N.E.W. Career List

[Morrus]

This list is a LONG way from complete, but it's enough to handle the playtesting which starts next week. Not every career will necessarily make it into the final game.

 

[Grydan]

I realize the list is not complete, but not knowing what's planned to be added, I'll comment on one gap that immediately caught my attention. You may want to consider a few more high-school related options in that starter grouping. My high-school experience (and I'd suspect most other people's) included more than just jocks.

Yes, a few of the other starter options might be attending high school as well, but there's no room left for say, the middle- or lower-class kid who didn't live on the streets, isn't a hacker, has no relatives in the Navy, isn't a jock, but still attended high-school.

 

[Morrus]

That is true. Problem is, it's hard to write backgrounds defined by their unremarkability, or imagine anybody choosing one. I'd be inclined to just describe that as a character who waived a starting background.

I might just add a generic human schoolkid background, but would anybody choose it?

 

[Traveller]

Are you planning on a long out drawn character building session? (a-la traveller)
If yes I think you can add some basic mundane background careers as bases to other careers.

On another tack - what about less glamours options for people that like the "every man"
starting option - were the character gets drawn into action.

 

[Morrus]

Are you planning on a long out drawn character building session? (a-la traveller)
If yes I think you can add some basic mundane background careers as bases to other careers.

On another tack - what about less glamours options for people that like the "every man"
starting option - were the character gets drawn into action.

Traveller is an influence. As is WFRP and done old FASA Star Trek stuff.

It's a career based cha gen sequence like Traveller, but it only takes 5 minutes or so. It's very modular in that more careers can be very easily published, but for now I just want a core of interesting ones to playtest the maths with. Adding careers is trivially easy.

 

[Grydan]

That is true. Problem is, it's hard to write backgrounds defined by their unremarkability, or imagine anybody choosing one. I'd be inclined to just describe that as a character who waived a starting background.

I might just add a generic human schoolkid background, but would anybody choose it?

Even if you exclude the unremarkable, there's still potential high-school clique backgrounds that merit just as much mechanical weight as 'jock'. Theatre students, dance students, art students, music students, etc.

Beyond that, you do have a generic 'college' career later, so if that's workable, surely a generic 'high-school' starter is workable.

And while the core mechanics of D&D have never much supported the idea, a great many D&D players seem to enjoy roleplaying the idea that their 1st level character is an everyman/wide-eyed yokel/whiny farmkid/joe ordinary suddenly being thrust into a life of adventure, so I myself can quite easily imagine people intentionally choosing backgrounds specifically for their unremarkability.

 

[Morrus]

Sure, I guess I can add that. It'd take about 12 seconds.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I choose the "Wall flower" high school starter career, followed by the "Retail clerk" career path and "Social loner" feats, branching into the "Insurance salesman" prestige career (with the "Crazy Cat Person" perk, of course). Think Clark Kent without the good looks, physique, interesting job, or friends.

I'm going for bland, boring and generic. Because then when I take "Starfaring Ninja Pirate Assassin", no one will see it coming, and I'll have the perfect cover story.