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I've uploaded a new set of rules to itch.io that use Tarot cards to prep and then run a wilderness area for exploration. The reason I'm linking it here is that the last page of the zine describes the primary function of bells within Gelgelim.
I've written about bells before. As a quick recap, bells ward off bad things (thieves, storms, spirits, witches, bad luck, demons, etc.), but it is difficult to model that at the table unless these warded-against forces actually plague the characters. And I'm not interested in making my players' lives more stressful in their urban interactions. However, by assigning 'bad luck' types of events to Tarot cards, which I present in the zine as an alternative to random(ish) encounters, I find a use for bells.
Bells make traveling more safe by reducing the chances of bad things happening. Different modalities and melodies ward off different things, and better bellringers can choose to weave together these modalities and melodies to abjure against more things at once. At the table, the player chooses some number of cards to avoid from a pre-selected list (boginky, spirits, delaying circumstances, catastrophe, traveling accident, and a few others). If I would reveal that card while the characters travel, I instead shuffle it back into the deck. If I draw that card again, the bells have no effect.
Silver bells repel boginky, both the card that invokes them and, if encountered anyways, will keep them at bay as long as the bells sound.
