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Style: Decent art, but I'm not an art person so YMMV and all that. The font is readable throughout, and it's written clearly enough so that you can understand what the game's about. A few typos, and in one case (p.57) there is a sidebar where some of the text seems to have disappeared. None of that is a serious hindrance to understanding the game.
Substance: Time for a breakdown.
Track 1 sets the backstory for the game. Magic has always existed in our world, mostly hidden because it apparently tends to back history's losers and oppressed when they most needed it to survive. It's enigmatic and hardly scientific, so that even those who are good at weilding it know only a fraction of what they can do.
In this alternate history, because it backed poor blacks, Latinos, and others who could barely scrape by in the ghettoes, it gained press and publicity during the rise of rap and hip-hop, as a few magic-using gangsters (called 'slingers') became popular and brought their knowledge of the streets and magic to a broader audience.
That's where Track 2 comes in. At the start of the game, magic is a known phenomenon, but no one (not even most slingers) really understands it. The world outside the ghetto is concerned, but as long as their children aren't directly affected, no one in authority has really done anything about it...yet. And for the most part, city life is only slightly tilted to the weird. Interesting parallels to be drawn between magic and drugs or gang violence, yes?
Track 3 concerns putting a character together. You are a slinger, with the power of your Wyrd (pronounced "word" in this game) to use magic in various ways to make your life a little easier. Your are by default part of a gang, with all the advantages and headaches that entails. From your gang, you also get that gang's Aspect (the part of the Wyrd that gang focuses on when doing magic), it's rituals for gaining Juice (fuel for magic 'slings', meaning spells), and a few gang-related magical rituals known and usable only by the gang. You can choose to either join a non-slinger gang, go solo, or play a non-slinger, but these options have their own plusses and minuses, especially out on the street where there is safety in numbers. Remember, slingers are rare, and are about as trusted by most non-slinger gangstas as the cops are--not at all.
As far as gangs go, here are your choices. While Wyrd is Bond does not provide explicit guidelines to make your own gang, it's fairly easy to extrapolate once you see the examples.
- The Crows: Following the teachings of Aleister Crowley, the Aspect that the Crows follow is "Physical." Their focus is the material world, the riches and the flesh that inhabits it. They are all about the bling-bling, sex, and drugs as the path to enlightenment. The poster children of Mothers Against Rap campaigns.
- The 3xStars: Following the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, the Aspect that the Triple-X Stars follow is "Spiritual", connoting the connection between all things and the dance between Order and Chaos. Thriving on luck and disorder, their primary goal is to uplift and perfect their communities. The "good guys" of the setting, though there are exceptions.
- The D-Men: Spawn of Satan (sometimes literally!) these are the default bad-guys of the setting. Their Aspect of the Wyrd is "Infernal", covering anything that adds to human divisiveness, pain, misery, and corruption. Hated by all other gangs, with good cause. Possibly the most difficult gang to incorporate into a game as PCs, as most players will be tempted to play them as having the "Chaotic Stupid" alignment, and to be fair, there doesn't seem to be much redeeming about them.
- Los Reyes: Hispanic-only gang, they are extremely isolationist and very protective of their turf. Their Aspect is "Family", allowing them to do whatever magic it takes to take care of their own. Highly religious and hot-tempered.
- The Hungry Ghosts: Oriental-only slinger gang, as isolationist as Los Reyes but not as militant about it. Their Aspect of the Wyrd is "Taiji," the balance of polar extremes. Anti-drug and only violent when provoked, at least while the higher-ups are watching.
- The Dread: Jamaican houngan handpicked by Baron Samedi, they were deliberately created to counter the blatant use of magic around and against the ignorant by other slingers. Their Aspect of the Wyrd is "Death", and some higher-ups have the zombis to prove it. Don't disrespect them, and don't sling magic around the non-magical while they're around. They despise the Crows and the D-men.
- Blood Queens: Women-only gang of literal man-eaters. Most blatantly magical of slingers, their Aspect is "Sanguine", meaning they gain power from blood. NOT Vampires, they will consume flesh. Most come into the gang from dysfunctional relationships, seeking healing and revenge. The only man welcome in their territories is a rail-thin enigma called "The Old Man."
After them, some mention is made about real-world gangs, and their tendency to keep slingers either at arm's-length, or to keep real close tabs on them. One gang (Vice Lords) hates slingers with a passion and will not refrain from killing them if they have the chance. Point being: slingers are minorities within a subset of minorities. Probably best to stick together.
The rest of character creation is also in Track 3. You are not given set "attributes" as in other games. You are given Traits, two positive and two negative, to indicate things your character is good at or bad at. You are given a broad-range Skill to cover things your character has proficiency in. You have at least one Ally (your best friend), one Enemy (someone who makes your life hell), one Lover (the person who is the center of your universe), and one Rival (the one person you hate more than anything.) Relationships are VITAL to making this game work. No "lone wolves" need apply. You start at rank one in Wyrd, which gives you either an initiave bonus, an effectiveness bonus, a "magic item" of your own, or a personal ritual to gain more Juice to fuel your magic. Roll 1d6 for your starting Juice, and you're ready to roll.
Track 4, the mechanics on how you play, makes Track 3 make a whole lot more sense. As befits gang members, denizens of a violent and chaotic world, all characters have three base "attributes": Order (how fast you execute, aka initiative), Power (how effective you are at achieving your goal), and Payback (a gift from the Wyrd, giving benefits such as healing, not being damaged in the first place, more success on your next magical action, or a nifty magical effect on your next mundane action.) During each time you need to roll (combat or otherwise), you roll 3d6, take each of the dice, and slot one each in Order, Power, and Payback. Higher is, of course, better. Applicable Traits add a die to these rolls, and the player keeps either the highest three (if a positive Trait) or the lowest three (if a negative Trait.) Positive and negative Traits, if they both apply, cancel each other on a one-for-one basis. Skillz, if applicable, add a die to the roll, and you add it's score to either Order, Power, or Payback, depending on the player's preference. (That part could have been made clearer in the game rules.) Bonus dice (situational modifiers) are treated mechanically as Traits. Finally, your Wyrd score might give you a set one-for-one bonus point to either your Order or Power roll, depending on the choice a player makes upon gaining that Wyrd.
Experience is treated in a free-form manner, based on your character's Reputation score. The higher your Rep, the more Wyrd you gain, and the more you are likely to gain Skillz. Allies and Enemies are mostly gained through roleplaying.
Juice is also covered here. You can only ever have up to 20 Juice at any time. You can only use gang rituals,personal rituals, objects, etc. to gain Juice once. (Once per day or once per session is not stated. It is assumed that that was left for the Master of Ceremonies (read: GM) to decide.) Each sling drains as much Juice as the Power roll to sling it. Juice is valuable, so watch how you use it. Also, magic is limited to small-scale effects, and damage is mostly less than what you'd get with a decent gun. You ain't Merlin, you don't shake the world, you're the sorceror's apprentice with street attitude. Remember that.
Also in this section, the importance of True Names is covered. There's a reason that most slingers assume a street-name and use it. Your birth name, if known, not only allows a rival slinger to hit you and hit you hard, but the more people know it, the less effective a slinger you become. The Wyrd only back underdogs, remember? So if you break out into the spotlight, or get caught by the cops and your name leaks into the press, you're screwed unless you take elaborate precautions. Thus, the only effective slingers are ones who "keep it street" and settle for notoriety rather than fame or fortune. The parallells between rappers who "sell out" versus "keeping it real" should be obvious.
My only big complaint is that Tracks 3 and 4 should have switched places, since Track 3 relies so much on Track 4 to make sense.
Track 5 is for the Master of Ceremonies (aka MC, GM, etc.) It details the cops (some of whom apparently know the Wyrd), the Mafia (who have their own slingers!), and some of the heavy-hitters in the magical underground. The parallels between the street gangs of today and the glorified thugs of yesteryear (the Mob) are interesting, to say the least. It is also a how-to guide on using the relationships set down on the character sheet to make adventures and keep dramatic tension, as well as some common-sense advice on keeping the action flowing.
Also present are rules for Disruption. Anytime you act in any manner contrary to your Aspect of the Wyrd, you gain Disruption. The more Disruption you have, the more things go wrong for you when you sling. You can get rid of Disruption by atoning for your sins; this is called Redemption. It takes five points of Redemption to kill one point of Disruption. The Wyrd does not like to be played.
The game from the start assumes you are familiar with roleplaying, and also assumes that you've figured out the core assumptions behind this game: that players are playing mid-teen to early twentysomething kids born into the ghetto, with not much chance of survival and even less chance of making it out or even making good. None of them have the higher education that most roleplayers take for granted, nor do they have access to computers or a lot of technology that most roleplayers are used to. If they have the Wyrd, most of them use it as a club, not for world-changing effects. Relationships are the most vital tools a character has, as the rest of the world is violent, chaotic, and desperate. Safety in numbers is a rule to live by. You always owe somebody, whether it's your friends, your gang, or the Wyrd; no one starting out this game has the luxury of not having obligations. Nowhere in Wyrd is Bond is this spelled out; it has to be inferred and uncovered from between the lines. It would have been better if it was spelled out, to make sure everyone playing was on the same page. Still, once you read it a couple of times, things that didn't make sense before start making sense. It also assumes that the GM is willing to fine-tune the system and is competent enough to know what to scale to achieve the desired results. A bit more advice on this would have been helpful, but odds are if you've heard of Wyrd is Bond at all, you're familiar enough with RPGs in general that this shouldn't represent a problem.
Track 6 is intro scenarios, loosely designed to slot your characters into. "Another Body Murdered" is designed to get the characters together, while "The Who Ride" deals with magical revenge and the rap industry. My main problem with these scenarios is that they assume no one is playing a D-Man, as the D-Men figure heavily as bad guys in the scenarios. Not insurmountable, but it will require some heavy tuning. Also, I just know that players are going to want to sling curses like the one that drives "The Who Ride," and there really aren't any ways I can see to do it mechanically.
In Sum: Do you want to play a gangster, with all of the problems and little of the Hollywood mystique? Do you mind having magic, even though it comes with it's own pitfalls and isn't world-shaking? This game will do all of that, and well. The mechanics are simple enough to get out of the way, while still reinforcing the setting. The setting is a niche setting, but it's easy enough to get started and still provides high drama in a blood-opera sort of way. Street culture and gang culture are treated respectfully, without crossing the line into glamorizing. As long as you stick to the rules of the setting, the game will flow smoothly. If not, well, it can be borrowed to add some depth to a street-level d20 game, Shadowrun, or Unknown Armies.
That's it. Peace out.
