Playing with Bonds
I'm developing a siren encounter for my Fabula Ultima campaign and hit on an interesting way to map charm effects in the game - change player character bonds! Between our pacing and alternating between two campaigns, though, I won't run this encounter for months. So here we go - it gets its own post!
Fabula doesn't have many mechanics that force characters to act in specific ways. Player characters can take levels in Fury or Dancer and taunt foes into targeting them with attacks, but that is about the extent of charm or compulsion effects in the game. Notably, those effects are a) in the hands of player characters, and b) temporary, only lasting for about a scene. This is great for a lot of reasons - very few people like it when they can't play their character and compulsion effects can raise thorny issues around consent. But our Ys campaign is set in a milieu where fey, wizards, and enchantresses will place charms, geas, and other compulsions on others in bouts of whimsical pique or to forward sinister machinations, and it would be nice to have a way to play with that in the game.
So how can I make a genre appropriate compulsion effect that is impactful, temporary, and affords the players a high degree of control over their character? I can "attack" their bonds!
Bonds are tied to emotions, so something meaningful happens when you tell someone "Your character now Admires this vexing pixie." Players still have full mechanical control of their character, and can even draw power from the bond by invoking it when spending a Fabula Point, so it minimizes the risk of the player not getting to play the game. Bonds can be altered or even replaced during a rest scene or with an Opportunity, so they are temporary, but might last beyond a scene. Further, players can choose whether to keep or remove the bond. All-in-all, it feels impactful without the referee telling the player "You now work for the baddies and must do so or I will take control of your character."
I bounced it off of my players and the folks in the Table Shapers Discord server and both groups were excited by it. Jointly we were able to think of a few different ways to implement such an "attack" - opposed rolls, filling-in clocks, using the strength of a bond to represent a clock - and a few variations on recovering from it. That tells me there's legs to this idea, and I am excited to test it out in my game... four or five months from now!