Hi, I am new to GMing and my entire group is new to EotE period. We usually play Savage worlds. However, i being tired of fantasy (we ran a fantasy savage world) and loving FFG board games decided to try this one out. We did enjoy it aside from my obvious shortfalls due to inexperience haha.

Anyways, we just ran the adventure in the back of the Core book and though everything went fine other than the normal first time playing a new system/GMing things... I keep thinking of the use of Obligation.

We kinda rushed character creation to get to playing as fast as possible and due to this, the obligations they chose are not well thought out which is fine, except some of theirs I cannot think of how to do it. I know obligation should be able to be "solved" or mechanically lowered. Like Han Solo could lower his obligation to Jabba if he would just pay his debts. My group has much more difficult things to figure out...

1. One player chose Oath(Manalorian). I read the article on Mandolorians on the starwarswiki but couldn't really think of how this would affect the character if I rolled his obligation? Maybe a mandalorian is a villain and he can't really kill him/her ? Even then, how would this obligation ever be lowered or raised? (numerically). This came up after reading about Motivations, which we skipped, and I thought that some of this may do better as a motivation rather than obligation?

2. One player chose addiction(gambling). Now this will be fun i'm sure, but how would you allow this obligation to be "lowered" or "raised" ? Would it go down if he went and spent a lot of credits gambling to get a "fix" or would that raise it? Could spending a lot of credits on rehab(lol) lower it? I'm just curious on some ways you would work with this.

3. I noticed that coming up with something special every roll with advantage/threat was very tough. Do you always do this with every roll that nets an advantage or threat? or do you only use it when/if it is during a major scene? just curious on what you do and any tips ?

Well thanks for all advice, I know most of these are just opinions, but I'm absolutely clueless on the Mandalorian Oath obligation, not exactly sure how to increase it, decrease it, and/or use it as an adventure hook or have it cause stress when it is rolled prior to an adventure.

Also any tips/advice is welcome for this new GM!

Oh, one last thing. Any website, youtube, or podcast that has real EotE sessions on it so I can listen and learn from actual games?

Remember that Obligation doesn't have to have a physical manifestation in every game. Having it pop only means that the character has something eating at him deep down. If you pop an obligation for say... gambling, but the players are in a deep dark tunnel under a sith temple, you don't' have to have a wild gambling hall suddenly appear. It just means that that character is "jonesing for a fix" is all. If you can come up with a reason to have Obligation manifest, cool, but if you can't, don't worry about it.

1) Oath: Mando suggests to me the character is one. So his Oath might be something simple like to bring back the good name of his dishonored clan, or more broad, like the desire to live closer to the Mando code and lifestyle. Rasing and lowering is then an extension of "did he do that?" If he did, knock of a few points. If he didn't no. If he really didn't, add a few.

2) Well paying off his debts through normal means is a method. A more interesting idea though, have him bet with his obligation as well as money. Every time he plays a hand of Sabacc, he's got to ante up at least 1 point of ob (though he can drop in a couple more if he likes). If he wins the game, he loses that point/points. If he loses, he keeps that point. If he doesn't gamble at...he gains a point.

Also he can use his Obligation as a resource. Outta credits and raelly need to buy something? The character can take some Points to "go card shark" and whatta ya know? He wins the exact amount of credits he needs!

3) You are encouraged to come up with something. This takes practice, no real other way. Listen to "Skill Monkey" line of Podcasts, and don't be afraid to just keep a folded up character sheet/skill list in your back pocket. When you find yourself with a moment to kill (in line, on the bus, at lunch, whatever) pull out that paper, pick a skill pretend you are using it wherever you are to do something... try and come up with all the combos of success, failure, advantage, threat, triumph, and despair results.

There's a few out there the best to start off with is the Order 66 podcast which deals with the game and has a few actual plays.

Another would be Dice Heroes they've done two seasons worth of edge actual play episodes, Real Gamers have done some although I haven't heard much of them of late which is probably because I missed their releases.

These you can find on the rpgpodcast.com site, Thursday Knights have done at least 2 episodes and check out youtube there's been a couple of posters there with videos of games they've run one even on Beyond the Rim (don't have the book handy but they even posted a short trailer on the opening of that adventure FFG released.

1) When I ran this, I tried to get the players to combine their obligation and motivation to explain their background.

Had a mercenary soldier who had a love for his clan but also has a criminal past which was explained that he was blamed for the actions of another Mandalorian but accepted the blame because of his loyalty even though it got him exiled.

I wish I handled those better since another player also got the Greed obligation and I should have made him the owner of the ship but it panned out the Rodian Pilot owned the ship, got complaints she got most of the reward ignoring they got money and she got to reduce her obligation instead.

2) Depends on how they want to handle it, if their combined total reaches or exceed 100 they can't improve anything until they find a way to reduce this I don't think I've explained that properly but you should get plenty of responses soon given what I seen from other threads in this forum.

3) Advantages can be spent for criticals and boost die although I've not run enough games to answer that properly the threat I suppose can be explained using that scene from a new hope where Han chases those storm troopers and they run into a barracks so he ends up facing an entire garrison forcing him to flee but managing to escape unhurt!

As for your Mandalorian character's Oath, is he sworn into the service of a Hutt or part of a family where he's following their orders perhaps searching for a missing clan or family member?

I better stop there hopefully after a good sleep I'll be able to post better but I hope that helped!

Yeah, these are also cases where some thought or elaboration on the player's part could help you to work the obligations into the games.

For "Oath: Mandalorian", I'm not even sure what this would mean. Does he have an Oath TO a Mandalorian? Has he sworn a Mandalorian Oath?

I'm not really up on the lore of Mandalorians so I'm not sure what that would entail, but if the player chose it, perhaps the player has specific ideas of how it could come up in his sessions?

An example I can visualize is something like a Doctor's Hippocratic Oath, or whatever the Star Wars equivalent might be. A Doctor who has sworn an oath to help cure people could find his oath tested by coming up on a villainous or evil character who has been wounded and is helpless. The Doctor character could find himself at odds with other members of his party who want to kill the helpless enemy, whereas the Doctor wants to keep his honor and do what he sees as the right thing.

In general to bring someone's Obligation into play, consider whatever the Obligation pushes them towards. And then set up a good reason for them to have to do the other thing.

If a character's got a gambling addiction, this could mean you send the party to Ord Mantell or Nar Shadaa or someplace where there are huge, massive casinos that beckon to the player from every street corner. If the player roleplays it well, they might get themselves into a game and spend the money the PCs just earned from their last job before it can be used to fix their ship's hyperdrive, or they might get themselves in trouble with bookies or loan sharks.

For lowering or raising it, I'd look at that as a factor of the character's personal growth. If a character becomes more mature and able to resist their temptations for whatever reasons, they might lower their Obligation. If they give in to it constantly and run themselves into debt, this might represent raising the Obligation.

If the gambling addict wants to lower their Obligation, you could set them up a scenario in which they've got to make some hard choices, possibly lose a friend, or put the party into physical danger because they resist their gambling temptation.

Maybe a crimelord says "You owe me 100,000 credits, so either you go commit this crime for me or I'll break your legs". Maybe he's supposed to go gamble at a casino on Nar Shadaa and plant some bugs while the crimelord is running a heist of the casino.

If he resists taking the job and stands up to the crimelord, he might come out the other side of the adventure with a lowered Obligation.

Just some thoughts!

For spending advantages and threats, I think when you do it for a few adventures you find yourself getting into a rhythm.

You don't want to bog down the game on every single roll by trying to make up the most amazing cinematic thing anyone has ever seen, but you don't want each roll to just be a boring "2 threat: take 2 strain, 3 advantage: pass a boost die".

Just like in an action movie, there are plenty of bits where the heroes and villains are just shooting at each other, but then it goes into slow motion and someone does a backflip off a wall while shooting two guns over his shoulder and it hits a barrel of gasoline and explodes the bad guy leaps through a window and he's on fire and he dives into a bunch of crates which shatter as he rolls through them.

You'll start to feel when it's cool to really go all out on coming up with something cool and when to move it along pretty quick by passing a boost or recovering some strain.

as for podcasts of actual play...

http://beggingforxp.com/category/podcast/star-wars/

Thanks for all the info! Great ideas. I was wondering, not quite ready to mAke my own adventure; would you guys recommend BoR or JoY published adventures ?

Another good way of handling odd obligations is to consider that the obligation is a reflection of the downside of whatever it is.

For example, one of my players took Obligation: Obsession Big Game Hunting. While the obsession itself may never go away (without a lot of psychological treatment), the after effects of the means he used to accomplish his hunting way be ameliorated. His rival that he angered is dealt with, the negative viewpoint of other hunters could be improved. Things like that.

The worst part is... he took Motivation to be the best. It has become a vicious cycle for his character but very entertaining for the player and the group.

with regard to obligations:

i changed my approach from the RAW. instead of rolling the obligation check at the start of the session, we roll at the end of a session. this way i have until the next session to come up with a way to integrate the obligation into the game.

with regard to obligations:

i changed my approach from the RAW. instead of rolling the obligation check at the start of the session, we roll at the end of a session. this way i have until the next session to come up with a way to integrate the obligation into the game.

Yeah, I already decided to do that, that way i can prepare a something... though we uh... have never had obligation come up lol. We have had only 2 sessions but their total obligation is 65. (they all got extra i think) I want it to come up so i can make it be a huge strain so that they learn how big of a role is actually does play, but so far it hasn't manifested.