Bound by Bind

Played Ironsworn again this weekend, after nearly a month break. Hadn't intended for the gap to be as long as it was, but October was really damn busy.  

So the other day I break out my notes from the Ironsworn campaign, and see that part of my character's status was that my "Bind" ritual was inactive. Bind, for those not in the know, is a seemingly very powerful Asset for a character, as it potentially gives you +1 to any (or every) Stat while active, and the range on the five Stats is just from 1 to 3. There's not a lot of granularity there, so +1 is potentially quite significant. Don't believe it: Bind is a trap for new players, and you don't want to get suckered into taking it as one of your three starting Assets. 

There's plenty of restrictions in place to keep the Bind from living up to its potential. You need to acquire various animal hides to use it: the rules don't say if you start with any, and you may discover that Boars and Bears are shockingly difficult for a starting character (especially a wits-based Ritualist type) to defeat. Once you have the needed pelts, you still need to make a Wits roll to activate it in the first place. If that succeeds, it has a roughly 17% chance to deactivate whenever you use it. Reactivating it again requires not just another Wits check but also you have to be outdoors at night. If your plot is chugging along during daylight hours, or your character is exploring an underground dungeon, once it turns off you're potentially stuck without it for a few sessions. I can unhappily report that suddenly losing a point in a valuable stat in the middle of a battle or delve is a recipe for disaster. What's more, if you fail the roll to reactivate it, you have to then roll on the Mystic Backlash Table that can complicate life further. 

In session 10 of the game, my Bind ritual deactivated. Because of where and when my character was located, it wasn't possible for him to try to reactivate it until session 12. Unfortunately, I failed the roll to activate it... and this began a long, long string of failed activations and narrative reasons why I couldn't try again for a while. The Mystic Backlash Table literally told me that I couldn't try again until I'd acquired a rare component to augment the magic. The session I just played this weekend was session 28, and my Bind has been inactive every consecutive session since session 10. So I really want Bind to be usable again at this point. In my last few sessions before the break, I'd undergone a quest to get those components (a quest that was made all the more difficulty by being down a stat point at its outset). At the start of this 28th session, I do all I can to set-up the Bind activation roll, Sojourning to raise my Momentum, doing the Secure An Advantage move to get +1 bonus on the following roll, and engineering a situation where my Demeanor (from the excellent 3rd-party Ironsworn Demeanor Deck that I picked up on DriveThruRPG) is applying to the roll as well, giving me a +2 bonus total beyond my normal activation roll (so a +4 total since Wits is my second-highest stat). 

So, of course, I fail it again, and get another nasty Mystic Backlash result to go with it. The Sojourn and Secure An Advantage were both Strong Hits. If I'd used either of those rolls on my actual Bind Ritual roll, it would have been a great success. So damn frustrating. 

Anyhow, I guess I'm whining to the internet as a warning to others who are browsing the Ironsworn Starting Asset choices and considering picking up the Bind Ritual. Don't do it. I mean, maybe, MAYBE, if your Wits is your best Stat and you are also taking the Ritualist Path Asset for the +1 bonus that gives, and you choose to start your character off with a free Boar Pelt and always lead with Bind Boar for Wits before trying the others... With all that lined up, maybe it's okay. Maybe. But then you've spent 2/3rds of your starting Assets trying to keep Bind from backfiring on you, and you've also saddled yourself with Wits as your main stat which means you're no good in a fight and have to take some other Wits-based Ritual in order for the character to be able to do anything interesting. It just doesn't seem worth it, building a one-trick pony whose single trick can backfire for multiple sessions in a row.

 Right now, with my Wits 2 character who started with just a Wolf Pelt, I'm feeling pretty raw about this completely useless Asset. 18 consecutive sessions, more than half my total campaign thus far, without being able to use the thing. It'd be like playing D&D, and your GM only lets you have 1 spell, and then for 18 sessions in a row he says "sorry, you can't take a long rest this session either, so no spell for your first-level wizard". I know it's self-inflicted, my bad character creation choice, but I have to say that on paper Bind looks hella strong. I was actually a little worried at character creation that it was going to be too strong, and that I might be playing the game on easy-mode. Boy was I wrong.

Weirdly enough, Bind is probably NOT an awful choice for an XP spend if you've already got a Wits-based Ritualist PC. You'll still hit long dry-spells where you can't use it, but if you've already got lots of cool things to do with your Wits (specifically starting with 2 other Rituals as Starting Assets and not getting Bind till later after you're more established) then Bind being streaky and unreliable is far less of an issue. When it's fully 1/3rd of what makes your character unique, that's when it's inherent fussiness is problematic.  

I love my Ironsworn character, and I love the game, and my weird plotlines and the worldbuilding I've done. Ironsworn is so good... but I also know I'd love it that much more if one of my main powers wasn't consistently borked for more than 50% of the campaign.

That 3rd-party Demeanor Deck that I mentioned is pretty cool, and so is the Motivation Deck by the same author. They both reduce the overall difficulty of the game by just a smidge by each giving you an extra power, nearly as good as another Starting Asset, but with a distinct feel and MO that's different from any of the existing Assets. I probably wouldn't have started using those decks if it weren't for this feeling that a full third of my character creation choices were a trap. The same goes for the option rule for "learning from your mistakes" that objectively makes the game easier by taking some of the sting out of a series of failed rolls. I like a good challenge, and especially want solitaire games to be difficult so I have to play sharp and clever to "win". So it's really rare for me to adopt something that specifically makes a solo game easier, but with a third of my eggs bound in one unreliable basket, I eventually felt like I had to dial the difficulty down a notch or three.

In solitaire play you are your own GM, so of course you can also "fix" the "problem" by just going easy on yourself narratively, taking care to describe situations where trying again feels reasonable and/or your plot deadlines are always significantly after sunset, etc. If you really want you can even just arbitrarily fudge a die roll without any other players at your table complaining about fairness. Those sorts of gimmicks just aren't my style, though, and I want to have to work for my victories. In fact, the feeling that the game's structure itself provides conflict, surprise and challenge is a big part of why Ironsworn feels so engaging and rewarding to me, when most other solitaire RPGs I've tried have failed to keep my interest beyond one or two initial sessions.