So, we've done four session of our current game, and my players' Edge/Force and Destiny characters have fallen in with the Rebellion and shake their fists at the Empire. After some discussion, the group has decided that they want to still mess with their old lives (Obligations), but want formal ties to the Rebellion (I envision a sort of "Letter of Marque" thingy deal for them, so, they'll have Duty scores but not necessarily rank, or it'll be "auxiliary rank", which is hilarious, since everything is auxiliary, but I digress).

Anyway, my question is, what Duty do I start these characters at? It obviously can't be their Obligation scores, since that's something else (and they're not leaving their old lives behind anyway). They obviously did something to catch the Rebellion's eye (thus the contact) but it isn't "bringing back plans of the Death Star" big.

How to you handle Duty for characters transitioning in to the Rebellion:

1. Zero for everything, but have them pick Duties, so that when they start doing stuff, they start gain scores?
2. Start them at a score, a "thank you for joining"? Like, 5 or 10 points each (as if they were a character beginning in AoR natively)?
3. Something else simple, or something I missed in the book that clarifies this?

Pick a Duty and start at 0.

Here's how I'm going to do it in when my group finally gets into the rebellion properly this weekend. They have a zero score right now, but I'm jumping them through a boot camp basic training game, so I'll kick them 5 or so Duty by the end of it - just enough to get them in the door. They should have the specific Duty all picked out by the time we get together, so we'll see if there is an opportunity for them to get a bit more.

Definitely start at Zero, but in the process of joining the Alliance to restore the Republic they will surely do something to get noticed, so award a little duty for that. With Duty don't aim for everyone to get the same amount of it every session, but do aim for their total to reach 100 every 3-4 sessions for weekly games, 2-3 for fortnightly and 1-2 sessions for monthly games (as per Devs and Order 66 podcast advice)

When Living on Borrowed Time made the transition I had all the returning characters choose a Duty, and gave them a value of 0. If they'd earned their way into the Alliance without having been paid to steal that Interdictor, than they may have received quite a bit of Duty to start, but at first the Alliance wasn't entirely sure if they could be trusted without credits being involved.

Definitely start at Zero, but in the process of joining the Alliance to restore the Republic they will surely do something to get noticed, so award a little duty for that. With Duty don't aim for everyone to get the same amount of it every session, but do aim for their total to reach 100 every 3-4 sessions for weekly games, 2-3 for fortnightly and 1-2 sessions for monthly games (as per Devs and Order 66 podcast advice)

That is good advice (I mean, about how often they should up the Contribution Rank). Thank you! My games are monthly so I was wondering how to handle that part.

@Cannibal Halfling - yeah, I hear you. It's a similar-ish situation (basically, the PCs show up with a bunch of cryo-frozen engineers who were being kidnapped to work on a certain project...and they intercepted and wanted to get them away from the Empire, and so, they had to contact the Rebellion; so, a good deed, but is it trustworthy enough?). So I felt weird giving them any rank or anything.

That depends on whether your Rebels genuinely want to help those engineers or will turn out to be very little different from the Imperials as they might want them to build the stuff they would rather never deal with ever again...

So are they dealing with Bail Organa decent natured Rebels or Saw or unredeemable evil Rebels?

Not saying there isn't a middle ground just its dubious...