New N.E.W. Career Tree

Hi Morrus,

One of my players got creative and let me know how he'd design N.E.W's career system! He's designed his own systems before and enjoys tinkering with systems and builds. I don't know how useful you'll find it as you're only supposed to point what isn't working during playtesting, as opposed to designing complete alternative systems but thought you may find this interesting regardless.

Also, I thought his point about experience scaling was of interest:

- Experience costs should be linear, as the conversion to dice already imposes a penalty for higher values. Alternatively, make the dice progression linear - eg. each even number gives a dice, each odd number gives +2. Or, something like Savage World's dice progression.

Anyway, I present....
New Career Tree for N.E.W.

* To starter careers add apprentice (tech background), colony, extropian (modified human colony or clade), punk (urban background), recruit (early military), spaceborn. Rename Jock to Rookie (Jock is slang for penis). First-rank careers only require a stat of 3 or 4 so they can be entered from multiple starter careers.

* Advanced careers require one tier of the basic career in each group, some more advanced careers require other advanced careers or more tiers of the basic career. eg. Sniper may require Enlisted -> Scout -> Sniper or 3 tiers of Enlisted -> Sniper. Some careers have multiple ways in, eg. Thug or Enlisted -> Mercenary, College or Astronaut -> Space Tech. No career should require multiple other careers, as this enforces a strict combination.

* Aliens will either be similar to humans or very alien with their own career trees. I would make the similar ones be uplifts / engineered races like those currently in the system, and some genuinely alien races which may remain only as NPCs. There should probably be a distinction between robots (which are bound to one body / processor) and AIs (free infolife), or possibly a career to enable a Robot AI or a human to become transferrable.

* General careers have low requirements but no fancy abilities or high advancement. They will probably be used for NPCs or players who want to pick up a particular skill or stat. Add basic careers activist, astronaut (basic space career), colonist, security. Some slightly more advanced have multiple entry points:
- Corporate (Scion or College or high Cr) -> Financier / CEO
- Police (Recruit or Security or high End), -> Detective or other specialisations
- Politician (activist or media or high Cha) -> Ambassador
- Priest / Monk (initiate or high Cha) -> ???
- Star (musician or media or high Rep) -> Superstar

* Academic and Technical careers start with College or Technician, branch into:
- Engineer -> Chief Engineer
- Hacker -> Programmer / Cracker
- Medic -> Doctor
- Pilot -> Mecha Pilot, Bot Jammer
- Psychologist -> Counsellor, negotiator
- Scientist - can specialise into GE, nanotechnology, xenology, others depending on setting
- Space tech (ship's technician) -> Explorer, navigator, ship master

* Criminal careers start with "Criminal", branch into:
- Burglar (Sneaky thief)
- Conman (Charisma / Fraud)
- Gangster (Organisation / leadership) -> Gang Boss
- Smuggler (Transport / space) -> Space pirate (Yarrr)
- Thug (violence / heavy) -> Assassin, Heist specialist / hijacker??, Mercenary

* Military careers start with "Enlisted", branch into:
- Officer -> Command
- Scout -> Commando / Sniper / Special Ops
- Star Marine -> Assault / Weapons expert
- Navy -> Gunnery / pilot / etc.

* Psychic careers start with "Psychic", branch into:
- Battlepsychic
- Biopsychic
- Mind warper
- Psi-cop
- Star Knight -> Star Lord or Dark Lord

* Extropian careers specialised by clade, require Extropian background or high stat to enter (or perhaps require high Cr?):
- Bionic (End) -> Cyborg
- Enhancer (Log) -> Transhuman
- Uploader (Wil) -> Infolife, Body hopper

* Robots / uploaders / cyborgs / aliens can have careers represent their body rather than learning. These may have no skills but excellent abilities.
- Combat (armour and weapons)
- Hazardous environment
- High speed / flying
- Industrial (high strength / end, built in tools)
- Stealth
- Space capable


Notes:
- Remove skill requirements, esp. where they are learned in the career (eg. requiring performance for a musician)
- Most careers only require a precursor career or one high stat. eg. Conman requires Criminal or Cha 5+
- Make everything more relaxed to encourage unusual combinations, such as a psychic police detective or space pirate priest
- I would also put more advances in each career, eg. 5 points of stats and 2 skills.
- Allow a choice of exploits, put 3 or 4 in each career with one or two being repeatable (may just be extra credits). To restrict certain exploits they can be put in higher tier careers.
- Experience costs should be linear, as the conversion to dice already imposes a penalty for higher values. Alternatively, make the dice progression linear - eg. each even number gives a dice, each odd number gives +2. Or, something like Savage World's dice progression.
- May require more spacer-type careers as it is difficult to get the skills at the moment. Maybe add them to a path from the Astronaut career.
- Have easy ways to adjust to a particular setting or game by removing individual career trees or the psi attribute.

Yeah, I think your friend is envisaging a slightly different game. One that has a lot more symmetry laid over top of it than I personally prefer in a game. My tastes are a little more eclectic, and a little less organized. I can see an approach like that being a popular third party module/sourcebook!

Y'know, I fervently hope that down the line folks tinker with, expand on, and write material for this game. That's why it'll be under a open license -- I want to encourage folks to do exactly that.

He does have some great points in there, though. I'll be sure to go through that list carefully, so some elements may affect the next document!

(I will note that astronaut is in there as space jockey; the frequency with which I have to explain that, though, makes it clear it needs a new name. The space jockey is the generic spacer.)

I think I'd like to clarify the position on new careers, since folks write a lot about careers. The system is designed to make adding new careers pretty simple; so simple, in fact, that adding careers is probably the very last thing I'll do. What's important right now is the system itself, rather than adding modular elements like careers, or guns, or species, or monsters. All that's just addition.

So I won't be adding many new careers in the coming months, simply because it's not a priority right now. That doesn't mean that I personally have not thought of roughly 429,478 possible new careers. While folks are more than welcome to come here and list piles of careers they would like to see, from the playtest point-of-view it's very much an easy, later thing (as is adding a half dozen pages of new guns or armor or what-have-you). However, there are career building guidelines in the book, so please do not even hesitate to design (and share!) your own. That's what I hope for this game.

Regarding the starter careers - they are supposed to represent childhood/upbringing. A character's early life before any 'real' career.

Rename Jock to Rookie (Jock is slang for penis).

Click to expand...

Really? I've never heard that. Is that a regionalism, maybe? High School Jock is a very common term and doesn't mean the same thing as Rookie at all. I've never heard of that other association you mention, and a quick Google search hasn't unearthed it. The term Jock, in the context of high school athlete type, is very prevalent in US TV, movies, and other media.