I know it doesn't really matter, but I've been wondering. I put together a dossier on a fictional character in my campaign so that I would have a cool feelie to give to my players. I was trying to figure out what kind of information would be on this, like occupation, DOB, criminal history. I realized that this dossier would probably have their SIN on it - but in order to do that, I would have to make some decision about what it actually is.

I settled on a 10-digit alphanumeric string of the form XXX-XX-XXXX (like an SSN), which leaves 36^10 = on the order of 1 quadrillion possible SINs, which seems like plenty. But I've been wondering, are there any official rulings on what a SIN looks like? I made the assumption that it serves as nothing more than a lookup into a database, but should it actually encode some information about a person in some meaningful way? (For example, the first two letters are their initials, the next six are their DOB... something like that.)

There is a SIN pattern for every SIN registry. An ARES SIN might look very different from a UCAS one. Use what you like.

Probably not because it would be not international enough. How would you encode initials for non-latin laguages - like a traditional chinese name, Indhi or cyrillic ? Which calendar do you use to encode a date of birth ?

Informations composing it are more likely to include the emitting autority (so you know who to call to check it), maybe the date of creation of the SIN, possibly some extra code to quickly identify "normal"/criminal/temporary/whatever SINs, a numerical or alphanumerical identifier and finally a control key of a few caracters to check the integrity of the rest of the string.

Canon published SINs are few and far between.

The example I know about are listed at the ''Sixth World Wiki'' SIN article

• Dunkelzahn's Will, "To the bearer of SIN 5T2G-8U6V-PK02: present yourself to the Draco Foundation..."

Crimminal SINs from Ghost Cartels

• Olaya Cartel members
  • Henry “the Diplomat” Uribe – IDEA-344212/002-41
  • Jaime “the Boss” Salazar – IDEA-344212/321-41
  • Graciela “the Maker” Riveros – IDEA-344212/331-41
• Wanted/watched in Seattle
  • Kaz Yakamura – LS-6733-KK#782-Sea-69
  • Dae – LS-6733-KK#782-Sea-69
  • Chulsoon Gray-Wolf – LS-8457-JT#782-Sea-57
  • Caine – LS-8457-JT#782-Sea-57
• Wanted/watched in Hong Kong
  • Hak – NHKS-1221AA3L4-Mac-58
• Wanted/watched in the PCC
  • Tse Ye Mu – 122-890787-PCC-62
• Wanted/watched by Aztlán
  • César da Silva – AZT-7644//ERDD/344

Presumably the repeated SINs from Seattle are typos.

First off, wow. This is some good work done on your part.

Second, perhaps the governments in 2072 recycle SINs in a matter similar to America's Social Security numbers, and that is why you have a repeat in Seattle.

Social Security Numbers (SSNs) are not reused, since it would confuse a whole series of important records. (see Q20 at the SSA FAQ)

The problem with reusing even a criminal SIN, is that it would confuse any future investigations or prosecutions due to the events and evidence attached to one criminal becoming conflated with the other criminal.

In the case of the examples from Ghost Cartels, the four NPCs in question are all active in the adventure, so even if criminal SINs were recycled eventually, there should still not be two the same at the same time.


I did like the fact that the author used the source of a criminal SIN to define them. "IDEA" (presumably International Drug Enforcement Agency) for the drug cartel, LS and Sea for Lone Star Seattle, etc.

Huh, I don't know where I got the impression that they were...