Cyril said:
Nirth''erev said:
Donovan Morningfire said:
Nirth''erev said:
I have to say, this would go a long way towards easing the strain on the whole group. As it stands, my character (30 Obligation) has been hit every single time for very negative strain, and is also causing the party to consider ditching him on the next dustball we land on, except if they do that they might be on the chopping block next.. The rest of the group has between 20 and 25 Obligation. His is that high because i really wanted to work with the modification system (which have made my character extremely effective in combat), but now it's a liability because every time something comes crashing down on him due to his Obligation, its in a magnitude that manages to piss off the party, often to the point where he is hindered by the party in fulfilling his Obligation. It just seems like the player with the highest obligation becomes the whipping boy so the rest of the party never has to suffer.
Well, to be blunt, you made the choice to put your own head on the chopping block by taking on so much extra Obligation at the start, so it's very much a case of "reap what you sow." Nothing in the game forced you to take on that much Obligation, it was first and foremost your decision to become the "whipping boy" as it were, a trade off for being able to afford those neat toys and be extra-effective at your chosen role within the group.
As Rikoshi noted, Obligation is an element to drive the story, and it was never intended to be a "good thing." Nothing except a player's own greed, be it for more starting XP or more starting credits is forcing them to add extra Obligation. If you've played an RPG with a "merits & flaws" system (HERO, 1st & 2nd Edition Mutants & Masterminds, Savage Worlds), then the extra Obligation points are the "flaws" you have to accept in order to purchase the "merits" in the form of more build points or more money.
To be frank, Ruken's method pretty much removes the teeth from Obligation, particularly for larger groups, as the totals will be so low that a PCs' Obligation is quite likely to never come up, which pretty much boils down to "might as well just give the PCs the extra XP and/or money and not bother with the Obligation increases."
Also, the GM should be offering chances to reduce that Obligation in some form or another, dependent upon what that Obligation is. if you have a Debt or Favor Obligation, then if it comes up, the GM should offer you a means to lower that Obligation by at least 5 points. If you haven an Addiction Obligation, perhaps an element of the story should reflect your PC's road to overcoming that Addiction, again reducing it by a few points. Maybe you managed to track down your missing cousin and ensure their safety, thus reducing your Family Obligation by a few points.
if you're really that upset with one PC's Obligation affecting the rest of the group (even if you're the one causing said issues by willingly taking a huge boost to your starting Obligation), then the GM can simply house-rule that the Strain penalty suffered by 1, so that the other PCs suffer no penalty to their Strain Threshold unless the roll comes up doubles. This way, the teeth of a PC's Obligation are are still sharp, but the rest of the group doesn't inherently suffer for it.
I think the main problem then is simply not being able to lower the obligation of my character. I admit, when i wrote that post, we were fresh from a session and i was still fuming. i had spent the entire session in a jail cell through events i had no control over (story event, not obligation related), so you can see how this would sit with a combat character. You are right, it really is my fault for taking that much obligation. However when our obligation hasn't changed in four sessions, i think we need to sit down as a group and work on what's wrong with our storytelling technique. We'll try again, maybe this time i'll be able to lower the number. fingers crossed!
To be fair, this sounds like a failing on your GMs part and not the Obligation system.
Now, I don't know the whole story, but speaking as a GM, I would never force a character to the sidelines for an entire session because of a choice they made during creation. That sounds like GM asshattery of the highest order. That's not what the Obligation mechanic is supposed to represent or do. Sitting in a jail cell for an entire game session unable to do anything isn't character growth nor is it worthy of a story unless something came out of it (which it doesn't sound like it did).
Honestly dude, I'd grab your GM one on one and have a conversation with him. Talk to him about your concerns and see if you can't figure something out, but I can say with a good deal of confidence that this isn't a failing on the part of the system or the Obligation mechanics, or even your decision to give yourself this Obligation at creation. This screams of the GM not quite grasping how to use the Obligation and possibly getting frustrated himself.
Yeah, turns out the whole reason was to have my guy interrogated by the Empire's Inquisition and to awaken his Force sensitivity. So now he gets Force stuff.
Anyway, I was rolling the percentile dice against everyone's score and saw that it was triggering me a greater percent of the time. Once my Obligation went down to the same number as someone else, the two of us triggered more than everyone else. So I withdraw my complaint of the system.