My regular Edge of the Empire group has managed to overcome their obligations as we started with the beginner adventure and tailored obligations based on the pre-gens provided to get us started. We then went on to Long Arm of the Hutt and completed that, essentially completing their obligations.
We've since started working on Beyond the Rim but with no real obligations. I personally think they should always have some form of obligation, otherwise, why would they continue to adventure? But I'm not sure how to introduce new obligations for the party.
I can't find any specific rules as to how to accomplish this, so how should I give them new obligations?
Best Answer
Characters are never supposed to be completely free of obligation in EotE. You can reduce it to a minimum of 5, but never alleviate it completely. Some plot occurrence should arise to transfer or change an obligation when a character gets close to paying it all off. Basically you should treat is as being on par with loot and experience. Dolling it out to keep the game interesting and the players engaged..
The universe (e.g. the GM) should conspire to keep the players down on their luck. When a player kills her sworn rival, she'll likely disrupt the boss of said rival's plans. The player will most certainly inherit the rival's troubles in their stead.
You can work with the players when this happens, or not. Depends on how mean a GM you are. The published modules like Beyond the Rim and Jewel of Yavin will also have notes on how to assign new obligation to the player based on the outcome.
For instance in Jewel of Yavin:
Also don't be shy about throwing out random new obligations to the party as the plot dictates. Whether or not they've had a chance to deal with any existing ones. In my game my players had to go several months without being able to spend XP because of a large Hutt bounty and owning a severely under-crewed Corvette.