Slicing the System–Adding In Rules for Operating Expenses to Age of Rebellion
Age of Rebellion—Operating Expenses
What follows is my attempt to address some of the issues I mentioend in my post mortem post for Age of Rebellion. It clarifies that the PCs will have a budget, provided by the Alliance, and that the any personal pay they might receive is outside of the scope of the campaign, while still attempting to maintain the actual measurement of credits, and the functionality negotiation and talents that are geared towards negotiation, so that the skill and the Quartermaster specialization retain their usefulness with minimal alteration.
Whenever Rebel Operatives are assigned a new mission, they are given credits equal to 1000 credits x [Number of Rebel Operatives] x [Contribution Rank]. If the contribution rank is 0, this equation is 500 credits x [Number of Rebel Operatives]. This amount is added to a pool of credits known as Operating Expenses.
When a Rebel Cell is attempting to acquire gear after they first receive their new mission, they can make a list of items that they want to “spend” credits with the Rebel Alliance. This does not represent spending credits, but lowering Operating Expenses by an amount equal to the gear acquired.
The operative attempting to acquire the gear still makes a Negotiation check to see if they can find the right people in the Rebel supply chain that have access to the gear they are seeking. If they have any talents that reduce the rarity of items, that talent works for this check as well.
Once gear has been located, the operative securing the gear can still use a Negotiate check to lower the cost of the gear, as normal, but in this case, they are negotiating how much they can requisition, instead of how much they are paying for items. Once the final price has been reached, subtract that number of credits from the Operating Expenses pool.
- Rarity modifiers on page 165 of the Age of Rebellion core rulebook do not apply for establishing prices
Once all the gear has been acquired from the Rebel Alliance, the operatives can draw out as many of the credits in Operating Expenses that they wish to have with them for the mission. This can be put into a bank account that they can access via non-identifying codes, or be put into liquid assets such as nova crystals. The whole group needs to decide on how much to withdraw from Operating Expenses, and how to distribute those credits, and once those assets are spent, they are not replenished until the team has been assigned a new mission.
Additionally, if the team does not draw the credits from their Operating Expenses before going on the mission, they do not have access to those credits during the mission, as the assets are safely stored with the Alliance during that time.
Imperial Assets
Imperial assets that are seized during the mission and then turned over to the Alliance, so that the PC operatives no longer have access to them, can be “sold” to the Alliance as a larger Operating Expenses pool.
- Anything recovered that was already part of the mission parameters cannot be used to add to the Operating Expenses in this way (i.e. if the PCs were sent to recover a hover tank, they don’t get credits for the cost of the hover tank for recovering it successfully)
- The PC turning in the recovered Imperial assets can use Negotiate just as if they were selling items, to potentially gain more credits in Operating Expenses than they would have without negotiating
- Rarity modifiers on page 165 of the Age or Rebellion core rulebook do not apply for establishing prices
Mission Downtime
Unless there is a compelling reason that missions should take place immediately following each other, it is assumed that there is about 7 days of downtime between missions where characters can perform tasks.
This time can be spent healing from wounds, tending to others, or crafting or upgrading gear. If crafting is what the downtime is being used for, an item that takes longer than this amount of time can be worked on incrementally during this time.
During some points in a campaign, a GM may “skip” a certain amount of time and assign more downtime.
Operatives and Personal Pay
Members of the Alliance are dedicated troops working against the Galactic Empire, but they do receive some pay for enlisting with the cause. That said, the amount of pay is assumed to be enough to cover room and board, a limited amount of recreation between missions, and the rest is set up in various accounts across the galaxy for after the end of the war.
In general, Age of Rebellion characters will not be receiving their individual pay, or keeping track of it during a campaign. Any significant amount is going to be difficult to access, as it is spread out in various accounts to avoid Imperial tampering, or is being paid directly to family members in secure locations.
Because of this, differences in pay scales between ranks and fluctuating pay based on cashflow issues the Alliance might have don’t play into the day to day activities of Rebel Operatives in an Age of Rebellion game.
Let me know what you think of this modification to the rules, and how well you think it might work at the table. If you happen to use it in your games, please let me know how it worked and where it might need improvement. Thanks!
What Do I Know? 
Don't think this is necessarily an issue with Age of Rebellion. Feels like a lot are having similar issues in Savage Rifts when it comes to players as part of the Tomorrow Legion. This is a nice codification of what I've kind of been doing in my Savage Rifts game so thanks 🙂
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