Modular Gaming Components 7 - Obligations

One of the things I do like about the Fantasy Flight Star Wars games is the obligation system. It basically means that characters get a leg up in the world, by linking themselves to key elements of the world. A bit like I described with the lifepath system ideas in the previous post.

An obligation is basically something that you owe someone due to something they've previously done for you. To pay off that obligation, you need to do something of equal value (or with interest). By starting a campaign off with this, you instantly begin with a positive and a negative, and that gives the story an instant kick of momentum. This is either something I'd add into a lifepath system, or something I'd allow players to choose for their characters if they have something in mind.  

I also like the idea in the Star Wars games where an obligation has a percentage associated with it... in 5% increments. You basically roll a die, and if it's lower than your obligation, then you can't choose your own tasks for the session, you're fulfilling duties and tasks to help pay off your debt.

One of the beauties of this idea is when multiple players have obligations. An example might have two players with a 20% obligation, a roll of 01-20 might fill character A's obligation, and a 21-40 might fill character B's obligation. If a party ever has a total of more than 100% obligation they basically become unplayable because they spend all of their time doing jobs for other people. 

Substituting this kind of idea into any game system would be relatively easy. It's just a case of working out how much benefit offsets what percentage of obligation. 

If characters start with an average of 100 gold, is an extra 100 gold worth a 10% obligation? 20%? 50%? 

If characters have an average of equipment worth 5000 gold as an experienced adventurer, is that extra 100 gold still worth the same level of obligation? Probably not. So, if you're going to include obligations in your campaign, you might want to consider working all this stuff out in advance. Or work out some vague guidelines, and then allow players to make skill tests for their characters to see if they end up with good deals or ones they regret.  

Personally, if I were doing it.

Let's go with that 100 gold starting amount. A starting character is worth far more than their equipment, they've got skills, and maybe some powers so I'm going to assume a trained human adventurer might be worth 500 gold (5 times their starting gold). This basically calculates to 5 gold per percentage point of obligation. Every now and then (when their obligation is rolled), a player has to pay off the interest on their obligation by performing a job worth half of the obligation value. 

A bonus of 100 gold, would be worth 20% of the obligation for a starting character.

In this case, players can pay off the debt if they work on their own, but if they roll the obligation at the start of a session, they do a job worth 50 gold for no fee. 

As a character gets more powerful, that initial benefit is worth less obligation to them. By the time they've reached a point where they should have 5000 gold that 100 gold obligation might only be worth 1% of the obligation percentage... so if we look at this from the other perspective, someone would need to offer 2000 gold (or items to the equivalent value) to get a 20% obligation out of someone. They could hire 20 starting characters for the same fee, so that veteran character would need to be 20 times more powerful than a starting character for the investment to be worthwhile. 

Some tweaking of the numbers is probably good, but every group will find their own sweet spot depending on the game they play, how quickly they accumulate treasure, and various other factors.