Discussion of Bonds

[Augustus_Octavian]

@Ashburn – Would you like to create a secondary bond with Alex and Erik? Maybe you were in town covering something else pedestrian when the fire broke out?

I really like the whole vibe @Mike mentioned during our last session with “Wait, you can do this too?” – people realizing that their latent magimystic abilities aren’t a weird fluke.

@Viviane – I feel like Cass and Alex were high school classmates – do you want to develop a bond there?

Anybody else have ideas for secondary or tertiatry bonds with other characters?

[Viviane]

@Augustus_Octavian Yeah, I think Cass and Alex were definitely in school together. Do you think they got along, or were they more antagonistic? Did they take any of the same electives? Or maybe they didn’t really interact normally but got thrown together on some occasion? I picture Cass as kind of a grunge teenager who spent a lot of time at the record exchange store, but I’m not sure how you envision high school Alex.

[Augustus_Octavian]

@Viviane – I think Alex would have been a kid of modest means who tried really hard and did pretty well. He had to work after school to help support his household, so maybe his after school gig was at the record store? Cass and Alex, although different, kindled a friendship early on over shared taste in music, but now have grown apart over the intervening 15-20 years.

[Ashburn]

Hmm… I know that local news people like to do feel-good features on people doing long distance treks for charity/awareness of various causes, any chance that could have been a factor in Erik’s backpacking around, @Skylad?

[Skylad]

Ooorrrr @Ashburn you and your crew where originally sent to Stoney Harbour to cover a piece on {insert whatever the event at town hall was} however when the city hall blaze broke out you where at the “right place, right time” and where instead able to cover a story of Erik’s heroic actions that day making a much more interesting story and earning high praise from your employer

(Do I feel like a douche calling Erik a hero? yes I do… but I loooooove it )

[Ashburn]

That was my initial thought (the covering a story at town hall), just didn’t know if I’d step too far into things Mike’s working on by trying to suggest what exactly was going on at town hall (beyond “someone’s starting a fire”).

[Augustus_Octavian]

Interviewing the mayor on either a feel-good or hot button topic?

[darkmimic]

I’ve have ideas on the cause of the fire and events leading up to it, but if any of you have something specific you want to do with it for your character’s, I can work around it or come up with something else. So don’t worry about stepping too far into things. there are plenty of directions I can go.

[darkmimic]

And please ignore all the typos. Sheesh. You’d think I’d learn how to type by now.

[Ashburn]

Well in that case… Hey @Augustus_Octavian, any ideas on what sort of announcement/event is happening at the town hall?

[Augustus_Octavian]

What about a highly anticipated announcement about the Mayor’s new plan to curb crime in Stony Harbor? And coincidentally a fire breaks out as the press conference is starting.

[Ashburn]

Bond written mentioning Alex and Erik, and bonus jerk reporter!

As for the reporter, I definitely see them admitting with zero shame that they’d bail on a family member hard if they were going to make them look bad.

[Ginger]

I feel like Noelani and Erik (@Skylad) could know each other at the very least professionally since first responders?

She could help out on occasion as she’d be trained in basic firefighting and at least EMR?

And maybe that’s how she ends up at the fire?

Also feel like she would 100% know Cass @Viviane because alcohol but I feel like that holds true for most of our characters

[Viviane]

Oh, definitely. Bonds and Aspects aside, Cass probably knows everyone. It’s part of her charm, and also her evil powers.

[Skylad]

Well if we are already apart of a coven we really all do know each other anyway. I think it’s just about creating interesting aspects and just because Erik has an aspect featuring Alexander doesn’t necessarily means Alexander needs to have an Aspect about Erik.

I think Cass could have an interesting one with Alexander but more so having to keep any form of relationship between them secret so that the gang members continue to drink at her bar and also Serene knowing Cass as a way for her to get supplies delivered to her remote location

[Viviane]

I think we were leaning toward starting without having the coven formally established, when it was mentioned in the other thread, so that we get to play out how we come together and form it. And we can build all sorts of connections that don’t need to work out into Bonds/Aspects, because mechanically you want Aspects to be things that will give you advantages and let the Narrator create interesting Compels.

Also, cackling at the idea of Cass never having met Seren but shipping her supplies from the bar for some reason? And then they meet unexpectedly and Cass is like “Oh, you’re the mysterious stranger who’s been taking supplies out into the woods!”

[Skylad]

Ah copy, so pre coven post fire will you still be down for chat Thursday just to make sure I’m on top of it all? I think I’ve gotten my 2nd and 3rd bonds locked in… should have primary bond done by tonight

[Viviane]

On my Thursday, yes. I’m free anytime after (insert Time Magic) 2021-03-04T23:00:00Z for like six hours.

[Tinker]

We spitballed a couple potential ideas on the call, and Mike added an interesting idea on my character thread…I was kinda thinking maybe my character uses Cass’s bar as a “third space” – somewhere to go that isn’t home or an office…she probably works through brainstorming projects there and Cass notices something not-quite-mundane about it? And maybe my character is working with the city on a project and interacts with Alexander?

Also, potential that I just thought of now…maybe my character goes out into the woods for the purposes of personal projects…maybe she’s doing some sort of Andy Goldsworthy living art thing to blow off some steam and she comes across Seren?

[Skylad]

I think I have all my bonds done but not super happy with my primary one. Any help will be amazing (otherwise I’ll hit Viv up on Thursday)

[Augustus_Octavian]

@Viviane – based on the above, I added a bond to Alexander called “Cass and I Go Way Back”. Does that work?

[Viviane]

@Tinker your character should totally hang out at the bar. And I really like the idea of you coming across Seren in the woods, because if Nim’s game for that, it could give Seren a specific tie to the area.

@Augustus_Octavian Yes, that works!

[Nimueh]

Hm… running into a few things thinking about aspects/bonds. While both your ideas for knowing Seren are good, I am wondering on how they’d work. If my character believes she causes bad things to happen to people, chances are she’s actively avoiding people, and I think in the call I said something about only recently arriving in town, though that’s making this really hard to do. It’s also making me wonder if a group did really want to go down the remote coven thing how they’d work out bonds like this if we’re all instantly trying to pin down us being in one place for “the thing that brings us together”.

[Viviane]

You totally don’t have to take any of these ideas if you don’t want; we’re just throwing options around! I do think you could twist Tinker’s suggestion to be less bond-like than the name “bond” implies, like your characters were both in the woods and stumbled across each other and something dramatic happened, but Seren ran away to protect the stranger and now Tinker’s character has this multi-faceted mystery to solve? But you could definitely just have pre-existing bonds that have nothing to do with any of us, and just happen to be in the same place because Narrator’s prerogative.

I think there are a few ways to go if a coven wants to be remote. It could look like what we do on the Forum, where the thing that brings everyone together is a mysterious website, or a discussion group for rare books, or the party all live in different places normally but formed their coven when they were all in some sort of game or workshop session together at Comic Con. And I think that’s more likely to be accounted for if the Prologue/Zero-Session leads with discussing the world rather than the characters, or if you explicitly ask up front “Are we all in the same place or not?” But the start of your coven would normally precede the magical creation of your coven hall, so you’d need to be connected somehow, even if it’s just via internet. And if the characters you’re developing are reluctant to believe in or engage with magic, having an in-person connection to the people they’re all going to make a permanent oath to seems like a more solid story base.

Our characters are all pretty different and pretty low in magical knowledge, so I think some of us just latched onto meeting in the same physical location as a likely starting point for becoming a coven. For what it’s worth, I think we were trying to put you in the same physical location because you have a really great concept that simultaneously would make it difficult to get Seren digitally looped into the coven (wandering loner = probably not great internet access), but maybe we could connect with her some other way?

[Augustus_Octavian]

Viviane:

Our characters are all pretty different and pretty low in magical knowledge, so I think some of us just latched onto meeting in the same physical location as a likely starting point for becoming a coven. For what it’s worth, I think we were trying to put you in the same physical location because you have a really great concept that simultaneously would make it difficult to get Seren digitally looped into the coven (wandering loner = probably not great internet access), but maybe we could connect with her some other way?

What about @Nimueh and @Tinker ‘s characters being related genetically? Or at least having some relationship in the past? We are all in this podunk town and are forming our coven, and in order to get that sweet sweet magimystic number 6 for our participants, Tinker reaches out and pulls her cousin/sister/childhood best friend who’s now gone wandering into the mix, knowing their mutual secret aptitude for the magimystic that they shared with each other but not with any one else out of fear of being ridiculed or institutionalized, etc?

[darkmimic]

I’m wondering if it’s possible to create some Bonds just like we do some Aspects, through gameplay. That’s probably something @CJB and I will have to discuss.

@Nimueh , I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t begin without the Bonds that others have. I also am thinking that it might be possible to have a bond with them that you are unaware of. For example, I could say that you saw, heard, or experienced something in the woods that would be of interest to one of the other characters. Only you don’t know it’s of interest to them just yet. It isn’t until the game begins that you realize you have this important information that no one else does. Then it’s the sharing of that information that brings you into the group. So, it would perhaps be an Aspect/Bond called I Have a Secret. And then after divulging that information, the Aspect could change to something else, depending on what happens next and how that affects your relationship with the other characters.

Or, you could have had an interesting experience crossing paths with someone else in the woods where, for some strange reason, something GOOD happened. And it was such a shock to the normality of what you’re used to that you decide to investigate further. Is it the place? The person? The weather? What? What was it about that singular moment that cleared that cloud of misfortune that always surrounds you?

As always, this is just food for thought. Do not feel beholden to any ideas I present. Take, tweak, or ignore at your leisure.

[CJB]

On another topic

and there’s room for two additional Bonds you can create during character creation or during the game.

Yep, I definitely think you should have the option to create during gameplay, but I think we can encourage having at least one “Bond” aspect to begin.