ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition Character Creation Guide: Sheet, Life Path, and Agendas

Introduction

Create ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition characters as a crew before you optimize anyone alone. In Campaign Play, a PC needs a career and the numbers that come with it, but also a personal agenda, a buddy and a rival, gear, and a reason to take the next dangerous job with these particular people. In Cinematic Play, the adventure usually supplies the characters, so your task is to understand the pressures already written into them and play those pressures fairly.

This guide covers the whole process in one place. It walks through the standard ten-step method with the core book's point budgets, explains each area of the character sheet and what it does at the table, covers the optional Life Path generator, and then spends real time on personal agendas, secrecy, and player-versus-player conflict, since those are where tables most often run into trouble. For a role-by-role comparison of the nine careers, use the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition Careers hub. For the library's overall map, visit the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition root guide.

Hot Take

Build the crew together before you optimize anyone alone. A perfectly efficient PC cannot fix a campaign with no shared purpose, no agreed limits on conflict, and no reason for the characters to trust each other once survival gets expensive.

The same goes for every field on the sheet and every secret on an agenda handout. The question worth asking is "What will this PC ask the crew to risk, and why will they still stay?" A childhood anecdote that never affects a decision is wasted ink. A secret agenda that only works by making the other players miserable is a missing conversation, and it will not give you a better twist.

Campaign and Cinematic Characters Have Different Jobs

The core book uses character creation differently in its two play modes. Do not bring Campaign assumptions into a Cinematic scenario, and do not expect a Cinematic role to hold up as a long-term campaign PC without a group conversation.

Cinematic Play can be brutal and may include PC conflict. Campaign Play can also be lethal, but its characters have to keep making decisions together after the session ends. The character-creation rules are still useful for Cinematic Play when a Game Mother writes a custom scenario: the book even suggests creating the characters first and building the adventure around them. Both modes benefit from safety tools and explicit expectations, covered under Safety Boundaries for Agenda Play.

Create the Crew Together

For Campaign Play, the core book recommends a session zero where the group creates characters together and picks one of three campaign frames: space truckers, Colonial Marines, or frontier colonists. Settle the frame before anyone picks a career, because it decides what kind of people the crew are.

The book's session zero questions translate well into a checklist:

Leave some gaps on purpose. If no one is the medic, pilot, investigator, or technical specialist, that gap becomes a promise: the crew will need help, take risks, or make tradeoffs when the problem arrives.

The Standard Ten-Step Method

The core book's basic method creates a Campaign Play PC quickly. Grab a character sheet (the book includes one to photocopy, and Free League offers a download) and work through these steps.

Two alternatives sit beside step 2. You can roll attributes instead: roll four dice, reroll any 1s and 6s until every die shows 2 to 5, and assign the results. With the random method, more than one attribute can be 5, but one of those must be the key attribute. Android PCs also have their own adjustments, covered under Attributes.

The core book's worked example is a roughneck named Nat: Strength 5, Agility 3, Wits 2, Empathy 4, with Heavy Machinery 3, Stamina 2, Close Combat 2, and 1 each in Comtech, Observation, and Medical Aid. She takes the True Grit talent, ends up with Resolve 3 and Health 4, and carries a photo of her dead partner as her signature item.

Choose a Career With the Group in Mind

Career is the first major choice. It establishes your background and your likely role in the group, and it shapes your attributes, skills, starting gear, and talent options. The book admits that career descriptions feel stereotypical on purpose, because an archetype gives everyone an immediate picture of the character. Treat it as a starting point.

A career should add a perspective to the group rather than guarantee control over a category of scenes.

Before locking a career in, ask three questions:

1. What problem does this character help the crew solve?
2. What problem are they likely to make more complicated?
3. What does the crew still lack if everyone chooses the obvious job?

More than one PC can overlap in a capability if their duties, goals, and methods differ. A Marine and an Officer can both act in a crisis while disagreeing about orders and responsibility. The Careers hub covers each career's key attribute, skills, talents, and gear in depth.

Reading the Character Sheet

The character sheet is a working record of what your PC can attempt, what pressure they carry, and why their choices matter. Career and attributes establish a role, skills and talents shape approaches, stress and Health show the current cost, and agendas, relationships, and gear give the crew reasons to act.

Do not try to write a full biography before the first scene. Make the sheet useful enough to answer a hard question at the table, and let play fill in the rest.

Read the Sheet in Play Order

The easiest way to use the sheet is by the question you need answered.

Identity Details

Name and appearance are fast handles for everyone at the table. Keep them concrete. A name, a few visible details, and a recognizable manner are enough to make the character easy to picture and easy for the Game Mother to bring into a scene.

The core book asks you to treat your PC as a real person with goals, hopes, and an agenda that may differ from your own beliefs. Start with a detail that answers "What does this person want from a hard life in space?" and add history when a decision earns it.

Attributes

The four attributes represent core physical and mental capability, each rated 1 to 5:

Attributes supply base dice for linked skill rolls and determine how much damage a character can withstand. A score is not a personality verdict. High Empathy does not require kindness, and high Strength does not require recklessness. Read the number as the kind of capacity the character brings to a difficult action.

Androids are rare, and the core book recommends talking it through with the group before creating one. An android PC adds +3 to two attributes of choice after the 14 points are assigned, and can reach 8 in the key attribute and 7 in one other. With rolled attributes, an android instead adds +2 to Strength and Wits and takes -1 to Empathy. Androids cannot push skill rolls, have no stress level, never make panic rolls, and take damage differently. A secret android can pose as human, which may mean rolling fewer dice than its attributes allow and faking stress and panic rolls. Clear that with the Game Mother first.

Skills

Skills represent learned competence, rated 0 to 5. A skill roll uses base dice equal to the linked attribute plus the skill level, then adds stress dice equal to your stress level. You can always attempt a skill with no level in it: you roll the attribute, any stress dice, and any modifiers from gear.

That makes a zero useful information. It says the PC has no trained edge in that area, so the crew may need better gear, help from another character, more time, or a different approach.

Talents

Talents are tricks, moves, and minor abilities that give a small, specialized edge. A starting character picks one of the three talents their career offers, and campaign experience can buy more later.

Do not choose a talent only because it makes one number larger. Choose the one that pushes you toward the decisions you want to make. A talent can change which risks look attractive, which problems the PC can handle, and how often the crew turns to them under pressure.

Stress, Resolve, and Health

These three are the sheet's live status display. Check them before a risky roll and after a dangerous scene.

Stress level represents mounting tension. It usually starts at zero and rises when you push rolls or face terrifying or stressful situations. Each point adds a stress die to your skill rolls. Those dice can help you succeed, but a facehugger symbol on any of them triggers a stress response: roll a D6, add your stress level, and subtract your Resolve. Mark stress as soon as it happens. It is the system's reminder that the next desperate solution may be both more capable and more volatile, functioning as a mechanical consequence rather than a way to shame a player for acting.

Resolve equals Wits plus Empathy, divided by two and rounded up. The Seen It All talent can raise it. You use it to resist stress and panic, so keep it visible when pressure spikes.

Health records physical harm. Your starting maximum equals Strength plus Agility, divided by two and rounded up, and the Hardened talent can raise it. At zero Health you are broken and might die, so the current value should change what a sensible crew attempts.

Buddy and Rival

Your PC can have one buddy and one rival among the other PCs, and only one of each. In Campaign Play you choose them; in Cinematic adventures they are assigned. The book frames the reason plainly: to survive you need someone to trust, and you need to be careful who you turn your back on. The Game Mother uses these relationships to build situations.

Give the relationship a job in play. A buddy might be the person whose opinion matters, whose safety changes a plan, or whose confidence the PC is trying to win back. A rival might challenge the PC's methods, authority, or values without becoming an excuse for hostility between players. Agendas get their own treatment below in Personal Agendas.

Gear, Cash, and Signature Item

List everything the PC carries. The core book's rule is blunt: if an item is not on your sheet, you do not have it with you. That includes tiny items, even though they do not count toward encumbrance.

Gear can enable an action, add dice, use up carrying capacity, or become a resource the crew must protect. You can carry regular items equal to double your Strength without trouble. Track supply ratings honestly: suits have an air rating, weapons an ammo rating, and some gear a power rating. A supply roll uses stress dice equal to the rating, up to six, and each facehugger lowers the rating by one.

Cash belongs here too. It turns work, debt, scarce supplies, and a job's reward into concrete stakes.

A signature item is small, sentimental, and of no practical use. The book's examples are a patch, a cap, or a photo of a loved one. That is exactly why it matters: the character can protect it, offer it, lose it, or notice it in a bad moment without it becoming another piece of optimization gear.

Advancement and Between-Session Notes

Campaign characters earn experience points after each session. The group discusses what happened, and each PC gets 1 XP for each of these questions answered "yes":

• Did you take part in the session?
• Did you risk or sacrifice something to further your personal agenda?
• Did you risk your life for your buddy?
• Did you challenge or stand up to your rival?
• Did you make a panic roll?
• Did you overcome a dangerous event, by violent or non-violent means?
• Did you make a significant discovery or revelation?
• Did you perform an extraordinary action?
• Did you earn any money?

If the group cannot agree on an answer, the Game Mother decides. XP can only be spent between sessions. Raising a skill one step costs 5 XP times the new level, so going from 2 to 3 costs 15 XP. Learning a new skill at level 1 costs 5 XP, but only if you used it successfully without a level during the session or trained with a teacher for at least a shift. Any new talent costs 5 XP, chosen from your career talents or the general talents. You can also change your buddy and rival after any session.

Use this part of the sheet as a short record of change. Update skills and talents when the rules allow, and update the human details too: a changed relationship, an agenda that evolved, a debt gained, a piece of gear lost, or a hard choice that now defines the PC.

Cinematic characters use their sheets differently. Most of their details are prepared for the scenario, and their agendas change by act and stay off the sheet entirely. Read the supplied role closely, play its pressures honestly, and do not expect it to behave like a long-term campaign record.

The Life Path Method

The Life Path generator in the core book appendix is an optional way to make a player-created character by discovering their past through rolls, then interpreting the results. The dice decide most of the PC's early life, with a few choices along the way, and the player decides what those events meant. Use it when the group wants a character whose capabilities and complications emerge together instead of being picked in one pass.

When to Use Life Path

The standard method gets a campaign PC to the table quickly. Life Path takes longer and trades control for surprise.

Skip it when the group needs fast, tightly controlled roles. Its randomness is only a feature if the table wants to play with whatever appears.

Life Path fits Campaign Play best. Published Cinematic adventures use prepared characters tailored to a short scenario and its acts, so do not spend an evening rolling a detailed history for a one-shot that already hands out roles. Nothing forbids Life Path in a custom short scenario, but it earns its time when the history has enough future to matter.

The Life Path in Nine Steps

The appendix gives a nine-step process. Follow the book for its tables and exact results. This summary explains what each stage contributes and what to note for play.

A few details matter at the table. Humans start with 2 in each attribute, and androids may add +3 to two attributes before starting. A failed career application means applying elsewhere, though the "pull a fast one" option lets you cheat your way in at the cost of a dangerous secret or a big favor owed. Strong application and performance rolls grant favors; a failed performance roll brings a disaster, such as injury, trauma, lost gear, or being sacked. The Kid is a lifestyle rather than a career, so you do not apply, but a Kid can serve only one term.

Life Path does not use the key attribute concept, but your career still defines which skills and talents are available. The random past changes the route into that role without erasing the career's practical place in the crew.

How to Interpret Random Results

The appendix tells players to interpret the events and fill the gaps however they like, and to agree the specific details of a life event with the Game Mother. Use that permission. A roll is an invitation to make a decision.

After each result, answer one or two questions:

Keep the answers playable. "I mistrust corporate medical staff because of a past event" creates choices. "I secretly know every detail of a conspiracy" tends to hand one player unwanted authority over the campaign. Write hooks that invite the Game Mother to pressure the PC instead of facts that resolve the plot.

Balance, Limits, and Choice

The core book warns outright that Life Path can produce unbalanced PCs, because chance shapes attributes, skills, gear, and complications. That is intended. The book frames it as the fun of playing someone whose history dealt them a hard hand and who proves the doubters wrong.

The process still has guardrails. By the end, a human PC must have at least 2 in every attribute and no score above 5, and an android can finish with scores up to 8. No skill can exceed 5. If a roll would break those limits, reroll or choose another result.

Balance at this table means every player has meaningful decisions and every PC has reasons to need the others. Identical numbers are not required.

Connect the History to the Crew

Roll Life Paths together, or at least share the consequences that could affect the crew. The session zero questions under Create the Crew Together still apply, and Life Path details should help answer them. The appendix also notes that formative events may drive the personal agenda you choose in step 9.

Once everyone has finished, try these connection moves:

1. Pair two results that point to the same institution, colony, job type, or person, then decide how those PCs are connected.
2. Turn one favor, debt, disaster, or unresolved event into a crew problem instead of one player's private burden.
3. Pick buddies and rivals that say something specific about the group's history rather than reflecting who sits closest.
4. Give each PC one reason to stay with the crew when a personal agenda creates pressure.
5. Ask the Game Mother which two hooks are welcome in the opening sessions and which should wait.

This matters most for secrets and psychologically charged events. A player can keep character-level uncertainty while the group agrees on player-level boundaries. Surprise belongs in the fiction; consent to the theme should never be a surprise.

A Table-Ready Life Path Checklist

Before the first campaign scene, each Life Path character should have:

1. A career and a clear job in the crew.
2. Attributes, skills, talents, gear, and pay recorded according to the procedure.
3. A brief interpretation of origin, early life, and the life event.
4. One favor, debt, rival, reputation, fear, or unresolved question the Game Mother can use.
5. An agenda that creates a costly choice without requiring sabotage.
6. A buddy and rival with a concrete meaning.
7. A reason to remain with this crew despite the trouble the past will cause.
8. A player-level agreement about any sensitive material the history introduces.

Once those are in place, stop. Do not solve the entire past before session one. The point of Life Path is to give the future something to collide with.

Personal Agendas

The core book puts it simply: you might be a team, but each PC also has an angle of their own. A good personal agenda makes a player choose between competing priorities. It should never become permission to wreck the group. The best ones add pressure to an already difficult situation: protect someone, hide a costly truth, get paid, fulfill a duty, find an answer, or refuse to repeat a past failure. They complicate cooperation without making it impossible.

What a Good Agenda Does

An agenda should point the player toward a meaningful choice when the crew is under pressure, not dictate a single action.

Agenda shapes that tend to work:

• Keep a promise, even when the job gets worse.
• Get proof before anyone can bury the truth.
• Protect a person, reputation, or resource the crew may not value equally.
• Earn enough to escape an obligation, then decide what the escape costs.
• Follow a professional duty that conflicts with the fastest solution.
• Keep a private failure from happening again.

Each shape asks a question and leaves the answer to the player. The core book's own example agenda for Nat is modest: downtime matters, and a can of Aspen beer and some time alone make her happy. Small wants still create choices when the job runs long.

Cinematic and Campaign Agendas Work Differently

The same word does different work in each mode, and treating the two as interchangeable causes most avoidable conflict.

Cinematic Play. The Game Mother hands each PC an agenda at the start of every act and evaluates at the end whether the player advanced it. The award is announced without explanation, and agendas stay hidden until the scenario ends. The core book recommends that agendas for Acts I and II avoid obviously suspicious behavior and direct confrontation with other players. That keeps the group able to investigate, escape, negotiate, and decide together before the final act breaks things open. A secret agenda can make a player hesitant, ambitious, protective, or conflicted without turning every early scene into a betrayal attempt.

Campaign Play. At the end of each session, the group discusses every PC's agenda and whether the player took concrete action toward it despite risk or cost. Write campaign agendas to generate recurring choices instead of recurring obstruction. A campaign crew has to keep working together after the session ends, and an agenda that only works by destroying the crew's reason to exist will eventually leave its player without a campaign.

Secrets, Open Agendas, and Player Knowledge

Hidden agendas are the Cinematic default, but the core book explicitly allows groups to discuss agendas openly, with players separating their own knowledge from their PCs'. Neither approach is automatically better.

The core book advises the Game Mother to avoid secret side conversations with players during Cinematic Play. They slow the game and tell everyone else that something fishy is going on. If a player insists, keep it short and remind them not to act overtly against the group until Act III, if at all. Put the agenda on the handout, let the player make visible choices, and let the other players wonder why without shutting them out of the table.

PvP Is a Table Decision

A PC can end up in direct confrontation with another PC. The core book says this is quite common in Cinematic Play and less so in Campaign Play. It is never mandatory, and it should never be casual.

In Cinematic Play, the Game Mother decides when a confrontation has escalated past the point of no return and "calls PvP." The players involved play out the current conflict to its conclusion. If the PC who turned traitor survives, that PC becomes an NPC under the Game Mother's control, and the player gets a new PC if one is available. Acting against the group can cost you your character even when it fits your agenda, which is why the book strongly recommends waiting until the third and final act, if you do it at all. Treat PvP as a tool for a climax, not an early surprise that takes away another player's ability to take part.

In Campaign Play, there are no specific PvP rules. The book says the group resolves such situations itself and has to work out its differences to continue as the same crew. Campaign conflict is a social question before it is a character question.

Before a campaign starts, agree whether PCs may:

1. Withhold ordinary information from each other.
2. Lie to each other about high-stakes facts.
3. Steal from, threaten, injure, abandon, or otherwise directly oppose another PC.
4. Keep secrets involving identity, employer, past harm, or a relationship.
5. Change the agreement once play has begun.

The answer can be yes, no, or "only after a check-in." Make it explicit.

Safety Boundaries for Agenda Play

ALIEN RPG is a horror game, but the core book states that no player should be forced to deal with topics they find distressing in real life or that make them feel unsafe at the table. It recommends safety tools before, during, and after play, such as pregame talks about lines and veils, safety cards shown during play, and post-game debriefs. It also tells the group to respect any player who raises a concern or wants to leave the table, and to take breaks.

Agendas are among the easiest routes for fiction to reach a sensitive subject, because they can involve loyalty, coercion, betrayal, grief, debt, violence, corporate control, or private history. Set boundaries before the first handout.

Never use "my agenda made me do it" to override a boundary. A sheet cannot grant more authority than a player has at the table.

Write an Agenda That Creates Play

For Campaign Play, start with a sentence that holds a goal and a cost:

I want to [pursue or protect something], even if it means [a pressure or sacrifice].

Then test it against the crew.

Share enough of a campaign agenda to establish its boundaries and possible impact. Keep character-level details private only when the group has agreed that secrecy will improve the campaign without reducing anyone's agency.

Agenda Checklists

Before Cinematic Play:

1. Explain that agendas follow the scenario's three-act structure.
2. Agree whether agendas are hidden or open at the player level.
3. State whether PC conflict is in scope and when the Game Mother may call PvP.
4. Set safety tools and content boundaries before handing out roles.
5. Remind players that early agendas should create tension without openly opposing the group.

Before Campaign Play:

1. Create characters around a shared campaign frame and crew purpose.
2. Write agendas that invite a costly decision without requiring sabotage.
3. Decide the table's rules for secrecy, lies, coercion, and direct PC opposition.
4. Link each PC to a buddy, rival, or common concern that supports continued cooperation.
5. Review agendas after every session and revise them when the character or campaign changes.

Build a Character Who Creates Play

Whichever method you use, a useful PC has three connected parts: a contribution, a pressure, and a connection.

The career sets an archetype and a mechanical direction, but it fills in none of these parts for you. A Pilot can be cautious, a Company Agent can care about the crew, a Marine can fear combat, and a Scientist can choose restraint. Let the choices made in play define the character.

A Pre-Session Character Checklist

Before the first Campaign session, each player should be able to answer:

1. What does my career let the crew rely on me for, and what problems do I want to face through it?
2. Which attribute and skill combination am I most likely to use?
3. What are my current stress level, Resolve, and Health?
4. What personal agenda could tempt me into a costly choice?
5. Who are my buddy and rival, and what would each relationship change?
6. Which item on my gear list solves a real problem, and what important thing do I lack?
7. What does my signature item reveal that my career does not?
8. Why does my character stay with this crew after the first serious crisis?
9. What kinds of secrecy or PC conflict has the table agreed are in scope?
10. What safety tools can I use if a scene stops being enjoyable or safe?

For Cinematic Play, answer the same questions from the supplied character sheet and scenario handout. You may not have chosen the pressure, but you still choose how the PC responds to it. If you can answer all ten, the sheet is ready, and the rest of the character will show up once the crew has something to lose.

Where To Go From Here

Compare roles on the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition Careers hub before your session zero, then return to the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition root guide for the rest of the library.

Source Scope

Character creation steps in this guide were checked against the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition Core Rulebook's standard character creation process, the life path method, personal agendas, and the character sheet's tracked fields (attributes, skills, talents, stress, Resolve, Health, and gear). Exact tables, life path entries, and full rules text stay in the book. Return to the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition root guide for the full library map.