Before discovering together in this review Bound, the sword and sorcery setting for D&D5e, I would like to thank Weaponized Ink for sending us a digital copy of their work.

If after having deepened with me this product you want to buy it, you can find it in digital version on Dungeon Master Guild for 8 dollars, about 8 euros.

The RPG market is now full of game possibilities, especially if we talk about the most famous role-playing game in the world; thanks to the System Reference Document, it allows you to approach the game even if you don’t have the manuals available. Yet the market does not stop and it happens, from time to time, to find very special products, like the one we are dealing with in this review.

A New Point of View for Storytelling

Fantasy settings have among their cornerstones, in addition to mythical waxworks and fabulous places, also magical objects. Swords, gems, and jewels endowed with sensational enchanted powers, able to change the fate of battles or even of the entire game world.

Weapons and jewels therefore but also books, the most precious object for a magician, an inexhaustible source of knowledge and power. Sometimes, these objects can even be sentient. Yet despite their intelligence, they are rarely at the centre of the stories we tell. Usually forced into the background, these objects rarely get a chance to tell their stories

Bound reverses this paradigm and puts sentient books at the very centre of the plot.

An Interesting Premise

Born from the fervent imagination of Gabriel Hatcher, Christopher Gunning, and April Allsop, Bound offers to play a sentient Tome with great magical powers. The intelligent books, who call themselves “Tomes,” live in a world where inanimate objects are as valued as animate beings.

Bound offers a completely new setting, parallel to the better-known ones; a place where clever books and other magical items hold court, wage war, and build the future.

I admit that at first reading the idea may displace or, in some cases, be funny. Analyzing it instead with a little more attention, I believe it can significantly broaden the game perspectives. But let’s look a little closer at what the conditions of the game are.

Review of the Setting of Bound

In the world of Bound, therefore, what is inanimate comes to life. The characters are sentient Tomes with a desire to influence the world according to their Author’s intentions. These are texts written to protect, inspire, educate and make the world a safer and more cultured place. The words contained in the pages of the Tomes are their mission and the reason for their existence. Of course, there are other sentient Tomes, some containing words to hurt, destroy, or dominate.

However intelligent or powerful, Tomes cannot autonomously use their content; they must therefore work side by side with a Custodian, a creature from the Animate world who helps them win against the evil Tomes in the War of Words.

The War of Words is a conflict that binds the nature of magic to reality. No Tome can ignore the War of Words. The magical words and runes in the Tomes help create the rules by which magic operates and, by extension, help hold reality together. Each Tome is therefore both a weapon and a soldier in the War of Words.

Special Rules for Very Special Characters

Bound‘s rules and settings are designed to integrate into any official or homebrew D&D world; however, playing an inanimate object is perhaps not the best choice for those who have never approached the most famous role-playing game in the world.

Since player characters in Bound cannot move independently or speak, the supplement introduces a new class specific to them: the Memeticist. Like any other class, it is spread over 20 levels and there is a handy reference table for its progression in the supplement. Of course, each level guarantees special powers and abilities, all perfectly consistent with the fact that you are playing an inanimate object. As with all other magic items, Tomes require a creature to form a bond with them before their properties can be used properly; this mystical bond is called Attunement. Without Attunement, the creature cannot become a Custodian, and the Tome cannot grant its special abilities; however, anyone with telepathic abilities can always interact with a Tome.

The world of Bound is experienced through the relationship between the Tome and its Custodian; we must therefore think about the creation of both figures that we will bring into play.

Create a Tome

While the rulebook suggests that you think of your Tome as you would any other D&D5e species, there are differences; its creation requires a particular process that includes the selection of the materials of which it is made, the author who wrote it and the topic it deals with, as well as a special “Chronology” that defines the history and the first powers of the Tome.

Bearing in mind a couple of basic rules (such as that the Tomes cannot communicate except telepathically with their Custodians and that they cannot autonomously cast the spells they contain), following the simple basic steps indicated by Bound it is possible to create your protagonist. First, you need to decide the title, choose the author, create the index and a small excerpt, define the material of which it is made and finally decide the chronology.

Each phase of the creation of the Tome in Bound is supported by practical tables that can also be used only as a suggestion.

Create a Custodian

A little more straightforward and more classic is the creation of a Custodian in Bound, as we will see in this review. Remember that the Custodian is not the protagonist but rather acts as a helper and is therefore a sort of NPC.

To create the Custodian it is necessary to choose an archetype among Warrior, Expert or Enchanter. As the Tome levels up, its Attunement with its Custodian will grow stronger, so the Custodian will also level up. For example, the Custodian’s Hit Points will also increase just as those of a normal character would. The supplement presents a table with all the specifications for each possible archetype.

The Custodian will also have his personality, which is vital to the narrative especially when Tome and Custodian disagree on what action to take or strategy to adopt. Bearing in mind that the Custodian is an NPC, the GM will then be able to intervene if the Tome is trying to convince the Custodian to do something contrary to his ideals or personality. The latter can be randomly selected on a table by rolling a d100 or in agreement with the master.

Bound Aesthetics Review

Bound is a supplement of about 50 pages which recalls, in terms of graphics and primary colours, the pages of an ancient tome.

All the text, on a single column, is interspersed with tables on a white background; the chosen font is easily readable.

The illustrations have two decidedly different styles, a more modern one to mark the chapters and one that closely resembles the style of the old illuminated tomes to underline specific passages or decorate the tables. In my opinion, the difference in style does not clash and makes the supplement pleasant.

Since a physical copy doesn’t exist at the moment, if you want to print it yourself I can say that even with a black-and-white resolution it doesn’t look bad, although the illustrations lose a bit of charm.

Bound Review Conclusions

Bound, as can be seen from this review, is certainly an intriguing supplement; perhaps, due to mechanical and narrative peculiarities, not suitable for those approaching the most famous game in the world for the first time.

The possibility of interpreting something that in other contexts is only a tool is, in my opinion, a new approach to dealing with already experienced stories. I’m sure it will give moments of narrative intensity and some twists worthy of memorable sessions!

If you enjoyed this Bound review, stay tuned for more RPGs!