End of session: resolving more than one bond

A fellow player pointed me that the end of session move states (underline is mine):

END OF SESSION
When you reach the end of a session, choose one of your bonds that you feel is resolved (completely explored, no longer relevant, or otherwise). Ask the player of the character you have the bond with if they agree. If they do, mark XP and write a new bond with whomever you wish.
Once bonds have been updated look at your alignment. If you fulfilled that alignment at least once this session, mark XP. Then answer these three questions as a group:

• Did we learn something new and important about the world?
• Did we overcome a notable monster or enemy?
• Did we loot a memorable treasure?

For each “yes” answer everyone marks XP.

The matter is we usually choose more than one bond, if more than one is resolved in fiction. Now my friend argues that one cannot choose more than one bond to resolve at the end of the session. But what about the fiction? I mean: what about if I am really resolving, in fiction, more than one bond at the end of a given session? This constraint no longer makes sense to me. Am I misunderstanding something?

Ciao Daniele,
 I think the rule is there to forbid an infinite number of bonds resolving in a single session, since it's the players who decide if the bonds warrant a resolution.
Not so much as "you may become too powerful!", but rather "What's your story about?". It helps to give every bond some importance.
But, if you have two bonds instead of one, and you played them, I see nothing wrong with resolving both. Or is it better to follow the rules at all costs? Boh...

An extreme example would be a session where a character with whom you have 2 or more bonds dies.  Those bonds are no longer relevant and thus should be resolved, but it seems by the RAW that you have to resolve them one session at a time...

I had a player simply change his Bonds with a dead character:

"I will avenge the death of [fighter]!"

"I must return [fighter] remains to his family."

 

Ok, the discussion continued on Google+ on the Dungeon World community: https://plus.google.com/112507662527787769890/posts/9Eoe93uMAz3.

Adam and Sage took part and that’s what they said:

It's one.  Says right there in the move, doesn't it?

Don't like it?  Doesn't work at your table?  Go ahead and hack it!  Thing is, it'll accelerate XP pretty dramatically.  If you're okay with that, cool.?

Yup, it may be that you have more than one bond you'd like to resolve. That's cool, but we wrote the rule as written to place bonds where we wanted them: as icing on the adventuring cake.

Let's look at how you can get XP in DW:
-Rolling a 6-
-Playing your alignment
-Resolving a bond
-Learn something new and important about the world
-Overcome a notable monster or enemy
-Loot a memorable treasure

Of those, only rolling 6- can happen more than once per session, by design. That's on purpose! The best thing you can do to get XP is take chances and get into tough situations.

Of the remaining options, three are about classic adventuring: learn stuff, kill/overcome stuff, loot stuff. That's 3 XP per session for adventuring. That's by design! We want being an adventurer to earn you XP.

Then there's the last two, your alignment and resolving a bond. Those are, to us, the icing on the cake. They should together be worth less than the others because they're not as important. They're a spice that enriches the rest of the game, not the focus of it.

If you could resolve as many bonds as you wanted the best way to earn XP would be to just focus on interpersonal stuff with the other players. You'd never need to adventure, really. You could just sit around and talk it out for 3-5 XP (depending on class) per session (or more if you can resolve mid-session). That's not the game we wanted to make.

So yes, the fact that maybe you have more than one candidate for resolving but only resolve 1 is fine. If it really bothers you, use this instead:

"When you reach the end of a session, choose all of your bonds that you feel is resolved (completely explored, no longer relevant, or otherwise). Ask the player of the character you have the bond with if they agree. If they do, erase your old bond and write a new bond with whomever you wish. If you resolve at least one bond, mark XP."?

tl;dr: The design of the game orders one can resolve only one bond because the point of the game is to explore the world, to defeat terrible opponents and to plunder great treasures. If you feel uneasy with that, you can hack the end of session move, letting more than one bond being resolved at the end of the session (and thus change the focus of the game at least a little).

That last suggestion in Sage's post, that's what we use. Resolve more than one if they're resolved, particularly if they are resolved by being irrelevant or untrue (as opposed to completely explored but still true, like '__ has my back when I'm in danger'), but only take one xp even if you resolve more than one.