
Background
Your character’s background covers their life before becoming freelancers. For the most part, Backgrounds will give characters a choice between several specialized skills which represent the kinds of things your character may have been trained at or shown a propensity towards through their life. Your background includes a small bonus or advantage which you can add to your advantages on your character sheet
Additionally, each Background gives you suggestions for Specialized Skills, Drives and Ambitions. GMs are encouraged to tailor or even add backgrounds based on the factions and locations that exist within their campaign.
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Born into wealth and comfort, the heir to a noble family or related to a powerful or influential individual(s) in their systems.
Bonus
Advantage on Social tests against wealthy or noble characters.
Suggested Skills
Aim, Knowledge, Diplomacy, Deception, Willpower, Presence
Suggested Drives:
Flaunt your status.
Attempt to correct someone's manners.
Ambition:
Restore my family / group / consortium’s power and reputation to its former glory.
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An itinerant priest, a penitent traveler, a faithful pilgrim, or a person who dedicates their life to the worship of a higher power.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to recall or interpret religious texts or iconography.
Suggested Skills:
Fortitude, Strike, Knowledge, Empathy, Willpower, Perception
Suggested Drives:
Pray.
Quote your holy texts (which you can make up!)
Ambition:
I must find a significant artifact, / document / place for the sake of my faith.
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Merchants, arbitrators, and diplomats and brokers, people used to defusing situations and advocating for dialogue and trade.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to buy, sell or trade information.
Specialized Skills:
Evasion, Datacraft, Investigation, Knowledge, Diplomacy, Deception
Suggested Drives;
Advocate for non-violence.
Try to make a trade or barter.
Ambition:
I must broker a deal, agreement or peace treaty between my faction and our worst enemies.
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Thugs, enforcers and people who think all conflict can be solved by the correct application of brute strength.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to intimidate or threaten.
Suggested Skills:
Athletics, Strike, Fortitude, Grapple, Presence, Survival
Suggested Drives:
Advocate for violence.
Try to intimidate someone.
Ambition:
I must rise to the top of a criminal organization or group of warriors, stomping out whoever is on my way.
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Inhabitants of hub or core worlds with mostly uneventful lives. They tend to be used to a slightly more comfortable, peaceful existence until some unforeseen event forces them out of their comfort zone.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to navigate an urban area.
Suggested Skills:
Crafting, Fortitude, Medicine, Knowledge, Piloting, Empathy.
Suggested Drives:
Quote local regulations (which you can make up!).
Try to avoid risk or danger.
Ambition:
I’ve been accused of a crime I didn’t commit, I need to run for my life and clear my name.
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Hackers, Netsphere operatives, Agents from data cults, a person who has begun to dabble in the recovering world of the Netsphere after the Blackout.
Bonus;
Advantage on tests to use the Netsphere.
Suggested Skills:
Aim, Datacraft, Investigation, Knowledge, Diplomacy, Deception
Suggested Drives:
Speak in netsphere lingo (Which you can make up!)
Stare at your datapad/rig when you should be paying attention to something else.
Ambition:
There is a secret hidden in the Netsphere which the powers that be don’t want us to know. I want to liberate that knowledge.
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Health professionals, tribal healers, scientists and combat medics, doctors can come from many walks of life but they share and interest in medicine and science.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to identify or diagnose illnesses and injuries.
Suggested Skills:
Evasion, Medicine, Investigation, Knowledge, Willpower, Empathy
Suggested Drives:
Give unsolicited medical/health advise.
Approach a problem through medical knowledge.
Ambition:
A mysterious plague swept through my home world in my youth. I see signs now of its return and I must find a cure.
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Netsphere vloggers, holovid stars, singers, performers and escorts, and people involved in the business of entertainment and pleasure.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to put on a show.
Suggested Skills:
Athletics, Sneak, Evasion, Crafting, Diplomacy, Performance.
Suggested Drives:
Mention a time you were at a place or event with a celebrity (which you can make up).
Perform for at least one person.
Ambition:
I want to make it big and become a household name on the netsphere or some entertainment megacorp.
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The most adaptable people in the new interstellar civilization. They take all kinds of odd jobs from shipping to fighting to exploring.
Bonus
Advantage on tests to look for work.
Suggested Skills:
Aim, Evasion, Fortitude, Perception, Piloting, Survival
Suggested Drives:
Recount a time a job went south (which you can make up!)
Go out of your way to obtain extra resources or loot.
Ambition:
I have a huge debt to a dangerous person, I need a big job to save my skin.
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Someone who has always been good at making money at the expense of others, be it through sleight of hand or a clever plot.
Bonus
Advantage on skill tests to Gamble.
Suggested Skills:
Strike, Sneak, Evasion, Grapple, Perception, Survival
Suggested Drives:
Try to sell something that is not yours.
Hide from someone you may owe money to (it's ok, it's not actually them).
Ambition:
I’ve got a tip on a massive heist, I just need the right crew and plan and I’ll be swimming in credits.
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A former prisoner, experiment, or patient, brought up or kept in a mysterious facility for most of their life.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to resist poison or disease.
Suggested Skills:
Athletics, Fortitude, Medicine, Survival, Deception, Empathy
Suggested Drives:
Casually recount an experiment performed on you. (which you can make up!)
Hide from someone from the lab (it's ok, it's not actually them).
Ambition:
I must figure out who or why I was put in that facility and get back at those who did.
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Bounty hunters, marshals or officers, experts at the art of hunting other man.
Bonus;
Advantage on Social tests against criminals and law enforcement.
Suggested Skills:
Athletics, Aim, Grapple, Investigation, Perception, Presence
Suggested Drives:
Quote local laws (which you can make up!)
Mention how years/months/days you estimate you have until retirement.
Ambition:
I must catch a bounty that got away from me in the past, one that took something important and personal away from me.
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A gearhead, a field mechanic, a professional mechacrafter or someone in training to become one.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to identify machinery.
Suggested Skills:
Athletics, Crafting, Fortitude, Mechacraft, Investigation, Knowledge
Suggested Drives:
Speak in technobabble. (Which you can make up!)
Critique some shoddy gear upkeep.
Ambition:
A piece of important tech (either financially or emotionally) was stolen from me, I must get it back.
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A former member of a mercenary outfit, using skills picked up through training or just pure grit.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to maintain or repair your own weapons.
Suggested Skills:
Strike, Aim, Grapple, Fortitude, Survival, Presence
Suggested Drives:
Complain about not being paid enough for this.
Talk to or about your gun (or any of your weapons - the weapon must also be named).
Ambition:
My whole outfit died when a contract went south, to this day I yearn to finish the job in their memory.
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Explorers and pioneers, always the first to explore a new derelict, abandoned facility or planet.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to find your way in the wilderness.
Suggested Skills:
Athletics, Evasion, Perception, Survival, Empathy, Presence
Drives:
Try to weave an animal fact into conversation. (Which you can make up!)
Approach a problem through the use of your survival skills.
Ambition:
Someone important to me went missing searching for a hidden, wild place. I must find out what happened to them.
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The inhabitants of worlds gone partially or completely feral after the Blackout, which may or may not even be aware of the spacefaring past of humanity.
Bonus:
Advantage on social tests against other Feral or Rimworlders.
Suggested Skills:
Strike, Sneak, Evasion, Grapple, Perception, Survival
Suggested Drives:
Completely misunderstand spacer culture or technology.
Quote the history or customs of your homeworld. (Which you can make up!)
Ambition:
I have been taken from my home and am lost in a strange, hostile space. I must get back.
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An intellectual, researcher, or overtly curious individual.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to understand or interpret academic or scientific papers.
Suggested Skills:
Knowledge, Investigation, Medicine, Crafting, Diplomacy, Empathy
Suggested Drives:
Try to correct someone's grammar, pronunciation or spelling (even if you are wrong)
Try to relate the current situation to a historical situation (that you can make up)
Ambition:
I have this small trinket that hides a massive mystery and have been driven to discover it my whole life.
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Formerly part of a city garrison, fleet, or some other organization.
Bonus:
Advantage on Social tests against military individuals.
Suggested Skills:
Athletics, Aim, Fortitude, Crafting, Piloting, Willpower.
Suggested Drives:
Speak in military lingo. (Which you can make up)
Explain why the thing the party just did/is trying to do would not have flown back in basic training.
Ambition:
There was a traitor in my squad, caused many of my comrades to die. One day I will find them.
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Born and raise in the black, spacers feel more at ease in orbit than they do planetside.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to find your way in Spaceships or Space Stations
Suggested Skills:
Evasion, Mechacraft, Investigation, Knowledge, Perception, Piloting
Suggested Drives:
Try to weave a fact about Space or Spaceships into a conversation (even if its wrong).
Complain about being planetside.
Ambition:
I want my own starship... one that is completely paid off, that is.
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Someone who grew up in a dead worlds, surviving in the harshest conditions imaginable.
Bonus:
Advantage on tests to recover from Insight stress.
Suggested Skills:
Athletics, Strike, Fortitude, Grapple, Perception, Survival
Drivers:
Fully dissociate.
Mention someone you knew who didn't make it. Then clarify that they didn't make it.
Ambition:
When I escaped I left something important behind. I wish to go back for it.
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Orphaned youths who hail from urban environments.
Bonus:
Advantage on social tests against underprivileged people.
Suggested Skills:
Sneak, Evasion, Perception, Diplomacy, Deception, Performance
Suggested Drives:
Try to steal something.
Blame someone else for something you did.
Ambition:
My sibling and I grew up on the streets, they didn’t get out. They are still out there and I’d like to find them.