Hello there, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions:
- Is it always the player who decides to add a new obligation? For example, if you make a crime lord angry, can not the GM decide to give him an obligation?
- When adding a new oblig ation, does the character always receive some benefits? Also, I seem to have read in the manuals that not only at the beginning, but also during the adventure, if the character increases or decreases his obligation receives XP bonus. Is that it? Do you remember where it is written?

Thank you

The player(s) always have the choice on accepting Obligation.

If you make a crime lord angry in play , that's not an Obligation, it's a consequence of your actions.

If you want some really cool piece of gear (or many other things) and the GM says you can have it for 10 Obligation, then you can work with the GM to come up with "I got piece of gear off of a dead enforcer. Unfortunately, the guy's boss and buddies think I killed him and they're sending out guys looking for me [Obligation of Bounty 10]."

As players always have the choice, they will probably not accept an Obligation if there isn't something for them in the exchange. However, the benefit can be all sorts of things like information, favors, gear (as above), services (like repair of your busted up starship), or whatever.

So, it works like this:

1. Player says what they want to gain. GM can outright veto certain requests ("I want a Death Star") or negotiate compromises that are better fitting to the campaign.
2. GM sets a value for an Obligation to get the negotiated gain.
3. Player and GM work together to come up with a descriptor for the Obligation (Bounty, Favor, Debt, etc.)
4. Player has final decision on whether to accept the Obligation in exchange for the negotiated gain.

Obligation is a bit messy because it was meant to be a kind of alternative currency but ended up being treated as a pure penalty system in a lot of the material. Getting obligation from a crime boss because he did something for you and now you owe him a favor is fine. It's also fine to get a bounty obligation from that same crime boss because you engaged in an unauthorized requisition of his capital assets - but you shouldn't really be getting one just because he's in a bad mood that day.

2 hours ago, Grievous999 said:

Is  it always the player who decides to add a new obligation? For example, if you make a crime lord angry,  can not the GM decide to give him an obligation?   

The GM always can, but rarely needs to or should in most normal situations.

Obligation is supposed to represent an ongoing issue, something that keeps the player up at night, that turns up at the worst times, and the kind of thing the player character just has to deal with for personal reasons of some kind or another. The kind of thing the character may never truly ever escape.

So merely angering a crime lord might do that... But probably not. You'd have to anger a crime lord pretty hard for him to be after you that hard that long.

By comparison look at Han Solo and his Debt Obligation. It adjusts and modifies over the years, but the bottom line is he always owes something to someone, whether it be to get his girlfriend from Proxmia, or over a dumped cargo with Jabba, or that deal with kanjiklub.

2 hours ago, Grievous999 said:

When  adding a new oblig ation, does the character always receive  some  benefits? Also, I seem  to have read in the manuals that not only at the beginning, but also during the adventure, if the character increases or decreases his obligation receives XP bonus.  Is that it? Do you remember where it is written?

No. There is an option to take on more to get something narratively important. For those situations where the players really need something well beyond thier means, so they can "know a guy" and get it anyway. Of course they push it more and more without working it down and it all starts to catch up with them...

But that usually something more narrative and money related. An emergency repair job, or a special critical item needed for a gig.

You can't toy with your Obligation post character creation to get bonus XP. No idea where that's coming from.

2 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

By comparison look at Han Solo and his Debt Obligation. It adjusts and modifies over the years, but the bottom line is he always owes something to someone, whether it be to get his girlfriend from Proxmia, or over a dumped cargo with Jabba, or that deal with kanjiklub.

Or save his wookiee friend and his planet...

Thank you all. I think I have finally understood how this system works. So far I have used it incorrectly, because for example, as one of my players damaged the Empire, I immediately created a corresponding obligation, like a bounty.