Failed Careers for Mothership

Recently over in the Mothership discord I shared a pdf that details some interesting spects of my Mothership campaign setting, as well as my d100 failed careers table. 

Roll 1d100 during character creation for a failed career, most of which are affiliated with various galaxy-wide factions. When leveraging expertise from this career to aid a skill check, a crewmember may add +5% to their roll. This is enough to make the player feel that the background is meaningful, but not enough that it is actually very helpful (these are failed careers, they can’t have been very good at them). The careers failed so catastrophically that a crewmember would be unable to return to that line of work and retains no friendly contacts or resources from it; in fact they may have enemies.

I use these debt rules and start my players off with nothing but their ship, trinkets and starting loadouts; adjust accordingly based on the starting circumstances for your own players.

Upon starting the game, the crew are in a terrible situation. They have a used starship that’s ready to fall apart, but otherwise they’re flat broke. The crew have a Debt rating equal to the ship’s hull, owed to an agent of one of the following factions:

The Interplanetary League. Official, chrome-and-gray, repressive. Ideals are Law & Order, Peace Via Surveillance and Good Old-Fashioned Values. All-powerful in the hubward systems, nearly nonexistent in the furthest rimward reaches. Rife with corruption, bends to the will of Imperial-Class Corporate Interests but does not tolerate outright threats. Publicly wants to eliminate Organized Crime Syndicates but too deeply blackmailed to try anything. Bankrolls Jumpgate Hyperspace Cults but also keeps tabs on them to prevent insurrection.

Imperial-Class Corporate Interests. Corporations so old and established that they have become the empires of the future; beautiful androids carry CEOs on palanquins and directorial boards act as a royal court aboard palatial space stations. Quietly in control of the Interplanetary League. Unbearable bloodlust towards Organized Crime Syndicates. Want to infiltrate and take control of the Jumpgate Hyperspace Cults.

Organized Crime Syndicates. Mobsters, gangs, cartels. The expansion of humanity to beyond the stars has provided a ‘shadow government’ of loosely-defined organized crime groups to seize power in the galaxy’s rimward systems. Constant infighting and regime changes but most rule fairly to prevent population uprisings. Reams of blackmail on the Interplanetary League, quiet alliance with Jumpgate Hyperspace Cults, total warfare against Imperial-Class Corporate Interests.

Jumpgate Hyperspace Cults. Thruster-based space travel is slow and jump drives are unpredictable and finicky. Jumpgates, massive spaceborne docks that allow for transportation from one gate to another, are near-instantaneous and reliable, but acquiring a license to travel through them from the Interplanetary League is incredibly expensive. They are constructed through proprietary methods and maintained by star-touched cultists whose prophets induce madness by entering jumpgates without cryostasis, though for practical purposes the cults employ many nonbelievers. Protected and bankrolled by the Interplanetary League, under constant threat of replacement by Imperial-Class Corporate Interests, often offered under-the-table protection in exchange for forged licenses by Organized Crime Syndicates.

The crew may choose which faction they owe their debt to; all are equally ruthless in ensuring payment.