Rikoshi said:

Yeah, sorry. I simply do not see how forcing an mechanic you have no control over upon your players is supposed to actually help anyone put some more tought into an charactrers' backstory. As we see it it does the opposite. Why bother with a well-tought backstory if it only going to bite you in the ass anyhow? And whats with this "It is suppsed to be negative" and you are okay with it. No character has a positive backstory all of the sudden. Reading upon Obligation as it is now it is always some negative doodoo.

Our gaming group came up with this houserule and if nothing change in the retail this is how we are going to adress Obligation since we all tought that not only did it free up the irritating part of "Character A has massive Obligation towards Crime and get hunted by Bounty Hunters. rest of characters do not want constant strain punishemnt so they dump character A in a ditch".

ADDITIONAL OBLIGATION

Default                                            +1 Obligation                     +2 Obligation
default species starting XP        +5 XP                                   +10 XP
500 starting credits                      +1000 starting credits      +2500 starting credits

Note that a character can only benefit from one source of bonus and a player can therefore only buy the +5 XP OR the +10 XP, not both. Same goes for starting credits. In total, maximum starting Obligation for any one character will be 5.

Adam wants an experienced and wellgeard character so he chooses to get both the +10 XP and the +2500 starting credits. This gives his character an Obligation of 5.

Therese is satisfied with her species starting XP but want a little extra cash, so she gets the +1000 starting credits. This gives her character an Obligation of 2.

OBLIGATION IN PLAY

Whenever a character is confronted with the nature of his Obligation he will at the GM's discretion suffer a number of Setback Dice equal to his/her Obligation value. A character with obligation towards a Debt could suffer Setback Dice when dealing for a reward, prices or just haggling with his broker. A character with Obligation towards Criminal could suffer his obligation value in Setback Dice when dealing with the law.

COUNTER SETBACK DICE

Having extra Setback Dice is never good, and perhaps a character has a very steep value in Obligation that the player wish to compensate for. He/she can do so by immediately suffer 2 strain per Setback Dice he/she wish to ignore on the roll.

Example in play: A character with Obligation 5 towards Family is being confronted by a knows gang that say they kidnapped the characters family and that they now want money. It is a nerv-vrecking situation and the GM decide to give the player's character 5 Setback Dice since this is in line with the characters Obligation (he really loves his family). The player however do not wish to roll the skillcheck to persuade the gang to release his family with a full 5 extra Setback Dice so he decide to lower the amount with 3, taking a heavy 6 strain hit on his character. Negotiations fail non the less due to a bad roll and the character has no choise but to blast his family free, but as combat begins he have still lost 6 strain and one of the gangers have his blaster set for stun…

I know it is an echo from my Hoserule post but we tested it, played with it and we have had far more fun with this then the original rule that only annoyed people. Please test it for a gaming session and tell me what you (or anyone else for that matter) honestly tought about it.

Ruskendrul said:

It's supposed to be negative because conflict is what drives a story.

"I'm awesome at everything" doesn't make for an interesting backstory.  To look at Star Wars, specifically, the only reason Han Solo had to take up Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker as passengers as because he had to pay Jabba the Hutt back (Obligation: Debt).  Without that, he could have (and likely would have) just said, "Forget this, I don't need to deal with some punk kid and a crazy old man."

This doesn't make Han Solo less awesome. Heck, everyone knows Han Solo is awesome. It's just that the Obligation part of his character (i.e., his backstory) is a shadow hanging over him, a negative aspect to his character that signifies what drives him to do what he does, and why.

At the risk of sounding rude, it seems to me like you and your group are completely missing the point of what Obligation is, what is means, and what it's supposed to represent.  This system is about playing characters that are living at the edge of galactic society because a tyrannical dictatorship has taken over and people are forced to do things to survive that require them operating in a gray area.  In the same way that the rules for "Shadowrun" are meant to play a group of characters conducting corporate espionage and criminal activities and the rules for "Vampire: The Masquerade" are meant to play a game about vampires and intrigue, the rules for "Edge of the Empire" are about this fringe element of galactic society that live in a dangerous time and a dangerous place.

Obligation isn't a character element the same way that Talents or Skills are (e.g., things that make your character better at something); Obligation is the thing that your character doesn't want to face, but HAS to, because that's what makes a good story interesting.

A lot of people have talked about the inclusion of obligations. Obligations are not innately a bad thing, but they are inarguably tricky to work with.

But I am curious as to whether or not there will be more options when the final product is released? For example, not having to pick an obligation at character creation and instead picking something else that drives your character. It seems really unnecessary to design it so that every character made has to have one, when for some characters/stories it would only feel forced and limiting.

Options, not the lack of them, help more than anything for an rpg and its players.

Ruskendrul 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.

If this was used in conjunction with the other suggestions to treat the ship as an extra player AND to always rotate the players positions on the chart, this would easily keep the party's total in the range for the percentile dice to do their job while allowing characters to adventure more freely, rather than focus on chasing down debts and favors owed.

Yeah, I totally see that problem aswell. It makes no sense why one characters Obligation would affect other characters. Some people been trying to argue about it but only been refering to the narrative part and not the mechanic problem. As I stated before I have no problem with the narrative part of Obligation but I can not understand why they use a mechanic that affect the entire group.

My players all made characters with their own backstory, they are not from the same family os it makes little sense that the Twi'Lek's family would affect the Bounty Hunter in the group. It is like "I could not care less about your shitty sausagehead family" as the Bounty Hunter put it, but when the Twi'Lek gets her number up on the 1D100 it suddenly hits the Bounty Hunter aswell…

We been going with setback dice now and using them when confronting the Obligation, and it been working really well. Far more dynamic and it makes the players think ingame about their characters Obligation more active instead of just "Did it hit me before the session?". Now the addict in the group start breaking sweats and act all funny around drugs, the Bounty Hunter avoids athorities since he got a bounty on himself etc..

Far more fun, far more in line with an narrative implement and a mechanic that only affect the character with the correct Obligation instead of making everyone easier to take down using stun damage.

Nirth''erev said:

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.

The amount of obligation accrued for the group probably should be lowered, mostly for the main reason that all you need is to have one more person in the group than what the designers might expect in a normal-sized party and then accruing strain at the beginning of each session becomes unreasonably commonplace. This has happened in our game every session; we have around five players, and some of them have taken more than one obligation, but even then, the whole group needs to suffer for it? Every time we sit down?

Either obligations need to impact only the person affected by it or make the group obligation aggregately weaker.

Chrislee66 said:

I agree with the above.  Except I dont personally  believe we need a reputation system.  Each story, and each group action will naturally create its own inpact in each game and its up to the GM to include this in his narrative.  I personnally never use these kind of systems because they dont feel natural and usually dont fit with the current way a story is developpping.

WereWes said:

I disagree.  I think that, in a group of criminals living in the Outer Rim (whether living outside the law by choice or by circumstance), you're going to be stressed out a lot that the people you've chosen as your company have people like bounty hunters and debt collectors coming after them, or that maybe a part of the next big score needs to go into paying off one of your buddies' contacts so that you don't ALL get hosed.

Plus, living and working with other people who are being faced with their problems is going to reinforce, at least subconsciously, that you have your own stuff to deal with.

To look at this in practice in the movies: do you think Princess Leia wasn't affected by bounty hunters coming after Han Solo during the events of The Empire Strikes Back? And can you image her, for even one second, saying something like, "Hey, Han's problems with Jabba go back to when before I knew him.  He can deal with that himself; I'm staying out of it"?

Seriously, complaining that other characters might suffer negative impacts from another character's choices is total junior high school video game mentality. I'd suggest trying to take a more grown-up attitude toward storytelling, because that's what the whole system is built around.

Rikoshi said:

Wow…

Way to be mature, and assume I don't have a mature attitude towards an rpg.

I was merely suggesting that the way it's structured to affect the group based on how it's set up and the player-dependency factor of it seemed to be a bit too frequent, worsened by having a decent-sized group. As I said earlier: every session my group sat down for was hit by it, which seemed to be an issue with the system to some degree due to that frequency. I was merely suggesting a revision based on how the game operates, not complain because things didn't go our way.

Donovan Morningfire said:

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!

Nirth''erev said:

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. 

 There's a very obscure rule in the Obligation section that may be worth review, and removal.  Page 30, second-to-last paragraph:

"Each player has the option to gain additional starting Obligation in exchange for additional mechanical benefits, as laid out in Table 2-3: Additional Obligation Bonus.  There are two limitations to this, each option can only be selected once, and player characters cannot gain more additional Obligation than their original starting value." [emphasis mine to highlight the rule in question]

This second limitation essential prevents players from more than doubling their obligation, which is based on starting party size.  I feel this limitation should be removed for the following reasons:

1. Starting party size (or any other aggregate measure of the party, for that matter) should not dictate a players character creation options .
2. It sounds like no-one is following the rule as it stands.

Personally, I hate mechanics that rely on starting party size.  I feel that the size of the intitial party is a poor predictor of party power/resources/ability at any point in any game after the start of a campaign, and party size and composition at any point is highly plastic.  These are facts dictated by reality:  players permanently join a game, players permanently leave a game, some players can't attend every week/session, etc.  There should not be permanent limitations at creation leveraged against players or characters that are no longer valid because of uncontrollable and unforeseeable changes to the party's future composition.

It appears that this is an oft overlooked limit on obligation taken at creation.  Based on the discussion I've seen about how players can maximize their starting XP pools, I don't think that I have seen starting group size mentioned once. I could be mistaken on this and everyone may have already been aware of the rule and felt it was implicit in these discussions, but I find it more likely most players, GMs, and beta-testers have merely overlooked or out-right ignored the rule.

Overall, the rule is awkard, limiting, and non-intuitive.  Based on these criteria, I think the game would be improved by it's removal.

That all being said, I like the way obligation currently works at an individual level:  It is a penalty that is completely optional for the benefit of a few extra XP at creation.  If you take it, any negative consequences your character experiences as a result are your own damned fault!!  All this "Oh, I took all this obligation and now when I have to pay the cost for my choices I don't like it!" whining is bullsh!t.  If the penalties for the permanent XP gains were trivial, they wouldn't be penalties. I also think there should be group effect when individual obligation activates.  And if the group thinks they should ditch a character that doesn't pull their weight, then they should leave them in jail/ditch them on a backwater planet/space them/whatever.  It's all about player choice on both sides.

However, I think group obligation should be separate from individual obligation though, as I've posted before, but there's no need to expand on that here.

-WJL

Rikoshi said:

I fully agree with Rikoshi here.  The obligation provides a way for there to actually be some tension between the characters, which has provided many more opportunities for interesting and involved story-telling at my table.  It's new and it fits the "Fringe" setting very very well.  It provides a reason for the group to be together, and can encourage further inter-character (and therefore, inter-player) connections when characters see the other members in the party will actually help them through whatever the problem is.  It hasn't felt forced at my table.  

I think this can pretty easily fall apart, though, if your players have a "Fuck you, I got mine" objectivist point-of-view…

But, yes, it's a negative aspect.  Everything doesn't have to be rainbows and unicorns and cotton-candy.  Just get over that and try to enjoy it in the broader sense as it was intended.

I think there are still some tweaks that need to be made, especially along the lines of the modification I proposed earlier that uncouples group obligation from individual obligation.  

-WJL

Cyril said:

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.