Sure, or simply whenever it best fits with the story. The PCs could take on Obligation to suppress theses consequences, such as seeking protection from a crime lord or taking steps to erase their identities. Each of these would incur Obligation (and thus potential or deferred complications of their own) as a cost for the benefit of not dealing with the bounty hunters in play.

Just a thought of mine here. If you as the GM don't like Obligation, then don't use it. I feel that the Obligation system doesn't really enhance, or detract from the game. For those that like it, great, use it, for those that don't, then don't use it. It's just a mechanic that adds some flair (not recommended 15 pieces!) to the game. It just adds in another dimension to help tell characters story.

When Trogdor keeps whining about his favorite Shockball team losing, it grinds on everyone's nerves and hence the reduction to the Strain Threshold.

I myself try to use it, but it can be a pain. Some people don't like rolling for it at the beginning as it could hinder what they planned out for the session, so some GMs roll for it at the end of the adventure for the next session. I like to make the player who rolled the most Dark Side pips for the Destiny pool roll the D100 for the Obligation!!

But all in all, if you don't use it, it doesn't break the game, but I feel you are missing a nice part of the system. It's like having that nice chocolate covered Boston Creme doughnut, but it turns out to be just a chocolate covered doughnut with no Boston creme. It's still good, but not as good....

mmmmmm....doughnuts...

Mmmmm, Boston Creme Donuts.

Interesting thread, and I'm surprised that I haven't jumped in yet.

For full disclosure we're running in an EofE, Aor, & FnD campaign. The GM is tracking morality ONLY for the force sensitives and uses Obligation for the group and individual PC's.

Per the rules we had the option of defining our Obligation during character generation.

A couple of us defined our obligation for our PC's (Mine was a Cr5,000 low value Bounty & an Obsession with nice back story). IIRC one of the other players picked an addiction for his character.

Most of the rest of the players are new to this GM and didn't understand that they NEEDED to define their own obligations! (oh boy).

As a group, we got a ship, but the ship came with a debt . . . to a Hutt. (Big group obligation there). The GM has given us a coulple of options on how to deal with that monetary obligation, but not a lot of good options. Our beginning debt for a nicely upgraded YT-1300 was almost Cr90,000. There are also lots of complications with our transfer of ownership and those are impacting us in the story, but don't have a numerical value.

The newer players are beginning to learn that not defining their PC obligation means that the GM gets to assign the appropriate 5-10 obligation points. Mind you, the GM is integrating obligation based on the actions and background of the PC's and its all done organically.

I don't imagine that the GM is sitting down and rolling "obligations" at or before the session, but he's keeping track of the various obligations and is injecting plots and sub-plots that tie in one or two characters' obligations into the story. (My Bounty obligation has come up twice since we started last summer . . . )!

From my perspective the point cost of the obligations help quantify the obligation. For instance; my buddy with the minor 5 pnt addiction obligation suffers 1 Black die if he's not servicing his addiction.

My Bounty got my character extra money so that I could survive the string of bounty hunters I was bound to face.

So that's how we're enjoying our donuts, er obligation.

So I was talking to my LFGS friend who runs her own game and she uses two different obligation tracks. One personal and another group, that don't mingle at all. She said she rolls on the personal chart first, and if that gets a hit then she leaves the group one alone, if not, she rolls on the group chart and goes off that. Seems interesting to me and I might try that out.