I've been running EotE for a few months now, and so far, player obligation has stayed roughly the same. The big obligation is a group debt to a crimelord, and I'm in the middle of putting the group through a mega-adventure designed to recover a gem the crimelord lost that will get rid of their obligation. Outside of that, though, not a lot seems to be happening as far as gaining and paying off Obligation.

How are other GMs handling this? Do you have adventures set up specifically for players to pay down their obligation, or do your players tend to want to pay down their obligation naturally?

Your group didnt use obligation to explain their backgrounds? How can they all have DEBT obligations?

Heres example of my group, so I have a WIDE range of stories I can go into.

Bounty: Spy droid on the run from former employer that wants to wipe his memory so noone knows they were involved in illegal activity.

Family: Doctor is trying to make his way back to his family that were displaced as refuges

Criminal: Smuggler has made a broken out of a Prison and stolen a shuttle from Imperials.

Betrayal: Force sensitive was betrayed and sold out by family friends and is now on the run

You can also use obligation as a means of reward. They get a ship, valuable information, a base or some other asset in exchange for owing someone obligation.

If Players ever make a promise or agreement with NPC about helping or yadda yadda, that can become obligation as well.

Usually your players will give you the best ideas to use. HEre are my examples

1. Escaped slave, with a Bounty. The obligation is to a being who now owns their contract and wants them to do a job to clear the contract.

2. Betrayal. Player was betrayed by a family member and accused of treason to the Empire (searching and finding Jedi Lore). The obligation is finding proof of innocence, or clearing their name

3. Criminal. Player is a former Stormtrooper that went AWOL. Faces prison (or worse) if found. My idea was to have a ISB agent contact him, and offer to retroactively assign him to the ISB, and honorably discharge him after he does a job for him

I use obligation in varying degrees to provide hints to their back stories and personal story arcs every time they roll theirs. Some people have rolled their obligation more often than others, and I moved up her personal story to be the next adventure because of it.

Some of the obligations will be very difficult to reduce, but that was a player choice at creation. If one continues to not dwindle in size, and the player wishes to change it, why not let them pick on that is more dynamic and interesting?

We are only three sessions into our campaign but I have forced Obligation somewhat in order to try it out as much as possible. So far it is working great and adds a lot to the story in a natural way.

We started out creating characters together and I made everyone take a minimum of 5 Obligation Bounty since we started out with Escape from Mos Shuuta and the group was fleing from Teemo the Hutt. There are four players meaning the group Obligation is 20. Every player also took an additional five Obligation during character creation. I also influenced one player to play a Twi'lek with 10 Obligation Favour towards Nyn Kablo in Nabat. This is working out marvelously and I have high expectations on the scene were the character and Nyn ses each other for the first time in years.

As we started the first session I rolled one player's Obligation Criminal. I interpreted this to mean that Lieutenant Herkin came to Mos Shuuta in order to pick up the character (an escaped alien slave) as a gift from Teemo, to further his career. After the party kills a few Storm Troopers and two Tie fighters (and steals a ship) I added +10 to the players Obligation. Currently their Obligation Threshold is 70(!) and Obligation has come up every session. Lieutenant Herkin is fast becoming a major mover & shaker of the campaign.

My plan is to influence the players to sell out Teemo to Jabba. This would help me immensely as Jabba would kindly inherit their Obligation to Teemo (changing it to Debt and lowering it probably) and then order them to do one of the three missions from the back of the books.

I also plan to connect B'ura B'an and Nyn Kablo with Reom as a tie in to Beyond the Rim. There I will try to connect another character's Obligation Criminal (a COMPNOR deserter) and Motivation Greed to the ISB agents i the adventure.

I plan for the group to play through all the written adventures to date but I already feel that Obligation will probably be enough to sustain a lot of the campaign on its own once we really get going. All in all Obligation is doing what it is supposed to do and more. It is my favourite part of EotE besides the dice resolution.

The only thing that is not working perfectly is how the players roleplay or bring up their increased stress but considering the campaign has had a pretty high tempo so far, escaping from a Hutt and all, it doesn't really bother me and should work itself out.

So far, my thoughts on handling obligation are to make them kind of obnoxious when they are triggered. As an example, when one of the player's obligation (debt to a hutt) triggered, they finished a job to find a couple gamorreans roughing up their contact. After killing the gamorreans (barely) the contact paid them, but refused to work further with the group. "You're wanted by a Hutt, Bothan. I don't want to get mixed up in any of that." It makes it more complicated because they were trying to get his trust to be introduced to his smuggling ring.

Naturally, the players have made lowering the obligation of the Hutt very high priority (since obligation can never be done away with totally) to keep bounty hunters from showing up at inconvenient times.

I'm undecided, however, if obligation should be a driving force, or an irritant. I've split the obligation requirement between group and personal obligation, so i'm trying to get a sense of both. The individual obligation is coming off as just annoying, rather than pivotal. I'll have to run more games to find out. Curiously, the Bothan is eager to get more obligation (he wants a disruptor pistol), but the mechanic is very hesitant to let the group shoulder any more. This energetic irresponsibility versus risk control is making for a very exciting group dynamic. I have offered the Bothan the ability to shoulder the additional obligation without telling the mechanic. The mechanic's character will be furious if she finds out, but the player is good humored enough to find the funny side to the whole thing.

Basically, I've found that if the players aren't threatened by obligation, they will just ignore it and it becomes a useless mechanic. Threaten them too much, and they will spend all their time running, be paralyzingly paranoid and never get anything done.

3. Criminal. Player is a former Stormtrooper that went AWOL. Faces prison (or worse) if found. My idea was to have a ISB agent contact him, and offer to retroactively assign him to the ISB, and honorably discharge him after he does a job for him

Hmm... I like this! Even if they are not a former stormtrooper, you can use this as a point of blackmail or anything. Nice!

My plan is to influence the players to sell out Teemo to Jabba. This would help me immensely as Jabba would kindly inherit their Obligation to Teemo (changing it to Debt and lowering it probably) and then order them to do one of the three missions from the back of the books.

I also plan to connect B'ura B'an and Nyn Kablo with Reom as a tie in to Beyond the Rim. There I will try to connect another character's Obligation Criminal (a COMPNOR deserter) and Motivation Greed to the ISB agents i the adventure.

I plan for the group to play through all the written adventures to date but I already feel that Obligation will probably be enough to sustain a lot of the campaign on its own once we really get going. All in all Obligation is doing what it is supposed to do and more. It is my favourite part of EotE besides the dice resolution.

Very nice! I like the ideas of being able to tie in the already written material... I plan to use as much of it as I can as well, and you've helped give me some ideas to work it in without it seeming forced or contrived. :-)

Very nice! I like the ideas of being able to tie in the already written material... I plan to use as much of it as I can as well, and you've helped give me some ideas to work it in without it seeming forced or contrived. :-)

Glad to help!

In order to help push the players in the right direction I am planning to slap them with a Obligation 5 Favour after B'ura B'an has his people repair and refuel their ship.

This might be a little harsh, especially since the players did save the life of B'ura (if by accident) but life out on Outer Rim is harsh. I plan to have B'ura B'an develop form the friendly "wise elder" to a more driven and calculating leader for a militant group of dissidents. He'll have no qualms about using the players to further his own cause.

I have also "planted" a datapad on the Krayt Fang where Trex has a list of bounties. Most of the bounties are small but in particular one Bandin Dobah should attract their interest...and what do you know. Formos is close to Hutt Space where they will have a few other errands to run....

I'm debating whether or not I should let every player start with the same amount of starting Obligation (10 per player), as mentioned in the book, or divide the total (50 in this case) it myself according to the way their obligations seem to have an impact in their background. I know this will make it so that some people's obligation will rarely trigger, but I feel that betraying a Hutt should have a much higher number that owing a favor to your family. Thoughts?

I've been trying to keep Obligation very fluid. Few characters in my games have the same Obligation(s) that they started with. I point out that just because a character no longer has an active Obligation in something like Family doesn't mean that the family is gone - Obligation just measures what is weighing on the character(s) right now .

For my game I had each player take an Obligation to Clan Ordo. This allows them to request gear from the clan but the clan can call on them for anything from simple errands to battlefield operations. This can be problematic when you’re trying to set yourself up as a reliable mercenary.