Bonds?

Hi,

I'm not sure I get bonds correctly. I know AW well and some other hacks, but only skimmed DW yet. As far as my research told me bonds stems from DW?

So my understanding is that you define connections/bonds you have with other characters (to one character you have two bonds, to 2 other chars one bond). Each bond is a sentence that describes how these characters are connected (like "Oh boy, that recruit is so green, I'll have an eye on him")

In DW there are prewritten bonds in the playbooks, but it encourages to write your own. I assume The Regiment (at least now) goes all the "write your own" way?

Am I right so far? Or is BOND much more like Hx from AW - once its determined its mostly a numeric value? Are there any helpful posts out there how to write good bonds?

Are there any other uses for bonds than the AID move and the XP gain on bond +4?

I totally know that this is an alpha version, so it might be just a matter of "not done yet", but both Hx and DW-bonds give you lots of guidance to fill your backstory (creativity kickstart). Is this left out on purpose here?

Other than this topic I'm really excited about this (especially colonial marines, as I dont dig WW2 much). The VOF/damage part took me a bit to figure out and I have to see how the battle plans will work in play but I think I reached a solid understanding there. Just bonds missing ...

Bond in the regiment works like Hx in AW, except that you don't have negative bond.

You "write-in" your own bonds, whether literally writing them down or by talking them through. We experimented early on with playbook-specific themes for bonds; but, the playbooks in the Regiment aren't strongly typed to a personality archetype. They are strongly typed to roles. Instead, you decide what they share with the other soldiers.

Bond is mechanically only used for Aid and XP, as you say. Fictionally, increasing your bond is about growing closer or overcoming obstacles together.

Guidelines aren't provided on the character sheets now; but, may in the future or in a full supporting text. The idea for creating bonds is more or less the same as AW and DW.

Thanks for checking out our game, hope you have a good time with colonial marines!

For further reading, you can check out the APs I wrote over the summer. There are some examples in there about how bonds came up in my game: http://enigmamachinations.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/the-regiment-ap-operation-market-garden-session-1/

This is a series and I linked to the beginning. Some of the later APs hit bonds harder.

Tranks, that helps me out.