I'm starting to get ready to GM a game and I'm trying to wrap my head around obligations during character creation.

I've read the book and many, many forum posts and it still seems nebulous to me.

Let's say that my gaming group has 2 people in it. According the book the starting obligation per player is 20.

A player can, of course, add more obligation in exchange for experience points and starting credits.

Here is where I get a bit confused. The text for purchasing experience and credits reads as such:

There are two limitations : each player can only choose each option once, and Player Characters cannot gain more additional Obligation than their starting value.

If I'm reading this correctly, a player can choose all four additional obligations once, meaning that a player character could end up with 40 obligation.

Can a character have all 40 points in one obligation or do they have to choose different ones when it reaches 20 points (their starting point value)? In other words, if you choose to 40 obligation, do you have to choose 2 different obligations?

Additionally, if a player has 40 obligation does that mean that for the d100 roll 1-40 would be one character?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The way I understand it is, you can only have a single 5 obl. & 10 obl. option for a max of +15 total obl.

So if you pick 5 obl. for additional credits that means you could have the 10 obl. +10xp option as well and vice versa.

I thought I recalled the maximum additional being +15 as Diggles points out, but I can't find an actual ruling in the book. The text you are referring to, I assume, on p40, does seem to say you can take up to 20. There are four options on table 2-3, and the text reads, "each player can only choose each option once." There are two +10 options on the table, so I guess it is possible to take 20 additional obligation, if your starting obligation was 20.

An easy way to diffuse this question is to point out the answer to your second question. Yes, if a player with 20 starting obligation takes 20 more for resources, his obligation is 40, then 1-40 on the d100 would be all for that one character. If both players in a 2 player campaign max out their obligation, you'll have 1-40 for player 1, and 41-80 for player 2, meaning that they will probably be triggering obligation most of the time.

Thanks, Diggles and GM Stark. You answers confirmed what I was thinking.