Hello,

So my players will be doing a job where they need to steal a large sum of credits (Looking into the millions) for the rebel alliance but I was planning on making the credits old republic credits and no longer legal tender as the empire has new credits.

Is this a bit too evil?

Nah, You da GM bruh! It's your game.

I did something in the same vein. My guys won a crap load of credits on a Swoop race. Paid in part by a local gangster.

The local gangster being so confident in them had a mission for them which unfortunately they really botched up. I take partial responsibility because I set a plot-trap to see if they'd fall for it and they ran right into it not even thinking. Thus I had the Gangster report the prize money as stolen.

Mind you, they still have the credits, but they're pretty much unusable because if they try to spend them it will alert the authorities.

This was particularly hard on the pilot in our group because:

1) He was the guy that won the race and the credits.

2) He was going to use the prize money to pay off his debts to a Hutt.

So even though they messed up, and the credits are worthless it opens up a lot of possibilities.

1) They could try to pass off the credits as legit. In other words, pay and run as fast as possible.

2) They could try to "launder" the credits. Make up a logical theory of how the credits work and work out a logical way to circumvent the banking infrastructure.

3) Find an expert that can "launder" the credits for them. For a price. The price could be a cut of the action or a very deeply needed personal favor.

2 hours ago, MrTInce said:

Is this a bit too evil?

Nah, go for it. My last rotation of Dark Heresy, I had my players fretting for over half an hour over a 'strange device' which turned out to be a Lava Lamp. If they don't enjoy stuff like that, they're taking themselves too seriously.

This kind of intel mistakes are all too common, so no.

But why are the Republic credits still around? Are they busting into a treasury archive holding notes that were supposed to be destroyed decades ago?

9 minutes ago, Mark Caliber said:

This kind of intel mistakes are all too common, so no.

But why are the Republic credits still around? Are they busting into a treasury archive holding notes that were supposed to be destroyed decades ago?

They've been recovered by imperial forces but not turned into imperial money.

Woah, ho wait!

As in this is hard currency? Gold? Latinum? Titanium?

As in something with intrinsic value?

When I read the post, I thought that they were paid in Alliance Credits. That would make your players mad as well. It's like paying a job with rainbows and kisses

6 hours ago, MrTInce said:

Hello,

So my players will be doing a job where they need to steal a large sum of credits (Looking into the millions) for the rebel alliance but I was planning on making the credits old republic credits and no longer legal tender as the empire has new credits.

Is this a bit too evil?

It's potentially a jerk move, depending on how you roll it.

Realistically speaking the Empire would have a pretty long grace period where you could exchange your RepCreds 1:1 for EmpCreds, and likewise anything not in hard currency (stocks, bonds, electronic accounts) would just automatically switch over.

What you could do to avoid this being a "Derp! You successfully failed the quest!"... is make that deadline looming. So like the players have X weeks to plan and execute the heist. If they execute and deliver by the deadline, the Alliance will have enough time to exchange the credits and walk away with clean funding. If the players show up late, they're now officially trading in credits that are literally only worth the metal they are coined from.

You can even make the exchange part of the heist story background. Faction Y is moving a large amount of hard currency from location A to B to get a no-questions-asked bulk exchange, making the cash vulnerable.

I would make it so even if the credits are still invalid it is still possible to exchange theam for imperial credits at an imperial bank for a lesser ammount

But showing up to an imperial bank with a bunch of republican credits will raise quite a few eyebrows on how they got theam so they will have to find a middel man (who wants to be paid) and that middel man mostlike has a boss (who wants to be paid). So they will still get money from it but just less money.

Or

They can start up a front company and launder the money via theam

Rember the players would want something out of the plan they did and just getting a red hearing is never fun, making it in to a intressting quest to launder the money is alot more interesting

Where are they going to be stealing the credits from? If it's somewhere that has to keep a large stock of hard currency on hand, like a casino, then they could be walking into the middle of a massive fraud on the part of the owner. If most of the reserve in the casino vault is actually worthless Republic credits, with only a small amound of Imperial credits to provide a veneer for anyone who inspects the vault and cover minimum operating costs, then things could get really interesting.

I would have the pitch be an "old treasure." Guy sells them a map or datacron with the information about it. They find 500k to 1 Million credits, but they are from the Old Republic. Not worth Sith spit to the Imperials. However, they think they could get 100,000 out of the deal from potienal collectors, but that takes a finders fee, a broker fee, etc. At the end of the day they still make credits but not enough to make it worth it. You could have the roll Hard Education checks to know beforehand if its worth the effort at all. Obviously you could have other valuables in the "treasure" besides credits.

If the coins have no metallic value, the players may be able to offload them to a collector or museum? All while trying to keep it low-key from authorities. Make it another mini-adventure once they discover their error.

Problems when finding a collector or museum?

• Museum curator: These are obviously stolen? I'm sorry but I'm going to have to alert the authorities.
• Collector: Yes! Exactly what I was looking for. I'll give you 10x coin value....for one....I just need one.

Perhaps the last successful search will be to an underworld collector that has lots of contacts and thinks he can resale small batches of the coins across the galaxy to other collectors and museums. He offers 1/100th value or whatever you want to give them depending on GM fiat and a negotiation roll.

I had this idea once awhile back while running Beyond the Rim for my group.

They weren't super invested in taking the treasure from the ship, they just wanted to complete their contract with Reom. There were other parties involved who were after the treasure though and this built up nicely over the couple sessions where the credits became a bigger part of the story. Eventually, a big fight breaks out and multiple sides are moving into the ship to claim the cargo with the players caught up in the middle. The person who claimed the credits was a bounty hunter who had been blackmailing a player for years. It was a really cool moment when everyone finally got the the credits only to find they were Republic credits from before the formation of the Empire. All sides were exhausted and realized just how pointless all the fighting had been. The characters were never invested in the cargo and the players loved the story with the reversal at the end.

So, to answer your question, I think it can work if you have the right players and don't take away their entire reward. In my case, my players still got paid for their mission and got a few extras, the credits just weren't one of those. If your players are stealing these credits exclusively for the Rebels, then they wouldn't be effected by their uselessness. This could lead into the Rebellion asking the party to do more missions for them to steal more credits or make the old credits worth something. Toss in a little payment up front for a new mission and promise of full payment for both when complete, and you can reward your players while giving them the opportunity to make more.