So iin the near future I was planning on running a campaign where the party would be colonists on a planet, and rather than have the usual party hi-jinks of screw up move on repeat, i wanted them to have a more permanent and fixed relationship with their colony. Rather than just impress upon them this I wanted to help them along with a style of obligation, but one linked to the community that could increase and decrease, and would also denote leadership within the community, which I hope will give them some motivation to seize it.

I typed up a little word doc which has some explanations of the rules and situations i was hoping ot encourage with these rules. Thoughts and feelings on this would be much appreciated, and of course should anyone want to use it they would be more than welcome.

Drive File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B16uAbqroeeiUmt3aktCX1ZnVDA/edit?usp=sharing

As a slight aside i designed this with my players and play styles in mind, and as such was not expecting any power-gaming with these rules, if you feel they can be overbalanced or too weak please let me know anyway!

I haven't read it (I'm on my phone), but wouldn't Duty work well?

I wanted to make a more tailored form of Duty, rolling to see if Duty will help at the start of missions and going for personal duty for the rebellion didn't seem to entirely fit. All in all I wanted to make something more personal for the players rather than a vague number which'll occasionally increase.

musket_max, have you picked up Far Horizons? Sounds like the Colonist focus and ideas might go well with this.

I did see the preview for Far Horizons, and will definitely get it for this campaign (i thought it was coming out in late september until you mentioned it), I also was linked to the new preview when I posted this over on another site. I gave it a read and thought it was maybe more emphasising a personal base that isn't a starship, so I don't think anything I've done here will be made redundant by Far Horizons, but I shall see. This is intended in lieu of anything in Far Horizons, though if it does have any thing that compliments this I'd be happy to alter this.

I can't get the whole thing to load, I have real problems looking at things in google drive.

But have you looked at the way Shadowrun 5th handles contacts? It might give you some ideas for pointing out relationships.

The game I'm playing in is focused in a central location, so it sounds like we're doing something like what you're working on. It's working fine for us without worrying about any changes to the system - but thus far none of us have worked through our background obligation, nor have we done anything to try and raise our obligation. Our GM thinks that obligation should only come into play when we the players deliberately make the choice to raise it in exchange for something, so despite playing for a year now, it's not come into play yet.

edit: (It comes into play when he rolls it in the beginning and our pasts come haunting us - I just meant that the numbers changing hasn't happened yet.)