Backgrounds

Backgrounds describe the characters’ lives and circumstances before they begin their careers.   If it’s a profession, it’s generally the parents’ profession. Skill rolls that you can justify having experience with based on your background use a d20, otherwise use a d10. Roll a d20 plus Luck mod for your starting background:

1. Urchin – no family, grew up on the streets (or equivalent)
2. Refugee – displaced persons from some catastrophe or war
3. Castaway – survivors or descendant of survivors of a ship-wreck (not necessarily primitive)
4. Zealot – inhabitants of world or culture dedicated to the tenets of a particular religion (rarely mainstream, or they wouldn’t have bothered to settle their own world or region)
5. Criminal – family of underworld denizens
6. Barbarian – natives of a low-tech planet that’s regressed from a higher tech
7. Aboriginal – non-human natives of a low-tech planet
8. Colonist – settlers on a colony world
9. Dirt Farmer – agricultural workers on a planet that grows crops the old-fashioned way
10. Miner/Prospector – planetary surface or asteroid miners and their families/small time searchers for ore and inhabitable planets
11. Prole – non-administrative workers on an industrialized world
12. Salaryman – administrative, managerial or knowledge workers on an industrialized world
13. Space Colonist – inhabitants of a space colony
14. Ship-born – family of ship’s crew (usually large or generation-ship, sometimes small family-owned vessel)
15. Merchanter – trading family or clan
16. Police – law enforcement agents’ family
17. Faculty – families of faculty or staff of an institution of learning
18. Military– families and camp followers of military personnel
19. Politician – family and hangers-on of the politically powerful
20. Noble House  – hangers-on (small chance of actual nobility)
21. Nobility – an actual noble or the cultural equivalent, though low-ranked.
22. Imperial House – a high ranked noble or the cultural equivalent.
23. Imperial – the emperor, an imperial heir or the cultural equivalent.