Four people already, huh? Not bad at all, considering the difficulties I had recruiting for something similar in the past. :P That might even be enough to start with, but, as I said, there's no harm in having reserves, so anyone else who would like to join is welcome.

Any thoughts on what character concepts you'd want to use? I find it's best to discuss those things as a group beforehand. Preliminary ideas about backstories, plot hooks and appearance (descriptions or images, or both) would all be welcome too.

Some notes on character creation in Heroquest. The building blocks of a character are called Abilities. This is a bit deceptive because they can actually as easily be personality traits, relationships with other characters, ideals or items as actual skills. They can all be used to overcome obstacles and achieve objectives in the story, and have their own ratings that are used in rolls. For instance, in order to fight your way through an army of batarian mercenaries to rescue the Asari Consort, you could use your Modified M-8 Avenger Rifle, or your Commando Training, or Secretly Infatuated with Shaira - or Hates Those Ugly Four-Eyed Batarian Bastards. As you can see, coming up with Abilities is more of an art than a science. Still, there are some basic guidelines. Colourful and flashy descriptions of abilities are generally preferable but not necessary. There are advantages both to more general and more specific abilities: a Skilled Tactician might be able to apply his ability in a greater array of situations without it being penalised as a Stretch, but an Ambush Expert would gain a bigger bonus during Contests that have to do with ambushes specifically.

Note that item Abilities presuppose being able to use the item in question and those like it, while profession abilities like Soldier or Technician presuppose having access to at least the basic tools of your trade.

I don't have any special requirements for your Abilities (besides common sense, fitting the character concept and the setting) except for this: I want one of them to be related to your background and reputation, like Shepard's psychological profile (Ruthless, Survivor, etc.). You get 10 Abilities at game start.

Two special types of Abilities are Keywords and Flaws. Keywords are broad package deals that include multiple preset abilities which don't need to be detailed further unless you raise their ratings on their own. You get two Keywords each: one for your Species and one for your Class, making a Turian Soldier, an Asari Adept and so on (you could get more creative with your Classes, so long as I still understand what they mean :P). Your Species Keyword is a package keyword, meaning it can't be raised during play (but you could still raise the individual abilities that fall under it). You can use it to play off species stereotypes (salarians are clever, humans are determined, asari are sexy), use your species' natural gifts (asari biotics, krogan regeneration) or draw on your allegiance with your species' state (a turian could use his Turian Keyword to try and request help from fellow turians or the Turian Hierarchy... though it's not bloody likely that this is all it would take). Your Class Keyword is an umbrella keyword and so can be raised as a whole, though it would cost you extra; it is assumed to include all the training and basic equipment that belongs to your class, as well as any professional connections that would derive from it (so a Turian Biotic would be able to use it to help interact with fellow Cabal members).

Flaws are simply Abilities that usually harm you, like character flaws, powerful enemies or old wounds - but note that there is no rule against you using them in your favour every now and then. You get 3 Flaws (though you don't have to pick them all at once), and their ratings are tied to the ratings of your normal Abilities.

I'll explain ratings and the actual character creation method a bit later. Does everything make sense so far? Are there any questions?