So my group, playing AOR, have just finished their first adventure (The Perlemian Haul, played over 2 sessions)

One of the "rewards" was General Cracken granting them use of one of the impounded ships found in cargo module on the frieghter, a YT-1300 (there was also 2 Y-Wings and a Lambda, conveinient, no?)

However, I have left the origin of the frieghter a mystery, and wish to use it to build a plot hook. Specifically I want to have the previous owners owe someone bad something big, i.e. obligation.

So my 3 part question is

A) Can I run a "group" obligation, and not assign it to a particular player

B) Can I keep it a secret, with their actiobs affecting it, and if it triggers possibly revealing it (or not, which could be fun, if not a bit sadistic "Why do we keep getting attacked by these guys)

C) how do I integrate it with Duty. Do I put it on the other end of the same table, or on a separate table and roll twice?

So my group, playing AOR, have just finished their first adventure (The Perlemian Haul, played over 2 sessions)

One of the "rewards" was General Cracken granting them use of one of the impounded ships found in cargo module on the frieghter, a YT-1300 (there was also 2 Y-Wings and a Lambda, conveinient, no?)

However, I have left the origin of the frieghter a mystery, and wish to use it to build a plot hook. Specifically I want to have the previous owners owe someone bad something big, i.e. obligation.

So my 3 part question is

A) Can I run a "group" obligation, and not assign it to a particular player

B) Can I keep it a secret, with their actiobs affecting it, and if it triggers possibly revealing it (or not, which could be fun, if not a bit sadistic "Why do we keep getting attacked by these guys)

C) how do I integrate it with Duty. Do I put it on the other end of the same table, or on a separate table and roll twice?

That's not an Obligation, it's a plot twist. Not everything in the story has to use the Obligation mechanics.

So my group, playing AOR, have just finished their first adventure (The Perlemian Haul, played over 2 sessions)

One of the "rewards" was General Cracken granting them use of one of the impounded ships found in cargo module on the frieghter, a YT-1300 (there was also 2 Y-Wings and a Lambda, conveinient, no?)

However, I have left the origin of the frieghter a mystery, and wish to use it to build a plot hook. Specifically I want to have the previous owners owe someone bad something big, i.e. obligation.

So my 3 part question is

A) Can I run a "group" obligation, and not assign it to a particular player

B) Can I keep it a secret, with their actiobs affecting it, and if it triggers possibly revealing it (or not, which could be fun, if not a bit sadistic "Why do we keep getting attacked by these guys)

C) how do I integrate it with Duty. Do I put it on the other end of the same table, or on a separate table and roll twice?

That's not an Obligation, it's a plot twist. Not everything in the story has to use the Obligation mechanics.

THat is right and yet still perfectly fine to use via the obligation mechanic. The whole duty / obligation mechanics are in some ways anyway just GM tools to distribute plot twists and stories among the group. Group obligations are legit by raw, using them as result for a adventure module, for example when the players shoot some officer from blacksun, gaiing them a group obligation with black sun is a suggested thing in Suns of Fortune.

If you want to keep this secret feel free to do so until later. You can as well just ignore the obligation mechanic and prepare a whole adventure just based on that as plot twist, though in many cases I would actually prefer the secret obligation because it makes it more random when the players find out about it and get into trouble because of it. It's more in line with Edge. For AoR campaigns I might most of the time not use obligations, simply because the pressure points against the characters are missing and the characters decided in many cases to put duty before obligations anyway and have a galactic government and military organisation to back them up on this. You sure can proc a obligation from time to time, but personally I would allow characters to lower their obligation peace by peace, paying their debts from their pay.

edit: Oh and for using both, you just use both on your group table, and consider of the role duty and obligation basically the same mechanic, which holds true for how the roll works anyway. They have mentioned in in AoR as well as the idea of mixed groups is an obvious one.

So, my answer was going to be something along the lines of:

You’re the GM. It’s your game. You can do whatever you want in your game.

However, on reflection, I think HappyDaze has a better and more useful response on that subject.

But, at the end of the day, you’re the GM in your own game.

We can give you advice on what we think we might do in our own game, or what the rules indicate should normally be done under whatever circumstances, but you still have to decide what you’re actually going to do in your own game.

Unless you want it to.

Say for example you offer them one of those ships but they need to take extra Obligation to cover it.

In the case above you could also deduct Duty indicating it was an early reward, the obligation side only gets revealed when your secret is revealed of course what stops them from getting a replacement ship if they don't want that extra your plot device?

Would you return that spent Duty once the secret obligation is revealed?

the obligation side only gets revealed when your secret is revealed of course what stops them from getting a replacement ship if they don't want that extra your plot device?

This is key. In this case you build a secret obligation to a piece of alliance equipment. The PCs might decide that this obligation is not worth the trouble at all and turn your obligation and plothook into a lost ship for the alliance and a formal complaint about the whole issue. Giving them a stolen ship from blacksun or whatever the secret obligation is might be a real problem that the PCs now have with their commanding officer.

Reminds me of that time when we called Cracken an idiot for activating a bunch of droids and demanded to return to our regular duty before those droids … well, sometimes your commanding officer is doing something so stupid that you even get away with insubordination. Anyway, you sure can do it as planned and if your group agrees to take the obligation it a nice added thing, they basically take that obligation for the alliance and should be able to proc their duty if it is somehow related to whatever the real boost that this obligation brings is. Space and Air superiority, resource acquisition, potentially intelligence, depending on whom is calling them about that ship, etc

And yeah, first handing out the ship as duty reward, and later giving the group a propper bigger duty reward or cleaning the obligation completely sounds like a good idea to handle this. Well or just forget about the obligation all together and just use the plothook itself.

There's no reason you can't used a modified, hidden Obligation for the group, but like others have said, there's no reason you have to. Just keep an eye on their actions and through in the plot twist when it feels right...

I don't use the hybrid mechanics, but my PCs transitioned from their starting individual Obligation to group Obligation as the campaign progressed. To get the most out of the mechanic you have to be ditching some and accruing some constantly I think otherwise it's just something you do at CHARGEN.

Some of their group Obligation was secret some was not.