel like a completely new, unrelated bond has developed between your character and a different member of the party. Write that one down too. {Suggestion: Classic DW does not allow (when Read As Written) for more than one bond to be resolved per game session, but if it feels obvious to you that it has, ask the GM if you can resolve all relevant bonds for no additional XP. Then write in the new bonds which represent changes in dynamics between your characters and the others.-LW)
- Core Bonds
- Alternate Bonds from Truncheon World
- Worldbuilder Bonds by Brennan O'Brien
- Bonds With NPCs