Hello Testers,

This thread is stickied for the purpose of posting feedback and comments concerning the dice mechanics. Thanks, everyone!

I noticed that when you build your obligation chart, the first person on the list (the lowest range) is going to have tend to have less of a chance to have doubles rolled within his spread. For example, a character with an obligation range of 1 to 20 will only receive double obligation on an 11 while a character with the same magnitude of Obligation but higher on the scale (21 to 40) will get double obligation on a 22 and 33. It might work out to about the same if a roll of "01" was counted as "rolling doubles" for this purpose.

Being married (Spouse) is oddly absent from the Relationship motivation chart. It seems like that would be a pretty common one.

GoblynByte said:

Yes, rolling double to activate the "bad" effect can lead to strange (and not so fair) results.

Maybe when an Obligation is activated it would be sufficient to roll a single d10: on a roll of 1 it would have the "bad" effect.

LukeZZ said:

Or maybe if a 1 is rolled for the 1's digit (01, 11, 21, 31, etc). That would save having to make one more roll and it would still give more or less the same results as rolling an extra d10.

GoblynByte said:

Or rotate each member up a position on the chart each session. This way, during the second session, the PC that was first becomes second, and the PC that was last becomes first, and so on around the dial each session. Each player then has an equal chance to be in the the lowest range.

Also, you could put the person with the least Obligation at the bottom, as it is the one least likely to draw in trouble. Or, if the party has a Group Obligation, perhaps that should be on the low end of the scale, as triggering a Group Obligation with doubles is a whole lot of pain to swallow.

That said, this is a discussion on a variance of 1% of situations or so.

GoblynByte said:

This way it would still lead to "unfair" results:

01 - 15 My Obligation

16 - 30 Your Obligation

Mine would trigger with 01 and 11.

Yours would trigger with 21.

For some reason I don't feel 'fairness' is necessarily desirable with the obligation mechanic. Rolling doubles is easy to remember and gets the job done.

cetiken said:

Fairness based upon the position of characters' Obligation in a table seems desiderable to me…

Meh. I can just put the character with the lowest strain threshold at the bottom. He's the one who would be most screwed right?

Or you could randomize placement that would prevent bias.

Or you could count on the law of very large numbers to make it so the PCs don't notice during the relative few game sessions of a campaign that it is relevant. Playing weekly for six years it would only come up three times after all.

nyriv1 said:

Yeah, it's a niggling little detail. One that would probably never be noticed. I just thought I'd point it out 'cause… well… I'm kind of a nerd.

After playing a session or two we have a question about the Obligation mechanic. First we love the Obligation aspect of the game. For me, it's right below the Destiny Pool for being the best aspect of the game. But we're having a bit of confusion about something.

Some of the Obligations are not easy to quantify into numbers for the addition or reduction of Obligation. For example, if a character has Debt, Criminal, Blackmail, or something like that it's easy to reduce or add to the Obligation. Paid some of the Debt, the Obligation reduces a little. Do an illegal task for a Hutt and the Criminal Obligation may go down a bit.

But there are some that I am having a bit of trouble trying to figure out how, and how much, an Obligation can be reduced. Family, Dutybound, Responsibility, Betrayal are examples. A player is Responsible for making sure someone is safe, Another player is dutybound to a Bounty Hunter Guild, A character is betrayed and sold into slavery. How do you quantify things like them and know when they would be lessened?

Any thoughts?

True, not all obligations are easily quantified, but I think that's not necessarily a problem.

Also funny you should mention Betrayal, because that's the obligation of my current character - and it ties into his motivation: Revenge. But mind you that revenge is a custom motivation (it's stated you're free to pick a different motivation if your GM allows it). However, being such a base motivation, revenge really should have a place in the motivation table. (And to be precise, the exact details about my motivation would be a bad bond to my character's former comrades, leading to a wish for revenge, since I wanted to use the motivations listed).

However, in my betrayal example, my character is actively looking for ways to seek revenge for his betrayal. I imagine the obligation would be decreased whenever a score is settled. I believe the clue to this is to find out what exactly your specific obligation entails. For example:

Betrayal and sold into slavery: Could be solved by battling slavers in general (your character has a grudge) - and especially if you encounter those who betrayed you or their agents. In general: Encountering the sources of your betrayal. Also keep in mind that your character could be the one who betrayed.

Family: This is (most likely) an obligation that never goes completely away (well, I guess it could in game terms, but you know what I mean). Looking after family/family member in question, sending money or goods, attending birthdays, weddings etc (imagine a session where your brother is getting married and you're the best man and you have to reach Dantooine in time for the wedding…only that you're busy fighting off thugs who are after your illegal cargo that you have yet to deliver to Tatooine). If you reach the wedding, you get some leeway, otherwise you might get the ire of a lot of familiy members for some time with Sunday brunches being obligatory for months to come…

Dutybound: Would perhaps function a little like family, depending on the nature of your duty. Is it a life debt, are you honor bound, is it by contract, etc. If you serve enough, your duties are likely to end or lessen eventually.

Responsibility: Much like family.

I believe that although there are no way to put a quantity to many of the obligations into real life terms (debt is easily transferred into money, for instance), it is possible to measure it in game terms. Since the obligations are vague (I imagine they might get some more examples in the final product), it is also very easy to match the details surrounding them to your specific character. In a way, this is better than being tied to a set of tables and values and more in tune with the open premises of the rules.

I agree some of those Obligations are not immediately clear. Personally I had problems with Obsession. Any ideas anyone can share are welcome

Obligation is making me scratch my head.

1. Is there a scale for what constitutes "high" Obligation for a PC? Is 5 a lot? 10? 15?

2. Is Obligation given by multiple of fives? I have players who split it 6/4 between two and character generation Is that legal?

3. How many Obligations can a player start with? I thought the rules said only two, but then I couldn't find it again. So I'm not sure.

Wulfherr said:

Well, what kind of obsession are we talking about? I guess it could be just about anything from being obsessed with a Bith band, to actually being famous (or semi famous) with an annoying fan who is obsessed with you, or an old sweetheart or similar. Or it could be an obsession over the Queen of Naboo… Or with violence or even justice, or it could be something entirely different such as ticks or some sort of compulsiveness (obsessive compulsive disorder?). Obligations are vague and could have both or either of an internal or external driving force. They're there to create hindrances and additional story elements, so be creative! For example: Who says debt has to mean you're the one in debt? Maybe you were the one lending out money and you're now in need of getting it back? Talk with your GM or players to decide some possibilities on how a certain take on an obligation might see play and under what circumstances it increases or decreases. Although it can be hard to come up with motivations and obligations because it's all so vague, I believe that freedom to be a nice boost in terms of making interesting characters and stories.

Yeah, I probably wasn't very clear. I have no problems with coming up with dozens of ideas, even for Obsession. I'm just not sure about using Obligations such as Obsession as a GM tool (e.g. for reputation) or coming up with ways to settle them. Settling a Debt, a Betrayal, a Bounty or even Criminal will be very different from settling Obsession or Addiction through the events of the adventures. I'm not saying it's bad, just that some guidelines might help.

Wulfherr said:

It is different, but there are ways to go about it. (My own character has Obsession: his spaceship, btw.) To use the examples from above, if someone wanted to 'pay down' on their obsession with the queen of Naboo, they might spend a ton of credits to go see her jubilee in person. Or if they had the classic obsessive cleanliness, they might spend a few weeks and a few hundred credits doing a detailed cleaning of their living quarters. Reputation is harder, but likely to be related to what they've done in the name of their obsession, like killed a guy who got their bed dirty.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed, but it would be helpful if the book discussed new players coming into a group of existing PCs with an already established Obligation level. New PCs will add obligation. It wouldn't be tough to manage, but I think it would be worth mentioning.

GoblynByte said:

With that observation, and the one about the uneven spread of double-ones coming up, I'm wondering if obligation should use a different mechanic than percentile dice.

Perhaps the player (or GM) rolls a number of boost and setback dice based on the value of their obligation. The net number of advantages and threats would then determine how that players obligation comes into play.

I was thinking one of each for every ten points of obligation, with any remainder being an extra setback die.

5 obligation = 1 setback

10 obligation = 1 setback, 1 boost

15 obligation = 2 setback, 1 boost

20 obligation = 2 of each

25 obligation = 3 setback, 2 boost

and so on…

JediHamlet said:

You mean for every die roll? That would be a bit heavy of a penalty, I think.

GoblynByte said:

Callidon said:

Yes. At the start of the session.

Been thinking more about Obligation as a mechanic.

The more I do, the more I feel the mechanics of Obligation are too far divorced from the rest of the narrative mechanics of the system. It feels contrived and doesn't scale well.

I would suggest making Obligation a secondary characteristic. Starts at 0 and is increased by taking on more obligation, or reduced by "settling" scores and what not. (instead of +5 and +10, I suggest +1 and +2)

It would add boost dice in certain situations (working with the underworld), or add setback dice in situations where having nefarious obligations would hinder actions.

When it comes to influencing the nature of the current adventure, it could work something like this: every player rolls a number of boost dice AND setback dice equal to their Obligation. The total result, across all players is interpreted by the GM as to how things should go in the adventure (counting net threats and advantages per character).

As to how much strain penalty each character suffers it would go something like: for each character that generated more NET threats than advantages they suffer one strain (worrying about their particular obligation) and the character that generated the most NET threats would be at the -2 strain point.

Now, if the threats across all character rolls was greater than the advantages generated by all characters, something is coming to a head. The character that generated the most NET threats would suffer a -4 to their strain, and all other characters a -2.

I think this would simplify the Obligation section of the rules slightly, and allow for a better scaling of the Obligation rules.