Character Creation
Ardent Spacers is an Item based rules system, instead of a Skill Point system.
We want to encourage players to tailor what they do at each event based on their roleplay and what they feel is right for their character, not what skills they have locked into with character progression. Engage with the story, use items to gain new abilities short or long term, and mess around with whatever you find fun to do!
All characters start with 5 global HP.
Use these buttons to navigate to the different character creation rules pages.
New Characters
At character creation, you get to pick a number of pieces of equipment or cybernetic upgrades and a resource for your personal income.
This represents the equipment you have gone onto the AES Ardent with. Every character had the same personal item allowance limiting what they could bring, and poorer characters would have been given the equipment when they signed up.
Character creation:
- Choose your Division
- The core part of your character: what is their job area?
- This will determine what high-end equipment you can use.
- Choose your Starting Loadout
- Purchase equipment for your character.
- Choose your Personal Income
- Choose which single-use items your character receives each event, in addition to their salary.
- Final Details
- Name, Planet of Origin, Species
- Backstory
- Player Group
Character Progression
Instead of accruing XP each event you attend, you will instead have a salary and items from your personal income. Use this to buy new equipment from the ship, maintain your current equipment, and barter planetside with traders.
Character Death and Retirement
To encourage players to get stuck in with the more dangerous parts of the game, character death will be easily avoidable for the most part. Instead of dying on missions, you’ll be able to be resuscitated or teleported back to base in critical condition, which may have some lasting consequences. The biggest downside is you won’t get to see that particular encounter to the end!
Players invest a lot of time and money into their characters, and we want to avoid bad luck from forcing you to stop playing a character you enjoy.
There are ways to force character retirement such as opting to leave the ship to live on a new alien planet, defecting to an enemy empire, or committing such a serious crime that you are put in cryo-confinement pending return to the Alliance core worlds for trial.
Multiple Characters
We believe everyone should be able to play a range of characters, and not have to permanently lose access to their previous character if they need a break or want to try something new at the next event.
Many games don’t allow this, citing meta-gaming or avoiding consequences as a reason, but we think the benefits of allowing multiple characters far outweighs the problems. Note however that using multiple characters to metagame, cheat, or otherwise attempt to get around the rules is still not allowed. Sharing in-game items between your own characters is also not allowed.
You are expected to play one character for a whole event. If you wish to play more than one, you must talk to the Command Hub and deposit all your items and resources there, where they’ll be recorded under your account. You may not change characters during an encounter. If you have any plot-vital items or samples, you will be asked to hand them to another player or NPC so they stay in play; depositing them will automatically give them to A-COM to distribute out.
What if I don’t spend everything?
If you don’t spend all your character creation money, it’ll be credited to your account as Vouchers to spend in the IC Ship’s shop.
These Vouchers are attached to your character; if you make a second character, you cannot use Vouchers from your first character on your second.
What if I need more money?
If you’re just short on buying an item you want, save your remaining money and buy it from the Ship’s Shop when you get to the event! You’ll receive some money and resources as your Personal Income that may give you enough funds to buy what you want. The shop will be willing to buy things from you as well, albeit at a lower rate than they’ll sell them.