Dear Community!

We are starting a new campaign soon, after playing through the Beginner game, and the Long arm of the hutt. (It was their first time playing tabletop RPG and my first time to GM)

They doesn't have their characters yet, just concepts, but I'm already planning the start. They were told not to choose obligation (other than the +5/10 for XP/creds) because I plan to give them the opportunity to get it themselves. They won't get a ship for starter, so that's what their first task will be, get a ship to leave Socorro, where they start the campaign, stranded. This way I hope they can understand that getting obligation can be a resource, not just a punishment and it makes more sense for the group to stick together.

I have some ideas how to do this:

- Ask for credits / favor from a hutt / loan shark

- Steal one

- Fight some pirates (through bounty) and capture their ship (I use a"local" law which lets them keep the ship if they kill pirates)

- Or any other means they will figure out

I plan to throw in some names (Bargos, Reom, Yiyar-clan) so might be used later if we want to do published campaigns, but I have the feeling it's too vague.

I'd like to ask the experienced GMs, can you recommend other ways to get their hands on a ship, and point out unseen complications I should anticipate when we start a new campaign.

Thank you!

Fully Operational has new rules for building one...

So to give you an idea that you can maybe relate to but not really use since you just finished your Long Arm Campaign. When I ran my players through it I made each of them take a small obligation to Teemo; ie owed him a debt, betrayed him etc. That way they each already knew each other, from working at Teemo's, and I just lumped it together for a group obligation. Second i knew they'd steal the ship and escape Mos Shutta, and I determined the ship belonged to Teemo which resulted in a bounty put out on them (Group obligation).

Generically, I think having them all start working for the same Boss makes things easy. They are small fries just starting out, and they have a reason to know each other.

Secondly but i think most importantly; since the CRB says to give players a ship to start I honestly feel like the easiest thing to do for any campaign is just have them acquire a ship and then put a bounty on them because the owner wants it back.

1 hour ago, ThreeAM said:

So to give you an idea that you can maybe relate to but not really use since you just finished your Long Arm Campaign. When I ran my players through it I made each of them take a small obligation to Teemo; ie owed him a debt, betrayed him etc. That way they each already knew each other, from working at Teemo's, and I just lumped it together for a group obligation. Second i knew they'd steal the ship and escape Mos Shutta, and I determined the ship belonged to Teemo which resulted in a bounty put out on them (Group obligation).

Generically, I think having them all start working for the same Boss makes things easy. They are small fries just starting out, and they have a reason to know each other.

Secondly but i think most importantly; since the CRB says to give players a ship to start I honestly feel like the easiest thing to do for any campaign is just have them acquire a ship and then put a bounty on them because the owner wants it back.

It is certainly easier, but I feel like, they will understand their obligation better, if they are the one who choose it through play, not just noting on the paper

17 minutes ago, Rimsen said:

It is certainly easier, but I feel like, they will understand their obligation better, if they are the one who choose it through play, not just noting on the paper

I mean why not both? They will almost certainly do SOMETHING early on that pisses someone off and will have consequences, boom, obligation. More obligations mean more options for you

10 minutes ago, Rimsen said:

It is certainly easier, but I feel like, they will understand their obligation better, if they are the one who choose it through play, not just noting on the paper

I think you just expressed the best reason to eventually dispense with the Obligation mechanic entirely. The purpose of it in the rules is simply to help new players and GMs deal with new concepts like "backstory" and "motivations", to help tie the party together, to help understand that their PCs are part of a galactic community, to plant idea-seeds for the GM to integrate the PC's story elements into their own, etc.

But once you have all that, you really don't need the bean-counting mechanic at all. If they owe a Hutt, it's a problem no matter who they are, and it can be dealt with in-story no matter what a "score" is.

17 hours ago, whafrog said:

I think you just expressed the best reason to eventually dispense with the Obligation mechanic entirely. The purpose of it in the rules is simply to help new players and GMs deal with new concepts like "backstory" and "motivations", to help tie the party together, to help understand that their PCs are part of a galactic community, to plant idea-seeds for the GM to integrate the PC's story elements into their own, etc.

But once you have all that, you really don't need the bean-counting mechanic at all. If they owe a Hutt, it's a problem no matter who they are, and it can be dealt with in-story no matter what a "score" is.

Interesting perspective, I'm not so experienced, neither as a player and especially not as a GM, but I haven't thought about it this way.

I imagined it's there for the constant source of conflict which propels the story.

First, now I have second thoughts about this all prologue adventure

6 hours ago, Rimsen said:

I imagined it's there for the constant source of conflict which propels the story.

It's worth asking whether you need that propellant, or whether you and the players can propel your story just fine without it. Sounds to me like you already made that leap.

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

It's worth asking whether you need that propellant, or whether you and the players can propel your story just fine without it. Sounds to me like you already made that leap.

I can't know for sure yet, since they only played the aforementioned stories, which frankly quite railroads the team, and I'm have no way to know how they will play if they get all the freedom.