*SPOILER ALERT* (Debts to Pay / Bendu's Shadow)

In our previous session the party just finished up the Debts to Pay adventure and were heading off to pay Bargos the Hutt his credits. One of the PCs had stolen all the credits instead of the 100k they're supposed to. Before they can make it back they get pulled into a space battle that begins Bendu's Shadow and are offered a job by the Rebels. After the battle they call up Bargos and tell him the situation but unfortunately he isn't buying it. A hefty failure and one Despair later and he's threatening them right until the party mechanic cuts the comm line - before he can tell them their 100k they owe is now doubled (maybe tripled?).

Most of the party can guess what the Hutt was going to say and rather than doing the Rebel's dirty work for credits they ask if the Alliance can 'take care of him'. I definitely want to reward this kind of out-of-the-box thinking but don't want them walking around with tens of thousands of credits. Also, I don't think the Alliance can afford to start a second war with the Hutts.

My goal is to reward the players while not completely bypassing a potentially serious plot point. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

A couple ideas I was playing with:

- Bargos has some powerful friends. A recurring Nemesis in our campaign takes the Hutt under his wing and protects him. They plot the party’s destruction together and are outside the Alliance’s reach. This would make the now huge Obligation the party has to Bargos more threatening as he isn’t just some broke Hutt but an agent of a far more sinister organization

- The Rebels are able to bribe some of Bargos’ guards (they’re barely paid by the bankrupt Hutt) so they can feed useful information to the PCs. They can use this info to blackmail him or take him down themselves.

- Another criminal organization has it out for Bargos and would be willing to help the PCs, for a price… This could be an entire adventure on its own.

I have read a few of the adventures and they seems to have a theme with regard to large rewards as it relates to the game and obligation. Shadow of a Black Sun has a few situations that boil down to a choice the characters make, a large reward that comes with obligation or a small reward that keeps obligation the same or reduces the obligation.

If you apply that mechanic to the situation you have described, you could handle it with an in game mechanic combined with a change in your story.

The crew decides to keep all 165K (or whatever the large amount of credits) and each gain a 5-10 magnitude obligation from their action. You can tailor the obligation to your story. Bargos wants the money more than the payback then slap them with a 5-10 "Debt to Bargos" Obligation. Bargos wants them pushing up daisies for ripping him off, saddle them with a 5-10 "Hutt Bounty Hunters coming at you" obligation.

The players get to keep the rather large reward and make a powerful enemy and you can represent both mechanically and relate it to the story.

Just my 2 credits.

Ian

I have a different system for rewarding creative ideas - and it's borrowed from another user of this forum. He designed something called "Destiny deck", here is the link to the thread:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/97446-destiny-deck-custom-rewards/

It's better than extra xp, rewards the players, not characters and I like it a lot. The best part - if your players like it, they can use it, if not, they can ignore!

What if you had some sort of Nemesis character that forced them to either hide or invest the cash? Something like a crack team investigating the robbery; something to force them to either hide or invest the money (in a new ship?) instead of letting it sit around and burn.