IMPERIAL
MEASURE

Social Sci-fi, Space RPG

Truly, truly I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death. 
-	John 8:51

We put the price on immortality, because your life is priceless!
-	Imperial Corps

It is 27xx AD, humanity is spread among the stars, stronger than ever united under the firm and just hand of the Imperial Corps. 

The Outer-Rim Rebellion got crushed after the invention of the Lazarus Machine – rapid cloning and consciousness transmitting device, now present at every planet and capital starship. Basically it equaled immortality for every citizen of the Imperial space. As long as you could pay the Imperial Measure – net worth of your life, established by the impeccable judgment of the Imperial Corps. 

The world of "Imperial Measure" is a world dominated by huge intergalactic Empire, governed by an eternal immortal bureaucracy of the Imperial Corps.
Every citizen on a planet is constantly monitored by an anonymous Imperial Watcher, his actions weighted and measured. Anybody can live forever, but the cost of immortality is different for everybody and constantly shifting. Behave yourself, be a productive member of the society and you will earn your Imperial Measure in a lifetime, maybe even sooner than that (to minimize the negative impact of any unforeseen accident). Become a criminal, a deviant and you would better make sure it was worth it. Because the cost of your life just shot through the roof. 
So, before you do something, ask your self – do you want to live forever? Well, do you, punk? 

Buth the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. 
-	Isaiah 57:20 

The PCs are offered the role of the elder members of this society. They might even remember the world as it was, before the creation of the Imperial Corps, without the tight norms of the Imperial Creed and the unblinking gaze of the Imperial Watcher. They do not fit in, so they escape to the Outer Rim. 
Some wish to risk their lives for the greater good of the whole Empire. Some are just honest thrill seekers, bored out of their mind by the rigid normality of the day to day life in the Imperial Space. 

You are a group of mercenaries, space jocks. Each – with several lifetimes of experience. 
6 lifetimes of experience to be exact. 

Distribute 6 points between three career paths: Soldier, Scholar, Spy.
Keep in mind, that the Imperial Edict prohibits anybody from spending more than 3 lifetimes in any one career.
After you have chosen your careers it is time to choose the Crafts you concentrated on, while you were there. 

Soldier Crafts: Armor, Grunt, Pilot
Scholar Crafts: Engineer, Medic, Nat. Scientist
Spy Crafts: Espionage, Diplomacy, Trade 

You may distribute the number of lifetimes spent in a single Career path between its Crafts. Any unspent lifetimes turn into Resources.

What is a measure of success, if not the number goals achieved dived by the number of tries it took you? Embrace your desires!
-	Imperial Creed, Chapter 2 "Heart's desire"

At all times your actions are followed by an invisible Imperial Watcher (IW). He determines the details of your missions and the difficulty of the tasks you face. Never ask his decisions, remember that the judgment of the Imperial Corps is immaculate.
When you face a task and you are unsure of the outcome, ask the IW for the difficulty of the task. You will be given a number of successes you need to achieve. Then roll a number of six-sided dice (d6) equal to appropriate dice pool. 
5+ is a success, anything below is a failure. 
You failures will not be held against you. As long as you do not give up and try again. Such is the Imperial Creed. 

When you encounter any complications during your mission you overcome them: using all the experience you have at your disposal.
Your task aptitude is the sum of an appropriate Career path and Career craft. 

If you spend some time and some resources prior the mission (plan making, equipment procurement, info exchange), you may exchange you Resources into Assets at the rate 1 for 2. Be wary that the Assets are useful only for a single mission and are spent once used. 
If you wish to gain Assets during a mission the exchange rate flips to 2 for 1. Keep that in mind when you are crouching in the corridor, blaster fire scorching the walls all around, and desperately wish you had a powertech with you.

Dice pool = Career + Craft+Asset

Helping
If you help a teammate and you have at least one point in an appropriate Craft, give them one extra die for their pool. If you have three points in that appropriate Craft, give them two dice for their pool. If you have an appropriate Asset you are using to help them, give them one extra die for their pool.
The structure of your lifetime
In a lifetime, if your life is not tragically cut short, you are expected to go on 12 missions. Each mission takes about half an hour to play through, so if you play for two hours in a session, you can expect to take three sessions to finish the game.
At the end of your lifetime, whether that is when you have finished 12 missions or when you die an untimely death, roll 2d6. For each time you broke the law or refused to participate in a mission for the empire, you will roll add 2 to your total. For each time you risked your life, subtract 2. That total is the Imperial Measure of your life. If you have been on at least that many successful missions, you are granted another life. If you double that number, you are promoted to the Imperial Court.
Each mission has three obstacles to overcome, and no obstacle has only a single path by which it can be overcome. You may not attempt to overcome the same obstacle using the same method more than once, but you may try to overcome the same obstacle by different means if your first attempt failed. If your team fails the same obstacle three times, you have failed in that mission. Skip ahead in time immediately to the next mission. If you overcome all three obstacles successfully, you have succeeded.
Breaking the Law
When you choose to break the law and act against Imperial interests, you may pick up any or all of the dice you rolled and re-roll them. Breaking the law brings the wrath of the Imperial Watcher, but might help your friends enough to be worthwhile.
Risking It All
All missions are dangerous, but you have the experience to stay safe. However, if you are willing to put your life on the line to overcome an obstacle, you increase your odds of success. Only the player making the roll can do this, not any helpers. After a failed roll, if you choose to risk your life, roll 3 more dice. Once things start to go against you, you can back off or take the risk. If you still fail even after risking your life, then you die.
Note: Once you have chosen to risk your life, it is too late to try to break the law afterwards.
Also, it should go without saying that you may not “risk your life” on an already-successful roll.
Dying
When you die on a mission, roll the Imperial Measure immediately. If you pass it, then you may come back on the next mission with your same character but one extra point to spend at character creation representing your one extra lifetime.
If you fail the Imperial Measure, you may create a new character from scratch but with one fewer lifetimes.
In either case, since you came in partway, the next time you need to roll the Imperial Measure, you will only roll 1d6.
Other Rolls
Sometimes you might do something that is tangential to the mission obstacles, or even unrelated. You may still roll for these tasks, though they bring you no closer to overcoming the obstacle. You might use a roll like this to create an asset from the situation around you.

Mission Structures
As the IW, you will come up with missions and the three obstacles. There are three structures you can use:
Linear:
Obstacle 1  Obstacle 2  Obstacle 3
Simultaneous:
Obstacle 1
Obstacle 2
Obstacle 3
Converging:
Obstacle 1 
				Obstacle 3
Obstacle 2 
In a Linear mission, the team is together the entire time and can muster many dice by helping one another. 
In a Simultaneous mission, the team must split up to accomplish their goals. All three objectives must be completed for the mission to succeed.
In a Converging mission, the team must split up, but then come back together. If one half of the team fails to overcome their obstacle, it is possible (but unlikely) that the remaining half can still accomplish the final objective. Add 2 to its difficulty.
Default Difficulties
With a 3-player team:
For a linear mission, the obstacle difficulties should be 3, 3, 4, or 2, 4, 4.
For a Simultaneous mission, the obstacles should be 2, 2, 2.
For a Converging mission, the obstacles should be 2, 3, 4.
With a 4-player team:
For a Linear mission, the obstacles should be 4, 4, 4, or 3, 4, 5.
For a Simultaneous mission, the obstacles should be 2, 2, 3.
For a Converging mission, the obstacles should be 3, 3, 4.
With a 5-player team:
For a Linear mission, the obstacles should be 4, 4, 5.
For a Simultaneous mission, the obstacles should be 2, 3, 3.
For a Converging mission, the obstacles should be 3, 3, 5 or 3, 4, 4.
Good and Bad Ideas
If the players are overcoming the obstacle in a fairly obvious and straightforward way, use the default difficulty. If they are using a particularly clever or advantageous approach, reduce the difficulty by one. If their plan is absurd or has an obvious flaw, increase the difficulty by one.

Example
Joyce and Ada and Shayan are a 3-player team. Linda is the IW. Linda sets them on a Simultaneous Obstacle mission. One player needs to create a diversion at the rebel base, while another needs to gain physical access to their data center, while a third player sets up a frame on Mara Yong, a prominent rebel, so that she will take the blame for the stolen data.
This is Simultaneous because all three of these things need to succeed for the plan to succeed. Without stealing the data, there is nothing to blame on Mara. Without the diversion, the infiltration will be noticed and Mara will be exonerated. Without the frame, she won’t take the blame.
Joyce goes first and uses her Armor Craft to pilot her Heavy Urban Ground Escort through the wall of the base to create a successful diversion, rolling 3 successes. 
Ada goes next, trying to gain access. First, she attempts to sneak in with Espionage, but is thwarted by the patrols. 
Shayan is up next, and she tries to plant evidence in Mara’s car using Espionage, but only rolls 1 success. Unfortunately, Mara is wise enough to have a bodyguard who is watching her vehicle. No dice.
Back to Ada. She uses Engineer to bring up a map of the complex and work her way into the data center through the ventilation system, disabling fans and removing filters as she goes. She rolls 2 successes and succeeds.
Shayan tries to use Engineering to access Mara’s workstation remotely to spoof searches to make it look like she was looking up a map of the ventilation system. It’s a good idea, and the IW reduces the obstacle from 1 to 2, but she manages to roll 0 successes. The network is locked down and Shayan can’t get in.
If Shayan doesn’t succeed on her third try, the mission is a bust. She tries one more idea: using natural scientist to get fingerprints from Mara and reproduce them to put them on the drive Ada stole the data from, then ditch the drive somewhere it will be found. She rolls 4 dice and gets just 1 success. 
She’s desperate now, and either they all lose the mission or else she needs to break the law or risk her life. She could break the law by trading an Imperial Secret to Jules the Fence for his help in getting Mara’s prints, or she could try to get them from right under the nose of Mara’s bodyguard, risking her life. She decides to break the law and re-rolls the 3 dice that weren’t successes. One of them comes up a success and so she manages to do it. The mission is a success and Joyce and Ada come out ahead, although Shayan is in worse shape than when she started in terms of the Imperial Measure.

Technical details: This draft was formatted to be an easy fit for a PocketMod booklet, compact but readable.