Bonds

Bonds are connections that the player characters share with other people, groups or organisations. A bond is a broadly positive connection, if perhaps a complicated one.

GM, give out bonds to the characters as rewards for recruiting allies or achieving objectives.

Helping Out Your Friends

Once per scene, when you act in a way that benefits someone you share a bond with, you may do so with mastery.

NPC Bonds

You can also ask an NPC bond to perform a favour on your behalf - something that they wouldn’t normally do and which puts them, and the relationship, under stress and danger. They’re under no obligation to do what you ask - and the GM might ask for a check to get them to comply - but if they do so, they incur stress based on the scale of the favour asked.

Treat performing a favour as a normal roll. An NPC bond rolls 1D10, +1D10 if it’s within their area of expertise, +1D10 if it’s in their neighbourhood/home. If an NPC bond suffers stress when they roll to achieve a task, treat the relationship a separate resistance allocated to the character and allocate stress to it. Here are some sample stress levels:

1 Stress: Give advice or access to general information within their domain; allow safe passage through space they control; offer temporary accommodation.

D3 Stress: Get you and your comrades access to a private area or event; lend you a piece of equipment; put in a good word with an authority in their domain; turn a blind eye to minor transgressions.

D6 Stress: Gift you a valuable piece of equipment; provide a safe haven for you and your comrades; betray the trust of an outsider; turn a blind eye to major transgressions; commit minor transgressions; engage in moderate-risk actions.

D8 Stress: Betray a friend; commit major transgressions; engage in high-risk actions; donate large amounts of resources.

You can remove stress from a bond by doing a favour for your ally in return; the bigger the favour, the more stress you’ll remove.

Bond Fallout

Bonds don’t count towards your total stress for fallout - they’re handled separately, each as their own track. At the end of each session, roll to check for fallout on each bond that a player marked stress to that session. (If a bond is temporary, such as one earned from an ability, then roll for fallout when it is removed.)

Much like the other resistances, you’ll need to determine some suitable fallout results for bonds - perhaps they get in trouble, draw unwanted attention to the player characters, require resources, get upset and refuse to help, or turn against the party entirely depending on the severity.

Bond Level

Each bond has a level associated with it to illustrate the scale of the power it can wield in the player characters’ favour. These levels are determined by you to reflect the world your story is set in, but here are some examples:

Fantasy revolution: PERSON, STREET, CITY

Sentient spaceships: HUMAN, SHIP, COVENANT, COUNCIL

Mythic heroes: MORTAL, CHOSEN, DEMIGOD, GOD, ANCIENT

A bond’s level reflects its overall capabilities, and the scale it works at. The GM and player are encouraged to use their common sense here and judge fairly as to what an organisation of a given size might be able to achieve.

If a bond works against an entity with a lower level than its own, it does so with mastery. A bond can’t work against an entity with a higher level than its own - find a level-appropriate entity within it for them to tackle.

COMBINING BONDS

You can combine two similar bonds of equal level and similar description to advance them to one bond of the level above if it makes sense in the fiction of the game.