Resources
Every character has a Resources rating — a number from 0 to 5 that measures their stable access to money, property, equipment, and material support. It is not a wallet. It is not exact credits on hand. It is the standing a character carries when they walk into a room and ask for something.
A League officer with Resources 1 does not have a fat bank account. She has rank, a requisition form, and the patience to fill it out. A Confederate freelancer with Resources 1 does not have rank or paperwork. He has a stash, a contact who owes him, and a vehicle that mostly runs. Same number. Same access. Different fiction.
That is the whole point. Resources tells you how much a character can reach for. The character's life tells you what it looks like when they do.
Resources is one of three Social Power pillars, alongside Contacts and Allies. All three use the same engine.
Only player characters and named Adversaries carry a Resources rating. Grunts and minor NPCs do not need one.
The Tiers
A character's Resources rating is picked at character creation and sits on the sheet next to their Abilities. There is no XP cost. It is not bought up like a skill. It moves through play.
| Rating | Tier | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Broke | You scrape by on the basics. Shelter is unreliable. Every credit is accounted for. |
| 1 | Modest | You can afford cheap housing, basic gear, and an old vehicle or public transit. |
| 2 | Comfortable | You have a stable home, a decent vehicle, and your routine professional expenses are covered. |
| 3 | Affluent | You can afford luxury goods, specialized gear, major travel, and staff on occasion. |
| 4 | Wealthy | You own multiple properties, employ private security, pay real bribes, and access elite services. |
| 5 | Powerful wealth | You command corporations, estates, fleets, political funding, and major operations. |
The tiers describe lifestyle and reach, not income. A pirate with caches buried on three moons sits at the same tier as a midlevel bureaucrat with a pension. They spend differently. They are spending from the same shelf.
Spending Resources
Anything at or below a character's Resources rating is routine. No roll, no fuss, no on-screen accounting. A Resources 2 character buys a decent sidearm, books passage on a freighter, replaces a worn coat. It happens between scenes if it needs to happen at all.
Basic survival is included at every tier — even a Resources 0 character eats and finds shelter. Being broke is being broke; it is not having to roll for every meal. Resources only constrains reaching beyond that baseline.
Anything above the rating is possible — but it costs more than money. The GM names a Cost, and the character pays it to acquire the thing.
This is the Costly Success principle applied to acquisition rather than to a roll.
When a character wants something above their Resources rating, the GM picks one of the following Costs. The character pays it; the thing is theirs.
- Debt — a numbered, named financial obligation. Someone is going to want it back, with interest.
- Delay — they can have it, but not now. The shipment arrives next act. The favor clears next session.
- Obligation — they are beholden. A person, an organization, a faction now has a hook in them.
- Exposure — the transaction draws attention. Someone notices. Someone asks questions.
- Reduced Resources — the rating drops by 1 until earned back through play. Not available at Resources 0; pick a different Cost, or call the ask too far.
- Cross-Pillar — reduce Contacts or Allies by 1 instead. A contact accepts the deal, an ally takes the heat.
The Cost should scale with how far above the rating the ask is. One step up is a single Cost. Two steps up is a heavier Cost, or two Costs stacked, or a Cost the player will feel.
The GM also has the option of saying no. Not as a punishment — as a story prompt. A Resources 0 character does not buy a corvette by stacking Costs until the math works. They steal one. They earn one. They get one given to them by someone who wants something. The acquisition becomes the next mission, and the rule is working as designed.
Routine equipment acquisition still runs narratively, as described in Between Sessions. Resources is what tells the GM and the player which acquisitions are routine and which need a Cost or a story.
Suggested Ranges
Resources at character creation should fit the fiction the player wants to play. The table below offers ranges, not fixed values — a freelancer can be flush, a diplomat can be hemorrhaging credits. The range describes what the role usually means economically.
| Occupation Type | Examples | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Drifters and freelancers | Freelancer, Mercenary, Entertainer, Scout | 0–2 |
| Criminal life | Pirate, Privateer, Smuggler, Thief, Bounty Hunter, Fixer | 0–4 |
| Trained professionals | Marine, Security, Medic, Engineer, Mechanic, Pilot, Navigator, Sharpshooter, Operative, Scholar | 1–3 |
| Position and access | Officer, Captain, Diplomat, Merchant, Explorer, Scientist | 2–4 |
| Privileged | Noble | 3–5 |
A character's background can shift their placement. A Marine from a Privileged family lands higher than the table suggests; a Diplomat from a Refugee origin lands lower. The occupation row is the starting point, not the verdict.
The Criminal row is wide for a reason. A pickpocket and a cartel underboss are both criminals. The Resources gap between them is the entire table.
Angus needs a clean false identity — Republic-grade, biometrics that hold up to a customs scan. His Resources is 1. The kit is a 3.
The kit is two steps above Angus's rating, so the GM names two Costs: Obligation and Exposure. The forger, a Confederate fixer named Mirela, does not do favors — she does exchanges, and Angus now owes her something he will be paying off for an act, maybe two. The Exposure is the cost of being seen ordering: every Confederate fixer in the freeport now knows he is running paper. He took the deal because the alternative — getting boarded at a Republic waystation under his own name — was worse.
Two missions later Angus's contact list looks different. The fixer is going to call. The papers are still good. So is the hook.
Priya wants a private testbed reactor — a real one, the kind a corporate R&D division would write off as a line item. Her Resources is 2. The reactor is a 5.
The GM does not offer a Cost. The GM says: you cannot buy this. You can build it from parts, you can steal it from a decommissioned hauler in the Tannhauser yards, or you can convince the Lyndri science attaché to lend you one for a quarter on the grounds that you are the only engineer in the sector who can keep it stable. Pick a lane.
That is not a refusal. It is the next mission.
Mission-End Adjustment
Resources is not bought up with XP. It drifts as the fiction drifts.
At the end of every mission, the GM and the table consider whether the character's standing has actually shifted. Did they pull off a real score? Did they lose their ship? Did they make captain, lose their patron, or fall in with a family that pays for everything? If the fiction moved the needle, the rating moves with it.
- Most missions move Resources 0 or 1 step in either direction. The default is no change.
- Bigger swings are allowed when the fiction earns them — a career-defining heist, a catastrophic loss, a marriage into a noble house. The table can move the rating two or more steps in either direction when the story supports it.
- There is no hard cap on a single shift. The test is whether the fiction supports the jump. A Resources 1 freelancer who genuinely inherits a shipping consortium is not Resources 2 next mission. They are whatever the consortium makes them.
Movement down works the same way. A Resources 4 corporate scion who gets disowned does not lose one tier per mission until the math is clean. They lose what they lost.
Players can pursue Resources actively as a personal project during Downtime — working a side hustle, cultivating a patron, running long-game investments. Personal projects are reserved to the character whose sheet changes; nobody else can spend actions on them. A Standard scope (target 3–5) fits most Resources work. The payoff lands at mission's end, not mid-mission — the Successes build the position; the rating moves when the fiction closes.
XP buys capability. Resources is not capability — it is position. A character with high Resources is not better at their job; they are better-placed in the world.
Letting Resources drift with the fiction keeps the rule honest. A character who got rich because the story made them rich feels rich. A character who got poor because the story took it away feels the loss. If Resources cost XP, players would pay the points and treat the rating as inviolable. That is the opposite of what this mechanic is for.
GM Guidance
Resources is the table's volume knob for economic pressure. Some campaigns want every job to matter — the kind of game where the crew is one bad week from losing the ship, and the loan shark has a name and a face. Some campaigns want competent professionals with their own moons, where money is never the question. The mechanic is the same either way. The GM and the players set the volume in session zero, and the answer is allowed to be quiet.
The rest of this section is for the GM specifically.
A Low Resources Rating Is Not a Penalty
A character with Resources 0 is not a problem the GM is supposed to solve. They are a story engine. The freelancer who wants a corvette plans a heist. The deckhand who wants a flat on a green world starts taking the jobs they would not normally take. The dispossessed noble who wants their estate back has a campaign.
This is the gameplay. The rule is not asking the GM to give a low-Resources character workarounds until their sheet matches a high-Resources character's. The rule is asking everyone to lean into the fact that a Resources 0 character lives a different life, and the things they want are harder to get, and that is interesting.
Treating low Resources as a deficit to be patched is how this rule goes wrong. Treat it as a hook to be pulled.
"No, but Here's How You'd Get It" Beats Stacked Costs
The Cost rule is for asks that sit a few steps above the rating. A Resources 2 character wants a Resources 3 piece of gear: name a Cost, move on. A Resources 1 character wants a Resources 5 ship: do not stack five Costs. Stop, and turn the ask into a mission.
The instinct to keep the player moving by saying yes-with-Costs is a good instinct. It is the wrong move for the big-swing asks. A Cost is a small wound the character carries. A mission is a story the table tells together. The second one is almost always better gameplay.
A good shape for the conversation:
"You cannot buy that. Here are three ways you could get it. Which one are we playing through?"
The Volume Knob Is Real
Tell the players, explicitly, in session zero or close to it: Resources is as loud as the table wants it to be. A crew that wants to play hardscrabble freighter-and-fuel will feel every credit. A crew that wants to play competent professionals with backing will spend Resources once at character creation and almost never roll against it again. Both are correct uses of the rule.
If this conversation does not happen, players will default to the assumption that Resources is mandatory crunch — a thing they have to manage every session whether they want to or not. It is not. Say so out loud.
Gifts and Transfers Are Flavor
A wealthy character covering the crew's bar tab does not change anyone's Resources. A friend lending credits for one job does not bump a rating. Treat transfers between characters as fiction — Resources tracks a character's standing in the world, not the cash currently in their pocket. If a gift is large enough to actually shift standing — a real inheritance, an ongoing patronage relationship — handle it as a Mission-End Adjustment rather than a one-time transfer.