Martial Arts Traditions concurrently with other career question

I have a question about the Martial Arts Traditions during character generation. The text says "Martial arts careers are available in all eras. These careers all have the unique ability that they can be taken simultaneously with non-martial arts careers by doubling the length of the martial arts career."

Does this mean that the MATs count against the Origin + 4 careers for Veteran play or that one could have Origin + 4 careers and Martial Artists on top of that for the extra years of study? If it is the latter, what is the downside besides being older?

It still counts as a career (so part of your allocation). The idea is that if you're, say, a cop or a ninja or what-have-you, you wouldn't alternate between years of being a cop and then years of martial arts training and then back to being a cop again; you'd train martial arts *while* you're a cop. So the actual effect is that you end up a bit younger, as the martial arts career takes place at the same time as the regular career.

The double-length penalty for doing that probably doesn't matter if you only took one grade in a martial art. But if you took lots of martial arts career grades, and very few regular career grades, there's a chance that the martial arts career might end up taking longer than the regular one, at which point it's no longer simultaneous.

Thanks, that makes sense. We were wondering what the down side would be for the double duration of the MAT careers when they start as only one year.

My group is looking at the material for a change of pace from the various d20 editions. It looks promising!

One thing to note is that the stuff on the website doesn't have a lot of the explanations or context of the actual rule book, as it's more a developer tools reference; plus I don't think the martial arts section there is complete. I tend to update the website when I have time, but it's usually lower priority than the actual books right now.