I apologise if this has already been covered - in fact, I'm pretty sure it has been, but I've got only minutes on the machine left, and wanted to get everyone's input on this.

Obligation as a mechanic is great! But I find that having a minimum of 5 and max of 100 (before you lose the ability to spend XP, and have Obligation trigger each session) means you're going to be limited on the number of players you can have. Normally, this isn't a problem: for table top games, 4-6 players is the manageable total; but as I'm running a popular* PbP game, and am using a medium that allows for a slightly higher number of active players, I'm curious as to what others think.

As of the start of the next Chapter in my game, I'll have seven players; this may rise to eight if an old player of mine - who was forced to leave due to a lot of work overtime - is allowed to rejoin.

I know some folks say "have them all begin with 5 Obligation as a cap", and that's great - even with eight players, Obligation is only 40; but what happens when it builds? If each player ONLY gets 5 Obligation for their respective adventures, giving each a meager value of 10, then that's still a Group Obligation of 8; and if they worked to lower this value, they can still only do so by 5 (since 5 is the minimum allowed per character).

Thoughts?

*Nineteen applicants so far, and that's AFTER I've already filled six player slots.

Maybe open up Duty as an option? :-/

How would you feel about running two games?

Or maybe allow players to have joint obligations. Maybe the pilot and copilot have an obligation together that counts for both of them?

I would raise the 100 point value.

Take a good average for each player (15-20 points) and multiply that by your number of players. So, 15 points a player, 8 players, raises that value to 120 before you lose the ability to spend XP, and have Obligation trigger each session.

That to me would be the easiest way to simulate the same feel as in a 4-6 player game.

.

Unless they are some sort of large crew or military force, I would expect them to be from different ships or organizations. If this is the case simply treat them as 2-4 different player groups that happen to work together. If they are all the same crew, are there departmental sections you can divide them into?

Try to find a way to break them into bite sized chunks.

The problem with splitting the group is that it would require a lot more work - and with the campaign size being what it is, I doubt I could handle that.

I suppose, in a way, there isn't a huge problem with things being done using RAW: it just means that the players would need to take extra care in order to ensure that they kept their Obligations down, and used a fair number of credit rewards/personal efforts to pay off any Obligation they attain.

And after reading the third update for AoR, I think having Duty become available in the future is a good option, too, especially if it's offered as an alternative to Obligation.

What's your method of handling that? i really find that with more than 4-5 players, the game tends to frag a lot if they're all together, especially in PbP where one person can potentially cause a lot more holdup.

As part of my campaign details, I have a list of Posting Expectations that players are expected to adhere to; one of these Expectations is that each player is expected to post at least once every four days (my GM post goes up early on the fifth day). So far, it's worked really well.

Oh, good plan. I wish you the best of luck. I'd have to say that for me, as a player, a 5-day cycle between GM posts would seem extremely slow and frustrating, but that's just me. If your group is having fun, more power to you.

If you started with obligation at the 5 player level for the whole group then just break the group down to 5 player sub groups. Perhaps by random draw at the start of each block of the campaign and have those players as a team for the purposes of obligation.

So you may have say 3 groups of 5 and one group is at 100+ and can't spend XP, another may be at 80 and triggered their obligation mechanic, the other group on 30 is OK.

After a period of rest the players then get a reset and you end up with 80, 70 and 50.

Players get to spend XP at the endof each session or block. So if they are over 100 they will have to wait until they redue or the groups reform and they finish a session.

Oh, good plan. I wish you the best of luck. I'd have to say that for me, as a player, a 5-day cycle between GM posts would seem extremely slow and frustrating, but that's just me. If your group is having fun, more power to you.

Well, players can post more than once, and I would do likewise; the deadline is the date by which each player needs to have posted at least once. Also, it helps that most player posts tend to be large and detailed, meaning that you cover more ground and elaborate more than most PbP games seem to.

If my job wasn't so demanding, I would decrease the deadline length to perhaps 3 days (with GM post on the fourth); but that would need to be agreed upon by my players.

I would either do something about the scale (where the maximum is 100) or something about the individual values e.g. 5 points = 2 points in your case. So the minimum everyone can get is 2 points of obligation and the PCs might start out with 10 points or something like that.

Good input from all. Thanks!

I wouldn't worry about the obligation. If it starts getting high, from additional sources beyond the minimum 5 for each player, it will motivate the players to lower it or not spend experience.

You could also manage the scale by adjusting the upper limit, if you don't mind a creative use of dice. If you set the limit at 120 instead of 100, you could determine obligation trigger by a roll of a d120 using a d12 and a d10. Similarly you could create d160 using a d8 and a d20. If you don't want to recalculate the players' obligation I think this is a rather neat option and it also provides a very easy way of adapting the upper limit based on the number of players, should it vary. (You could find several other ways to randomize the obligation trigger, but imo dice feels right.)

While the math may get a bit wonky in this I'l attempt to explain it, but my idea is similar to tinnitus'

If 5 players can have a maximum obligation of 100 then each player could be said to be responsible for no more than 20 points worth of obligation.

That said, w/ 8 players you would get an obligation cap of 160. as this doesn't work very well with d% dice, you could roll a single d10 (with the player slots being 1-8, 9 and 0 being for not happening) and go from there.

In our games I typically only roll for obligation at the begining of an adventure. I'll pull the strings and let the PCs know that they will have a chance to lower their Obligations but if we are mid "adventure" (like breaking for the night before a fire fight) I don't normally roll for another one at the begining of the nex adventure.

With a group that large, I would probably only roll the single d10 and work that characters Qbligation into whatever was going on. If any given characters obligation went above 20 then I'd inform them of the XP penalty, but other than that I'd leave it alone. Or something similar.

I wouldn't worry about the obligation. If it starts getting high, from additional sources beyond the minimum 5 for each player, it will motivate the players to lower it or not spend experience.

This is how it's being worked so far.

I always assumed that the cap of 100 Obligation was per character, since it says that Obligation for the group can rise above 100.

Are all of these people expected to work together like a single adventuring party? I think the game assumes smaller groups so the rules are made with them in mind. If you're running something with an adventuring group of 25 (omg!), then you have to start figuring out what changes you need to make. I think that's beyond me to figure out!!

I read this yesterday and, for some reason, I was thinking about it today and I had an idea.

I'm sure BIG organizations don't sum up their members' Obligation even if they're effectively an IMMENSE team of people. Even the crew of a medium ship wouldn't all add their Obligation together. So maybe the EotE idea of smaller groups works best if we break up these large groups into separate teams. So maybe they're all still the crew of a ship, employees of a corporation, pirates in the Black Suns or whatever... but what matters, for Obligation purposes, are the teams the size that the EotE rules are written for. In that case the teams might form naturally (like when friends get together to do something) or through some kind of assignment (like when the teacher breaks his class up into groups to do a project) and only last for that mission.

If you do that, maybe each player keeps tabs of their own Obligation and as teams form and beak up, you can tally the group's Obligation sum and see where that takes them. It might be that certain people can't really work because "that girl brings along way too much baggage for me!" or they can work together but will have to give up spending xp until that group breaks up (and will have to deal with the complication of the auto triggered Obligation, too).

Hmm... as I think even more about it, I realize that this actually keeps everyone self checked from abusing the Obligation rules, too. If you want to be able to team up with people, you'd better do your best to keep yourself clean enough that they'd want to team up with you! If a team leader wants to put together a group with no complications, they might look for people with low Obligation and, for those naturally forming groups, you might think twice about going to a show with Rizzi because you know someone's going to show up and make a mess out of it (either a bounty hunter, his ex-girlfriend, the other ex-girlfriend, the girl who thinks she's his ex-girlfriend, his current girlfriend wondering about all those other girls, the authorities, or the guy he owes money to..bah blah blah....)

Well... that got longer than I originally planned. Sometimes I just get going and, seeing as I can't see the whole thing while I'm typing it, I lose myself in my ideas. Sorry.

Thanks for replying Haley. And the group currently stands at six members - it MAY increase to seven and, at it's largest, eight (but no more). If the group became so large as to be difficult, I'd likely assign the eight players into two 'groups' (not physically, but in terms of Obligation), and would roll up two charts to cater to each.

As things are at the moment, things aren't that bad: with my six players together, their Obligation is 65.

First the 100 point limit works, for a 6 man group at least - although they have to be more careful than say a 4 man group. I'd imagine that once you go 7+ this can change. I'd up the 100 point limit something like 10 to 15 points per person above 7 or 8. If I ever again ran a 7+ player group, which I'll try to avoid.

Noted. I'd be tempted to perhaps split the group in terms of Obligation/Duty if it became too much, with players 7 and 8 beginning with the latter.