So I'm gearing up to run my first session of Edge for my roommate's gaming group (Which has the potential to become a campaign if they like it), and I'm still trying to decide how much a typical adventure should reward the group with. Since I've written up a bunch of episodes based on "job offers" that the crew can choose at the start of each session I'm trying to determine an average so that I can increase the pay for riskier missions.

Right now I'm thinking of having 15,000 as the bare minimum pay, with some jobs going as high as 25-30,000 and major end-of-the-arc "BIG SCORE" jobs hitting 100k. This might seem like a lot (Especially since "Trouble Brewing" only rewards the group with 10,000 at most) but this is because I took the "Keeping the PCs Hungry" sidebar to heart and assembled the following deductions:

1. Repairs. I'll be using the "500cr/point of WT" repair statistic quoted in the book, and I plan on including some sort of space fracas (Whether combat or navigational hazard) in at least every other session so their ship will have plenty of opportunities to get banged up.

2. Fuel. I'm not going to be super anal about this kind of thing, but whenever the players travel from one region of the galaxy to a reasonably-distant one (Hutt Space to the Corporate Sector, for example) I'm going to make them roll an Astrogation check to see how much they manage to save on fuel costs; generating Threat increases costs, generating Advantage decreases costs, and failure has the potential to drop them out near a hazard).

3. Obligation. The book suggests that the players might try to "pay off" their Obligation with credits, so I've settled on an average price of 5,000 credits/point of Obligation. This will reflect the characters expending funds on whatever their Obligation is (Paying off debts, throwing bounty hunters off their trails by spreading rumors that they're on the other side of the galaxy, paying information brokers to locate lost loved ones, etc). Furthermore I also plan to be handing out additional Obligation depending on what choices they make while undertaking different jobs so that they won't ever be completely free of all Obligation; they might get out from under a Hutt's grasp, only to find that doing so has put them on Black Sun's **** list.

And of course there's the usual medical costs, replacing lost gear, buying upgrades for ships and weapons, etc etc. I'm trying to avoid giving my players a **** ton of money that just piles up and up until they have their own Death Star made of money, which is what happened in the Saga campaign I ran for my hometown gaming group. Yet at the same time I don't want to reward them with pittances for their hard work; by giving them decent rewards while simultaneously reminding them that they have expenses I hope to find a happy middle.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Also, hello new forum.

Pay them what makes sense for the story and narrative.There aren't hard levels and challenges like in other systems like saga and gear plays less of a role in determining player power and balancing encounters. The job pays what it pays, be it 15,000, or 15. Some jobs may pay purely in an obligation reduction and drop no credits at all. And remember, obligation is a resource, if they players are short on cash its OK to give them what they need for a few dozen obligation instead of charging them credits.

Personally, unless you're planning to trash their ship and gear regularly your current pay scales seem a little high. But I don't know how you operate, so maybe it'll balance out...

Unless your players like bookkeeping, forget fuel shortages that don't effect the campaign. Trust me its easier to just assume they've got the fuel they need to get where the story needs them to be. This is Star Wars, and we never we Han and Chewie standing around at the pump complaining about how gas prices are way too high ever since the first dstar got popped.

The money value on obligation is just a rough suggestion. For obligations like debt, it makes sense sure. But if you're dealing with something like family its a little lame. Instead of just letting the players send money home to cousin Jesse to keep him from calling all the time, why not have the players run an adventure where they actually get Jesse out of some jam he's in?

Remember, Edge is very different from Saga, its less crunchy, less tight, and doesn't do dungeon crawls well. It is faster, more casual, works better when its more story driven, and is better about letting the players decide how things play out.

Relax, learn to go with it, and I think you'll find its just as fun as Saga, but in a different way.

We'll to keep them hungry you seem to be really over paying them. Most of the official written adventures pay 5-10k. If I was a player and earn 30k I'd retire.

I'm trying this as my rule of thumb:

Make a cool character, and buy the equipment you can afford. Now look at what else you want. Better blaster, awesome armor? How about all those modifications? Upgrades to the ship? Maybe your own personal vehicles?

Most sessions a character should be able to upgrade something. On smaller jobs, he can get some of the cheaper tweaks for his blaster. When he really hits the jackpot he can trick out his ship and buy that sweet set of battle armor. Give them just enough that the feel like they're moving forward, but make 'em earn it.

Then, feel free to break something every now and again.

Also, I realize now I forgot to ask...

We are talking the default from the book stereotypical fotrmula of 5 guys and a light freighter, right?

Just cause if we're talking something different like the Far Orbit project where the players get a nebulon b frigate, that changes things a little....

My players frequently get cargoes on credit (Obligation, usually Debt) and then sell them to gain a big pot of credits (up to 25,000 credits so far). They then have the option of spending the credits or of using them to pay off the Obligation. Quite often they end up having to spend some of the credits and they can't pay off all of the Obligation from that deal, so it creeps higher. The Trader in the party is always trying to arrange a "big score" that will get them ahead, but it hasn't happened yet.

I think you're grossly overpaying them. Once they earn six-digit figures they can afford everything in the core book, and then what's left to be hungry for?

I think you're grossly overpaying them. Once they earn six-digit figures they can afford everything in the core book, and then what's left to be hungry for?

It's so easy to lose belongings in this game that you need to take into account how to replace them. Sometimes you'll do that with Obligation, other times with cash. When your starship gets destroyed/stolen/impounded, you might suddenly find out that your 50,000 credits in the bank doesn't go very far.

Thanks for the advice everyone; I've gone back through my notes and tweaked the rewards a bit so that standard pay is closer to 5-10k, whereas the big scores (Of which I've only written two, and both are considerably riskier) are 20-30k. I'm gonna scrap the fuel costs for now (Narratively I'll just tell the players that things like that are automatically deducted from their pay) and take another look at Obligation.

The money value on obligation is just a rough suggestion. For obligations like debt, it makes sense sure. But if you're dealing with something like family its a little lame. Instead of just letting the players send money home to cousin Jesse to keep him from calling all the time, why not have the players run an adventure where they actually get Jesse out of some jam he's in?

I should have clarified that I was planning on doing something like this: the players can 'buy' their way out of Obligations, as I said in the OP, but when they get to the very end they'll have to do a major detour mission in order to get free of it once and for all. In the case of your example the player in question would receive word from one of Jesse's buddies that his gambling habits have gotten him into trouble with a Hutt and that he needs help getting off-world and starting a new life elsewhere. If it was something like an Oath, Obsession, or Betrayal Obligation the "wrap-up" quest would involve finding the object or person of your focus and settling things with it/them. This is in addition to the side quests that can pop up as a result of player Obligation being triggered during a session, which I haven't written out yet because my players haven't actually made their characters.

The reason I'm paying so much attention to this is because I really want to give the players the sense that they are in an open world making their own choices on what jobs to take, rather than following a carefully crafted rail. I want them to make decisions based on what their needs are (Repairs/Obligation/Gear) and what skills they can bring to the table (Should we take the smuggling job or the salvage op?). As a result this campaign will be more episodic than linear, but I'm hoping to develop a few central arcs based on the characters and the hooks provided by their Obligations.

First, welcome to the forum!

Second, I ran a one-shot for my group to see if they wanted to continue on with the game (and they do after the remake characters), and this is how things panned out:

They were all broke at the start, and we suggested that they pulled a copy of favours and used the majority of their remaining credits (a group of 4 has about 200 credits left) to get the job hauling cargo. The job paid them a percentage of the sales, which would be about 20k; enough to greatly reduce someone's obligation.

When they finally got to the planet, they realized how much damage they took. In the end, they had nearly 5,000 credits worth of Hull Trauma to deal with. Ouch!

Then, when they had some fights, they had to pay for the table that was broken on one of them, pay a bribe to keep the local law off of their backs, and a bit more to a contact; there's another 500 credits gone.

When the BIG fight broke out, they had a heavily damaged speeder truck (that was a rental) that they had to pay repairs on, they used up 3 Stim Packs, two blaster reloads, shorted out a pair of shock gloves, and ruined a perfectly good ion blaster.

In the end, the party probably only "made" about 10k after all replacements and repairs were squared away. This was enough for them to do some minor upgrades on their gear, but when the goal is to get out of the YT-1300 and get something better and faster, there's still a LONG way to go. . .

That said, unless I knew I was going to be damaging things left and right (like a ship or vehicles), pulling the "you had to leave your weapons on your ship in orbit, and now you need to get replacements on the black market," grease a couple of major palms, or even just make them pay for Obligations more often, I'd keep the pay for the entire group in the 10-15k range. With the above, I'd feel okay paying more, but the more I pay, the more problems I throw.