A milestone is a meaningful event in your character’s life, a point at which they re-examine themselves and changes in response to what they’ve experienced. Milestones occur at the end of missions, though your character will not always have a milestone at the end of every mission.
Milestones are connected to a character’s values, and to the Directives present during missions. Values are what drive a character’s actions, and a milestone is a significant point reached because of those actions. Milestones also vary in significance, with greater impact the more a character is involved in the action.
Log Entries
To reach milestones and have your character grow, you should maintain a personal log. The log is a record of your main character’s adventures, and serves as an accounting of the character’s history in play. You gain milestones whenever you make a connection between the current adventure, and one noted in your log.
At the end of each adventure, create a brief description of the mission itself and how your main character was involved. This doesn’t need to be a detailed account of the adventure, as it’s mainly there as a reminder of past actions, so one or two sentences should be the most you need; if your gamemaster provides titles for each adventure, noting down the title of the adventure is sufficient. You’re welcome to write more if you want—and some players may want to—but it’s not essential, and so long as you have a useful reminder of past exploits, any amount is fine. A blank personal log is provided on page 373.
Note which (if any) of your values you used positively, used negatively, or challenged. Some shorthand is useful here: by numbering your values, you can refer to them by simply writing V1, V2, V3, etc., (or D1, D2, etc., for Directives), and following any that were used with a + (used positively), a – (used negatively), or a ! (challenged).
In addition, if you challenged a value, you may rewrite that value. The new value should relate somehow to what it was before, and how the character’s views have changed because of the situation that caused the challenge. It doesn’t have to be a big difference—and often, it won’t be—but the new value should demonstrate how the character’s perspectives have shifted. If you choose not to rewrite the value, it remains crossed out until you rewrite it.
Finally, if you used any of your values (positively, negatively, or challenged) during that adventure, you may also make an adjustment to your character. This is optional, but it allows characters to adjust and shift in small ways over time, letting you tweak things that aren’t working as intended, or represent how your character adjusts their priorities over time. You may do one of the following:
ATTRIBUTES: Reduce one attribute by 1 and increase another attribute by 1. You may not increase an attribute to above 11, nor may you reduce an attribute to below 7.
DEPARTMENTS: Reduce one department by 1 and increase another by 1. You can’t increase any department to more than 4 in this way, nor reduce a department below 1.
FOCUSES: Choose one of your focuses and replace it with a different focus.
TALENTS: Replace one of your talents with a different one for which you meet the prerequisites.
SUPPORTING CHARACTER: Help a supporting character in their training: adjust one of the supporting character’s attributes or departments, swap one of their focuses, or swap one of their talents, as described above.
Reaching a Milestone
Once during any adventure, when you choose to use one of your main character’s values, you may call back to any previous adventure in your log where you used the same value (or, in the case of values that were challenged and rewritten, to the new value created that adventure). Describe how that previous experience influences what is happening now, and then gain Determination (you’re still limited to the normal maximum of 3). Place a tick next to the log entry you called back to, or otherwise mark that you have used it: each log entry may only be used once.
The gamemaster may veto a call back which seems tenuous or inappropriate to the situation, though this should be done rarely, and if a call back is vetoed, then you may attempt another call back later in that adventure.
At the end of the adventure, when adding to your log, you receive a milestone. Note or mark in the log entry for the current adventure that you have received a milestone, and which previous adventure you called back to (this will be important later).
Once you’ve written the log entry, you may make a change to your character. The change can be any one of the following:
ATTRIBUTES: Choose a single attribute and increase it by 1. You may not increase an attribute above 11, and you may only increase each attribute once using a milestone.
DEPARTMENTS: Choose a single department and increase it by 1. You may not increase a department above 4, and you may only increase each department once using a milestone.
FOCUS: Gain one additional focus.
TALENT: Gain one additional talent.
SUPPORTING CHARACTER: Help a supporting character in their training: increase one of the supporting character’s attributes or departments, or give them one extra focus or talent. A supporting character may not have more than six focuses or four talents.
SHIP SYSTEMS: Adjust one of the ship’s systems. Reduce one system by 1 and increase another system by 1. You may not increase a system to above 11, nor reduce a system to below 6.
SHIP DEPARTMENTS: Reduce one department by 1 and increase another by 1. You can’t increase any department to more than 4 in this way, nor can you reduce a department below 1.
SHIP TALENTS: Swap one of the ship’s talents, with the ship removing some specialized systems to make way for others. Choose one of the ship’s talents and replace it with a new one.
Character Arcs
Each milestone is built on calling back to prior experiences and being influenced by them. Character arcs are the next step of that, showing how a character has developed over a longer stretch of time and several important events.
When you make a call back to a previous adventure, you may gain an additional benefit if that previous adventure was a milestone, creating a character arc. You can only get this additional benefit a few times, as they represent momentous and significant events in the character’s life, and moments like that don’t come along very often.
Each character arc is a string of adventures connected by a single value. At a minimum, this will be three adventures: an initial one where you used that value, a milestone where you called back to that initial adventure, and the third one which calls back to that milestone. However, each time you complete a character arc, it takes more time and effort to complete the next character arc.
When you complete a character arc, you may change your character using one of the options below instead of one of the normal milestone options.
ATTRIBUTES: Choose a single attribute and increase it by 1. You may not increase an attribute above 12.
DEPARTMENTS: Choose a single department and increase it by 1. You may not increase a department above 5.
VALUE: You may create one additional value for the character.
SHIP’S SYSTEMS: Choose one of the ship’s systems and increase it by 1. Each system may only be increased by 1 by any character using a milestone.
SHIP’S DEPARTMENTS: Choose one of the ship’s departments, and increase it by 1, to a maximum of 5. Each department may only be increased by 1 in this way.
SHIP’S TALENTS: Select one additional talent for the ship, which may ignore the normal maximum number of talents a ship may possess.
Further, the total number of missions required to make up a character arc increases by 1 for each character arc you’ve already completed: so, while the first character arc you complete is made up of three missions, the second must include four, the third must include five, and so forth.