Wanted to get some fellow GM thoughts about assigning Obligation for story-advancing consequences of players' actions.

Take for instance "Beyond the Rim". Without getting too close to spoiling a 3-year old product, the PCs have a good chance to make lasting enemies of both the Yiyar Clan (the overhead of Yiyar Salvage) and the ISB. In an EotE campaign, that suggests adding some Obligation to reflect the chances of those groups or their surrogates ("bounty hunters - run!") showing up again in unrelated adventures.

There would be two ways to do this.

(1) Assign Obligation to the CREW as a group, in similar fashion to how a homestead is a party Obligation award. Wherein, each character maintains their own personal obligations, but on the Obligation table there is a single additional entry for this CREW obligation. For BtR, I could see 5-10 Obligation being possible for both groups. Say, 5 Obligation for thwarting their plans in general, or even 10 Obligation for killing off their named leaders. BUT... and maybe I'm missing a rule... when this Obligation comes up, how many STRAIN do the PCs suffer? Normally its 2 (rarely 4) for the triggering PC, and 1 (rarely 2) for the others. In this case EVERYONE gets it... so, would is be 1 Strain (rarely 2), or 2 Strain (rarely 4) for EVERY PC? Over time, as an Edge crew works their jobs as Edge crews tend to do, they could build up a good bit of crew Obligation representing the various factions that might have it out for the crew.

(2) Assign Obligation to EACH MEMBER of the crew, as normal. But with 5-10 Obligation potential for EACH character, this could mean 20-60 Obligation for the aggregate Obligation depending on how many PCs you have. That could be a BIG number! Perhaps mitigated by assigning 5 for everyone and 10 only for those who SPECIFICALLY do something to p*ss off the adversary group (pull the trigger that kills the leader, etc). It also presents an exponential increase in the probability of the Obligation triggering in the course of some other unrelated adventure - which could prove disruptive over time.

What are your thoughts? Would you use either of these methods? Are there other ways to reflect the lasting consequences in the campaign story for PC actions?

May the Force be with You,

GM Khyrith

I'm a big fan of group wide obligations, I think it's a nice method to tie the group together mechanically. After a campaign's gone on for a while, I think the obligation table should be a nice mix of personal issues and larger group-wide problems.

In our last game we had our force user force-mop the floor with our ewok mechanic, after he puked on the cantina floor. Decided to give her 10 obligation with the imperial inquisition for public use of the force (surely there is at least someone, who smells easy money for informing the empire about a force user) and 5 for everyone else, for hiding a force user..

I've found that a very good rule of thumb is to never force your players to take Obligation. If they're about to do something that you think warrants Obligation, inform them first that if they proceed with that course of action they will get so and so much Obligation of whatever type is appropriate. Just slapping them with some unexpected Obligation can quickly lead to a lot of resentment around the table, but if you let them know beforehand then the choice is on them and they have nothing to complain about.

Personally I prefer keeping Obligation as a personal thing rather than a group issue, as I enjoy using any given character's Obligation as plot hooks for further adventures. And while you can certainly do that for the group as a whole, I quite like the personal aspect and how it lets a given player feel that his/her character is special and that their choices in the campaign matters in a tangible way for them personally.

Usually, when there's a situation where the group aquires Obligation, I let the players decide between them whose character is going to take on how big a piece of that Obligation. Typically the ones who advocate the most strongly for the course of action that led to the Obligation are the ones to accept the largest chunk of it.

On 5/19/2017 at 2:24 AM, Khyrith said:

Wanted to get some fellow GM thoughts about assigning Obligation for story-advancing consequences of players' actions.

Take for instance "Beyond the Rim". Without getting too close to spoiling a 3-year old product, the PCs have a good chance to make lasting enemies of both the Yiyar Clan (the overhead of Yiyar Salvage) and the ISB. In an EotE campaign, that suggests adding some Obligation to reflect the chances of those groups or their surrogates ("bounty hunters - run!") showing up again in unrelated adventures.

There would be two ways to do this.

(1) Assign Obligation to the CREW as a group, in similar fashion to how a homestead is a party Obligation award. Wherein, each character maintains their own personal obligations, but on the Obligation table there is a single additional entry for this CREW obligation. For BtR, I could see 5-10 Obligation being possible for both groups. Say, 5 Obligation for thwarting their plans in general, or even 10 Obligation for killing off their named leaders. BUT... and maybe I'm missing a rule... when this Obligation comes up, how many STRAIN do the PCs suffer? Normally its 2 (rarely 4) for the triggering PC, and 1 (rarely 2) for the others. In this case EVERYONE gets it... so, would is be 1 Strain (rarely 2), or 2 Strain (rarely 4) for EVERY PC? Over time, as an Edge crew works their jobs as Edge crews tend to do, they could build up a good bit of crew Obligation representing the various factions that might have it out for the crew.

(2) Assign Obligation to EACH MEMBER of the crew, as normal. But with 5-10 Obligation potential for EACH character, this could mean 20-60 Obligation for the aggregate Obligation depending on how many PCs you have. That could be a BIG number! Perhaps mitigated by assigning 5 for everyone and 10 only for those who SPECIFICALLY do something to p*ss off the adversary group (pull the trigger that kills the leader, etc). It also presents an exponential increase in the probability of the Obligation triggering in the course of some other unrelated adventure - which could prove disruptive over time.

What are your thoughts? Would you use either of these methods? Are there other ways to reflect the lasting consequences in the campaign story for PC actions?

May the Force be with You,

GM Khyrith

I try and ditch personal Obligation as quickly as possible and move the group to a group Obligation pool. My goal is to have opportunities for everyone to unload their personal Obligation during each session.

I try and integrate all of their starting Obligations into my story idea, so the whole notion of Obligation isn't detached from what I have planned. It's too clunky and tacked on feeling I think if I don't make it an active part of my campaign moving forward. It just sorta happens once in awhile and then we would sorta do something Obligation related or have some tangential Obligation encounter when it's everyone's separately.

It's a useful meta currency in the game in a group model. Want those Restricted weapon creds in Hutt space? Sure, now you owe BoBo the Hutt. Want that ship weapon upgrade? Sure, now you owe Veemo the Toydarian, etc.