A Bond Mechanic For Developing Inner-pary Relationships

[Whiskeyjack8044]

I've noticed that some players need a little encouragement to develop positive relationships with each other and consider those relationships. The goal here is to use a boosting mechanic to incentivize this.

First the carrot. During session 0 you have 2 bonds and 1 tension. Pick a player character to share a bond with, collaborate with the player to define the bond. You may pick 2 player characters to share 1 bond with, or share 2 bonds with 1 player character.

When you have a bond with a character, once per-session you can grant them a d4 to add to any d20 roll so long as you are in sight of each other. With 2 bonds the d4 becomes a d6, 3 bonds a d8, 4 bonds a d10, 5 bonds a d12. After a session, a DM may suggest a bond after a noteworthy Roleplaying moment between player characters. If the players agree they add a bond with each other. Think of this as player granted inspiration, though it can be asked for and can be retroactive. This ability is pretty strong so it should get players to actively try and develop their bonds with one another. Adding a d12 to a save against a Death Save is certainly worth it.

Now the carrot. You pick one player to have a tension with and collaborate on what that tension may be. You can not have a bond with a character you share a tension with, but once you resolve that tension you gain 2 bonds with that player character. The goal is to discourage the none interesting types of party strife. If your Halfling Rouge is stealing from the party that is going to create tension. Once that tension is resolved however, the bond will be stronger than ever when all is forgiven. Tension can be applied to characters who have a bond, it merely suspends the bond while it is in place and upgrades the bond once it is resolved. Party conflict can be interesting and opposing word views can create some dramatic Roleplay. They may make things tense between the player characters, but that isn't Tension as defined by this mechanic. A broken promise or an outright refusal to cooperate or compromise WOULD be a Tension.
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Example: Drew and Stew decide they want their characters to be brothers. They each apply their 2 Bonds to each other. Stew applies his tension to Sally who is a Tiefling. Stew and Sally think it would be interesting to develop a friendship despite Stew's initial fear and distrust of Sally. Sally decides to apply her Tension to Stew as well. Drew doesn't have a problem with Tieflings or Sally, but he does have a problem with Kelly. Kelly is from the same village as Drew and Stew, and she stole Drew's girlfriend! Drew wants to apply his Tension to Kelly. Kelly agrees to this and thinks it would be funny if she didn't even know Drew disliked her. Kelly is going to apply her Tension to Stew because he is being rude to their new friend.

During their time in a dungeon Stew goes down in a fight. The party is pretty spread out so he has to make a Death saving throw. A 6, oh no! Well the last he saw before he went down was his panicked brother across the room, he can leave him all alone. Stew asks Drew for the Bond Die and he agrees, rolling a 6 he passes the death save with a 12, whew!

Sally is first on the scene and heals Stew, likely saving his life. While wrapping up the session I ask Stew if Sally saving him would be a good way to end the tension between them. He says yes. I remind them that Sally also has a tension with Stew and that must be resolved before they can use a Bond Die. This leads to a nice Roleplaying session between the two where their relationship grows. Not only do they now have a Bond Die, it is a d6 rather than a d4.

Drew keeps taking the magical items that Stew wants. Drew refuses to negotiate in good faith even though he barley uses the items. This creates a bit of Tension between the characters and they no longer benefit from their Bond Die. Once Drew learns to share, or Stew gets over his item envy, their bond is strengthened and their Die is upgraded to a d8.
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So to TL;DR this is a mechanic that lets you reward healthy co-operative play and punish negative party strife in a defined and mostly neutral way.

[Zhorn]

How does the bond integrate into the player's behaviour?

Hob and Barbarian and Gob the wizard share a bond over ice cream and sprinkles.... we don't do anything with this information, but each game grant each other a d4 to our rolls.

[Whiskeyjack8044]

"Hob and Barbarian and Gob the wizard share a bond over ice cream and sprinkles."

DM: So why was sharing ice cream a bonding experience?

Hob: I don't know, maybe I was having a bad day?

Gob: Maybe you had mentioned that you loved Ice Cream and as a child your mother would get it to cheer you up?

DM: Why were you having a bad day?

Hob: Hmm, well I have a standard tragic backstory, maybe this is the anniversary of my mother's death?

Gob: OH! Gob's mother is dead too so maybe he is super sympathetic to that, so he gets the ice cream that you had mentioned cheered you up!

Hob: Touched, Hob offers to share it with Gob and they just watch the sunset together.

Fireball is just a bunch of d6s is you want it to be, its up to you to make it more.

[Zhorn]

I just mean in your initial post there wasn't any detail on how the bond is mechanically incorporated.
You can DM fiat to make sure the players have a good story pick for the bond, bur in play there isn't a requirement to use it to access the dice. It just exists in the background.
Set and forget.

[Whiskeyjack8044]

Yeah, I honestly had the idea in bed last night and wanted to write it down somewhere before I fell asleep. I should probably edit that OP now that I'm not exhausted.

[KorvinStarmast]

Looks like a game feature from Dungeon World. :)
Suggest you scrap this part.

With 2 bonds the d4 becomes a d6, 3 bonds a d8, 4 bonds a d10, 5 bonds a d12. After a session, a DM may suggest a bond after a noteworthy Roleplaying moment between player characters. If the players agree they add a bond with each other.
I think you got carried away there. Leave it at two bonds, and if another one comes up perhaps neutralize the tension, and if another one comes up max out at three.

And rather than award a bond per session, maybe one per adventure arc or one per adventure tier?

[Whiskeyjack8044]

Looks like a game feature from Dungeon World. :)
Suggest you scrap this part.

I think you got carried away there. Leave it at two bonds, and if another one comes up perhaps neutralize the tension, and if another one comes up max out at three.

And rather than award a bond per session, maybe one per adventure arc or one per adventure tier?

I probably did get carried away lol, but I think I'll keep atleast 4. I want the players to actively be looking for ways to develop relationships in the fiction.

The once per-session thing is pretty powerful I'll admit, but I fear that once per adventure will lead to it being forgotten about. After all each time the player uses it they will be reminded of how their character feels about the other character. And since it is per-session you don't have to worry about "rest farming".

I've never run a game with Real Life friends, just people on the internet. The intent her is to develop healthy dynamics between players that don't know each other.

Oh, and I've never played Dungeon World but I love it in theory so I'll take that as a compliment!

[KorvinStarmast]

Oh, and I've never played Dungeon World but I love it in theory so I'll take that as a compliment! The first time we played it was a variant called Fellowship, but the bond thing is a neat mechanic. It took us a while to 'get' it; but as we developed it we found it quite enjoyable.

I applaud your efforts to reward the inter personal bonds on the team. Best wishes. :smallsmile:

[Stattick]

I'd rather do something like this than to use the Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws for generating Inspiration. In my experience, granting Inspiration for players playing up their personality traits tends to get forgotten. It's easy to see why too. You're supposed to have 5 per character, and when you've got 6 players at the table, the GM remembering that list of 30 things just isn't likely to happen. But here, it's player driven: The player tries to remember that s/he has a Bond or Tension with other characters, and watches for opportunities to help them by giving them a die.

As to the proposed mechanics, I'd increase the die by Tier. Tier 1 would be a d4. Tier 2 would be a d6. Tier 3 would be a d8, and Tier 4 would be a d10. I'd say that to grant the die, you'd need to give some sort of encouragement.

I'd eliminate the multiple bonds to the same person.

For Tension mechanics, I'd say that when you do something discouraging to someone (an insult, a small prank, laughing with they screw up, etc) that you have a Tension with, that you can then get a Bond Die that you can either use immediately for yourself, or put in your pool of dice to give to someone else later. That way, you can have a pair of frenemies working together, but insulting and belittling each other the whole way through an adventure to keep bolstering themselves. Or maybe they're just competing, "Hey elf, I killed 12!" "Pssh... I got 14... 15. Keep up, will ya?"

[NorthernPhoenix]

This is a great idea in theory, but it is disappointing that finding ways to cynically exploit such a system while engaging with it as little as possible would be the go-to for anyone.

[Magicspook]

I didn't like it at first, but I think it has some potential now that i gave it some thought. But I think you are making this too difficult. One tension and one bond is all I'd want to deal with, and this number never changes, it just shifts around between players.

[SiCK_Boy]

I did something similar at the start of a previous campaign, but without the mechanical benefit.

When creating characters, I forced every player to establish a "positive" link to another character, and a "negative" link to a different one.

For example, one character was a drow rogue, and the aasimar paladin's link to him was that the paladin had defended the drow in the past when he was being ostracized by patrons in a tavern. Another character (halfling barbarian) had his negative link to that same drow rogue, and the link was the the halfling would often make insensitive remarks (racist/bigoted) about drows without being aware of it.

We made sure everyone in the party had links to different characters, so in the end, every character was the target of the same number of positive and negative links.

These made up a good foundation for roleplaying situations and also helped build the background story of the party, so that when we started at Session 1, the group already knew each other and had collective background and items in their past histories they could rely on during play.

The one difficulty with this approach, however, is how to handle character death and the introduction of a new character to the party; obviously a bit more difficult to invent past history between that new character and the party, although by then the story momentum of the remaining players can still carry the story forward.