All characters begin as untrained, inexperienced young people of about 18 years of age. Then you do these things to generate your character:

  1. Generate your characteristics.
  2. Name your character.
  3. Acquire skills and expertise through enlistment in a service.
  4. Note down your Universal Personality Profile.

Characteristics

Roll 2d6 six times, once for each characteristic in order:

These initially range from 2 to 12, with later modifications possibly lowering them as low as 1 or raising them as high as 15. They can never exceed 15 and may not go below 1 except due to severe injury or aging.

Try to play out whatever you get! (If you really hate your character, consider taking Book 1’s advice and enlisting in the Scout Corps, where your chances of survival are worse than other services.)

Name

Name your character.

If you have a Social Standing of 11 or greater, you may use your family’s hereditary title with your name.

If you receive a commissioned or promoted rank as part of your prior service (below), you may use your rank as part of your name, even after leaving the service or retiring.

Prior Service

So far your character is not well-equipped to make their way in the world. The way to gain skills and experience is to enlist in one of the six services (Navy, Marines, Army, Scouts, Merchants, or Other).

Here’s how this goes:

  1. Choose a service to try to enlist in.
  2. Make an enlistment roll. The target number (throw) on 2d6 is determined by the “Enlistment” throw listed for the service in question. Most services also allow one or more bonuses if you have appropriate characteristics.
  3. If you fail to enlist, you are drafted into a random service (potentially even the one you failed to enlist in).
  4. You serve a 4 year term in the service you’ve enlisted or been drafted into:
    1. Add 4 years to your age. If you are now 34 years or older, see the aging rules.
    2. Make a survival roll on 2d6 against the Survival throw listed for the service (applying any listed modifiers). On failure, your character dies. Start over from scratch with a new character.
    3. If you don’t yet have rank in this service: make a 2d6 roll against the Commission throw listed for the service, applying any listed modifiers. On a success you gain level 1 rank in the service. If you were drafted you don’t get to make this roll during your first term of service but can do so in subsequent terms.
    4. If you have rank in the service (even if you just got rank from your commission roll for this term): roll 2d6 against the listed Promotion roll for the service (applying listed modifiers as usual). On a success you advance to the next rank.
    5. Roll on one of the acquired skill tables for your service an appropriate number of times: twice during your first term of service, once during each subsequent term, an extra time if you received a commission this term, and an extra time if you received a promotion this term. You choose which skill table to roll on before rolling; the fourth table is only available if you have an Education characteristic of at least 8.
    6. Roll 2d6. If you roll 12, you must reenlist regardless of whether you want to or not. If you roll at least the Reenlistment number for the service but less than 12 (and you haven’t served 7 terms already), you can choose whether or not to reenlist. If you roll less or have already served 7 terms (and didn’t roll a 12), then your reenlistment is denied and you must leave the service.
    7. If you reenlisted, go through this whole step 4 again. Otherwise continue on to the next step.
  5. When you leave the service for whatever reason, you get mustering out benefits, rolled on the tables for your service. You get one benefit roll for each term of service served. Rank 1 or 2 characters get an extra roll, Rank 3 or 4 characters get two extra rolls, and Rank 5 or 6 characters get two extra rolls and also get to add a +1 to their die rolls on Table 1. You get to choose whether to roll from Table 1 (for travel, education, and material benefits) or Table 2 (for cash severance pay) for each roll, but may roll on Table 2 at most 3 times.
  6. If you left the service voluntarily after serving at least 5 terms, you are entitled to annual retirement pay according to your duration of service (see the retirement pay table on page 27 of Book 1), in addition to mustering out benefits.

The possible benefits from terms of service and mustering out include:

Weapon expertise and basic skills are written e.g. “Brawling-1” or “Gambling-2”.

Starships gained during mustering out are either Free Traders or Scouts:

Enlistment and Rank in some services entitles you automatically to gain certain skills (these add to existing skills normally):

Universal Personality Profile

Your characteristics can be summarized in a 6-digit hexadecimal (base-16) numeric notation (digits 10-15 are represented by the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F) called the Universal Personality Profile (UPP).

This is in order of Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Socail Standing.