Roleplaying games are a social activity. The D&D groups that we remember for years to come are those played together with friends whom we love, or come to love over the course of countless sessions. These are the groups whose characters remain with us, who we tell stories about, and who we compare all other RPG characters to in the future.

Games like this sometimes happen by pure chance, but your odds of forming a legendary gaming group with an epic campaign and unforgettable characters skyrocket when you consciously work with your friends between sessions to create strong character relationships. In this installment of New Player’s Guide, learn how to create character bonds in-game, how to extend character bonding outside of RPG sessions, and how to help ease you and your friends into forming deep character relationships without making things awkward.

Roleplaying Without Making it Weird

If you’re not used to roleplaying, pretending to be someone else can be terrifying. And awkward. Terrifyingly awkward. Most of us roleplayed as kids in some capacity; you might have play-acted lightsaber duels with sticks or pool noodles, or pretended to Pokémon trainers, or pretended to be exploring dangerous ruins like Indiana Jones. What it was doesn’t matter—think back to the freedom from embarrassment and ego you had back then. You could do anything as a kid, without worrying if it was cringey or awkward. Your friends didn’t think you were weird because you loved doing something out of the ordinary with all of your heart.

Remember that feeling. If you’re your group’s Dungeon Master, you have the power to ask your entire group to do that. The biggest cause of roleplaying awkwardness is an atmosphere of judgment. Your D&D group is much more likely to explore their characters’ personalities if they feel safe that their friends won’t judge them for it. For some people, this is taken as a given. Most of the naturally outgoing or extroverted people I’ve played with aren’t saddled by this fear of social judgment—but the vast majority of the introverts or otherwise socially awkward I know (myself included) have had to work hard to overcome this fear. I’m totally confident doing funny voices when I’m DMing a half dozen different NPCs and monsters, but creating deep emotional bonds with friends while I’m playing an adventurer is still something I need to psyche myself up for.

If you want to create a safe environment for roleplaying that’s free of judgment, say it out loud to your entire group. Do it during a Session Zero, so that you know you have everyone’s full attention. If your DM says, “Don’t giggle or make fun of people for roleplaying. This table is a place where people are free to experiment, be weird, and try things that might not work without judgment,” then they are laying down a house rule that should be adhered to with as much respect as a mechanical house rule. Creating a safe atmosphere is really as simple as saying those two sentences—though the DM and the players need to self-police themselves afterwards to make sure that environment stays welcoming. If people giggle and make fun without consequences, then you’ve shown the wallflowers among you that your promises don’t mean anything. Give them a reason to trust you—just like any relationship, a good roleplaying relationship is all about trust!  

Setting Boundaries

Speaking of trust, the topic of boundaries is important enough to merit its own section. You and your fellow roleplayers aren’t mind readers. When you sit down to play with people you’re playing with for the first time, it’s important to ask them about what topics they are and aren’t interested in bringing up during roleplay, and which topics they absolutely do not want touched upon. Again, this is a great topic to cover during a Session Zero.

Long-time friends may have intuited one another’s boundaries and limits over the course of the years they’ve known each other, so you don’t need to formally ask them anything. If you’ve played D&D with one group of people for months or years, you may have fallen out the practice of asking people what their roleplaying boundaries are, if you were even in the practice at all! That’s totally understandable; you know your friends well enough that you don’t need to anymore. But if you start playing with a new group where you haven’t established that rapport yet, or if you’ve just invited a new person into your group, taking a moment to lay bare all the things you take for granted is incredibly important—and who knows, you may even open the door for one of your long-time players to voice some concerns that they’ve been too worried about rocking the boat to say until now.

Forging Bonds During Gameplay

The seeds of important character relationships are sown in the moment, during gameplay. One character saves another from certain death. Two characters decide to work together to convince a captive pirate to reveal the location of his booty. Several players are all knocked unconscious in a desperate battle against a villain who manages to escape, and so they all swear vengeance together when they are healed and awakened.

Bonds between characters are vital for good roleplaying. They create common ground for the characters to interact with one another on a deep level. Your character sheet has a space for you to write down the bonds that drive your character to adventure, based on your Background. These bonds are great for motivating your character once you start adventuring, but it’s bonds that you develop between other characters that unite you as a party. Why would four highly capable warriors, rogues, and mages travel together? There’s strength in numbers of course, but why doesn’t a character leave the party when they go on an adventure perpendicular to their bond?

Sometimes the answer is just because “we all want to play D&D together,” but a better, more character-motivated answer is “because our characters care about one another.” You’ve formed bonds of friendship, duty, shared vengeance, or even love with the other members of your party.

If you feel like the characters in your party aren’t creating these close connections, the simplest and most straightforward way to start forming these bonds is by asking your fellow players if they’re interested. Ask, “I want my character to have a closer relationship with your character. Remember when they both did _______? My character feels ______ about that. How about yours?” Ideally, they’ll reciprocate, and you can start working together with that player more closely. If they’re not interested in roleplaying in that way, then hopefully they’ll tell you straight-up that they aren’t interested in that kind of RP, and you can try to create a character bond with another player’s character.

There are also game mechanics that support this. The spell warding bond is a great low-level tool that links two allies together, allowing them to share equally in one another’s peril. The spell compelled duel also creates a singular bond between two creatures, though this bond is between an ally and an enemy. If you want to form a rivalry between your character and an NPC villain, this spell is a great way to lay the foundations for that relationship. Just yell, “Stop! They’re mine,” and watch as you and that villain become the center of attention.

Think of other spells or class features you have that will help you create roleplaying bonds. Class features like the Protection fighting style (available to fighters and paladins) give you a great prompt to stop a giant monster from goring your friend, then stare right into that beast’s ugly face and snarl, “Keep your claws off my friend.” Remember that all of these spells and features are just prompts; they’re opportunities for you to then do something cool in-character. The spell or feature alone isn’t enough to create a fun and memorable bond, but it will give you an easy opening to start.

Lifelong Companions

There’s also one more unique game mechanic in particular that deserves its own section: the Lifelong Companions. Mythic Odysseys of Theros introduces a new character-building element that serves to create heightened, mythic stories: Supernatural Gifts. Just like heroes of ancient mythology, characters in Theros campaigns are touched by divinity. One of these gifts transforms your character into one of the Nyxborn, a being born of the minds of the gods; another makes you an oracle, a being who can interpret the inscrutable signs of the gods themselves.

Another allows you to form an unbreakable bond with another character or NPC. This gift, the Lifelong Companion gift, grants you in-game mechanical benefits for being near your companion, and near your other party members as well. However, it also specifically asks you to get the consent of the player who you want to form a bond with before doing so. This is great! Everyone who wants to form character relationships should talk with those characters’ players often about the form their relationships are currently taking, and what ideas they have for their relationships in the future.

The best time for these talks to happen is away from the gaming table.

Going Beyond the Gaming Table

It’s the middle of the week. You don’t have another D&D game until Saturday, and isolation during the pandemic is making you twitchy. You want to play D&D because it’s your weekly fix of good, fun social interaction. You don’t have to wait for the next session of the campaign to create a scene of your character and another character talking at camp, or going hunting together, or doing something small between adventures.

It can be easier to roleplay with a full group of people there, since you can step in and out of the spotlight whenever you feel like it. But, if you feel awkward roleplaying in front of a large group, it could be easier to sit down with a friend and roleplay a scene one-on-one over video call. Or, if you’d rather not to do that, open up a shared text document (using Google Drive or a similar app) and roleplay out a scene over text, like you’re playing your own mini play-by-post forum RPG. It’s best to let your DM know that you’re doing this, and to be respectful of the world they’ve created. Don’t go killing dragons in your scene unless you’ve asked your DM’s permission. Hunting a giant elk or protecting yourself from hobgoblin raiders might be more reasonable.

If you’re the DM and you want to delve into another character’s backstory, see if they’re interested in running a one-on-one RP session with you. In my current campaign, there are two ways that I like to RP one-on-one with players. The first is during downtime; my players’ party frequently stops in town between adventures for a week or two at a time, which gives them a chance to train, shop, and relax. I also take that time to ask if they do anything interesting in town during their downtime, and RP out mini-sessions with one or even two or three other players. Try to respect other peoples’ time while doing this; unless everyone wants to go long, keeping these downtime sessions to an hour or less is probably for the best.

The other type of one-on-one RP I’ve enjoyed during this campaign is similar to what I suggested two players do above. I take on the role of an NPC from one of my players’ backstory, and do a back-and-forth text RP to explore the details of that backstory. Typically, the player and I both have an idea of how the scene will end, so we’re both careful not to suddenly swerve off-track unless we have a good idea about how to get back. This is very different from most D&D sessions, where everything is up in the air and we find joy in the unexpected—but the change of pace is fun, and refreshing, and worth trying if you have players or a DM who’s interested in trying.

The most important rule of one-on-one roleplay is respect. Whenever I worry that I’m taking things off the rails, I explain my thinking to my friend in an out-of-character chat. If the player thinks everything’s okay, then we keep playing as normal, but if something seems wrong, neither of us are afraid to rewind and try again. As long as you respect what the other person wants, you can’t go wrong.

How do like to roleplay in your D&D games? Are there other fun ways of building relationships between D&D characters that you like to use in your D&D games? Let us know in the comments!

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James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.