One of the things that came up last session was that the WFRP 2E career system doesn’t really jive with what I’m doing with the game.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the flavor the career system brings to the table and, were we doing a more urban or sandbox-style game, it would probably fit like a glove.  Instead, we’re doing a more traditional murderhobo (or, rather, “We’d be murderhobos except we’re so terrified of being killed by other murderhobos”) style game (which is by design).

Now, I know that the career system is part of the whole point of WFRP, but I don’t really care. We’re using the WFRP 2E system because I’m extremely comfortable with the system, having played in a Dark Heresy (its descendant) game for probably longer than any other game at this point. (Exalted might be a close second, but I doubt anyone would claim that it has a system one would describe as “salvageable”. Ideas, absolutely, but the not system as a whole.)  So, I’m comfortable with it. It’s flexible, does what I need it to do, and gets out of the way.  That’s what we want, right?

But when the PCs are sprinting away from danger and trying to find a safe place to not be murdered or eaten by bears… none of those careers really matter. They’re all Vagabonds.  Before that, they were Militiamen and Camp Followers. Before that they had lives doing stuff for which the Career System was useful.

There are a couple of fixes for this:

• Just roll with it. Stick to the RAW, let everyone switch into the Vagabond (or similar career) if they’re so inclined. One PC (the Noble!) did that a few sessions ago.
• Fiat them all to be Vagabond (or similar career). “Guys, all of you have just exited your careers to one of the following careers. For free. Am I not merciful?  Am I not merciful!?“
• Do something complex and strange but more open-ended that’s a riff on how Only War handles advances.  What?

(Because the first two options are negligibly easy and probably advisable: let’s put them aside. I’m going to talk about what I cooked up in terms of the more complex approach.  What follows is probably a terrible idea, but sometimes it’s fun to just overcomplicate things.)

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Only War came out a few months ago, and I’m really digging its approach to the 40K RPG system.  Instead of the weird class-based but also pseudo-level, pseduo-skill buy system that works but is awkward and initially kind of confusing, it makes things very open-ended.

Of course, the 40K Skills and Talents aren’t quite the same as the WFRP Skills and Talents, and mapping those WFRP careers to the Aptitude list…  Fortunately, the day after the session I needed to be mentally pseudo-active while vegging. Doing that sort of thing was exactly what I needed that afternoon.  Here are the results.

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At a high level: characters still roll their starting careers. They get their skills and free advance as per the core book.  Based on their career, they receive a total of six Aptitudes (some of which are automatic, some of which may be selected from a list) that determine how my XP different advances cost from that point going forward.

If you’re interested, all of my work in assembling this can be found in this spreadsheet.  This is basically the scratch paper I used to make sure stuff looked reasonably like what the career system promoted.

For starters: the Aptitudes

A couple of notes here:

• Characteristic advances are limited to 8, except Additional Attacks, which are limited to 2. This is, more or less, how WFRP 2E caps advances: across all of the careers, you’ll never get more than 8 advances to WS, for example. Where it’s a bit lower (Int, Fel), it seems arbitrary to cap one at 7 and another at 8.
• I tried really hard to keep the distribution of Skills and Talents fairly even. I didn’t shoot for totally even, but I did try to get everything close.
• Sailing and such are associated with Wilderness. That’s imperfect, but it was necessary to keep things even close. Otherwise, Wilderness and a hypothetical Sailing Aptitude would be woefully underutilized.
• Talents like Lightning Reflexes and Hardy that are really-out-of progression Characteristic advances only make sense within the context of the Career System, and don’t make any sense here.  They’ve been moved into the Aptitude table
• I’m not interested in running a game with fantastic races right now. Just Humans. So, I’ve ignored anything Dwarf/Elf/Halfling specific.  If any of this makes sense outside of my head, it should be negligible to apply to demihuman stuff.

Speaking of Careers & Aptitudes: this was the tricky part. I ran down the list of careers and built up the list of which Aptitudes were clearly appropriate, which were maybe appropriate, and which had no place. I literally cut-and-pasted stuff into the above spreadsheet and just ticked down Yes/No/Maybe if the Advance Scheme indicated that the Characteristics, Skills, and Talents associated with an aptitude was something that was strongly present, not present at all, or present but not strongly so, respectively.

Career	Mandatory	Optional
Agitator	Int, Fel, Leadership, Social	BS, Ag, WP, Knowledge, Larceny, Perception
Apprentice Wizard	Int, WP, Magic, Social	T, Ag, Fel, Knowledge, Perception
Bailiff	Int, Fel, Knowledge, Leadership, Social	BS, S, WP, Perception
Barber-Surgeon	Ag, Int, WP, Knowledge	T, Fel, Finesse
Boatman	WS, Ag, Wilderness	BS, S, T, Int, Social
Bodyguard	WS, Offense, Defense, Finesse	S, T, Ag, Perception
Bone Picker	T, Larceny, Perception, Social	S, Ag, WP, Fel, Animals
Bounty Hunter	BS, Ag, Offense, Perception, Wilderness	S, WP, Finesse, Larceny
Burgher	Int, Knowledge, Perception, Social	Ag, WP, Fel
Camp Follower	Ag, Fel	T, Int, WP, Finesse, Animals, Larceny, Social
Charcoal-Burner	Perception, Wilderness	S, T, Ag, Int, WP, Fel
Coachman	BS, Ag, Animals, Wilderness	WP, Fel, Perception, Social
Entertainer	BS, Ag, Fel, Social	S, WP, Finesse, Animals, Larceny, Perception
Estalian Diestro	WS, Ag, Offense, Finesse	S, T, Int, Defense, Engineering
Ferryman	BS, S, Perception, Social	T, Ag, Int, Fel, Defense
Fisherman	S, Ag, Perception, Wilderness	BS, T, Int, Finesse, Social
Grave Robber	Ag, WP, Larceny, Perception	BS, S, Finesse
Hedge Wizard	WP, Fel, Magic, Perception	T, Ag, Int, Animals, Social
Hunter	BS, Ag, Perception, Wilderness	T, Int, Engineering, Larceny
Initiate	Int, WP, Fel, Knowledge	BS, S, T, Leadership, Social
Jailer	WS, S, T, Defense	WP, Larceny, Leadership, Perception
Kislevite Kossar	WS, BS, T, WP	Defense, Leadership, Perception, Social, Wilderness
Marine	WS, BS, S, Offense	Ag, WP, Defense, Social
Mercenary	WS, BS, Offense, Social	S, T, Ag, WP, Defense, Finesse, Animals, Perception
Messenger	Ag, Animals, Perception, Wilderness	BS, T, Int, WP
Militiaman	WS, Ag, Defense, Perception	BS, S, T, Animals
Miner	S, T, Perception, Wilderness	BS, Int, WP, Animals
Noble	WS, Fel, Leadership, Social	BS, Ag, Int, WP, Defense, Animals, Knowledge
Norse Berserker	WS, S, T, WP, Offense	Leadership, Wilderness
Outlaw	WS, BS, Ag, Offense, Larceny	Int, Defense, Finesse, Animals, Perception, Social, Wilderness
Outrider	BS, Ag, Int, Animals, Wilderness	S, WP, Perception
Peasant	T	BS, S, Ag, WP, Animals, Social, Wilderness
Pit Fighter	WS, T, Ag, WP, Offense	S, Defense
Protagonist	WS, S, Ag, WP, Offense	Defense, Social
Rat Catcher	Ag, WP, Animals, Larceny, Perception	BS, T, Engineering
Roadwarden	WS, BS, Ag, Animals, Wilderness	S, Int, WP, Perception, Social
Rogue	Ag, Fel, Perception, Social	BS, Int, WP, Larceny, Leadership
Scribe	Ag, Int, WP, Knowledge	Fel, Engineering
Seaman	WS, S, Ag, Offense, Wilderness	BS, Defense, Perception
Servant	Ag, WP, Perception, Social	S, T, Int, Fel, Defense, Animals
Smuggler	Ag, Int, Fel, Larceny	BS, Animals, Perception, Social, Wilderness
Soldier	WS, BS, Ag, Offense	WP, Defense, Animals, Perception, Social
Squire	WS, Offense, Knowledge, Leadership	BS, S, T, Ag, Fel, Defense, Animals, Social
Student	Ag, Int, Fel, Knowledge	Engineering, Perception, Social
Thief	Ag, Fel, Larceny, Perception	BS, Int, Finesse, Engineering, Social
Thug	WS, Offense, Larceny, Social	S, T, Ag, WP, Fel, Defense
Toll Keeper	WS, T, Perception, Wilderness	BS, S, Ag, WP, Social
Tomb Robber	WS, Ag, Int, WP, Engineering, Perception	Fel, Knowledge, Larceny
Tradesman	Ag, WP	S, T, Int, Fel, Animals, Engineering, Perception, Social
Vagabond	BS, Ag, Larceny, Wilderness	Int, Fel, Perception, Social
Valet	Ag, Int, Fel, Knowledge, Social	WP, Perception
Watchman	WS, Int, Defense, Perception	BS, S, Ag, WP, Fel
Woodsman	WS, S, WP, Wilderness	T, Ag, Perception
Zealot	WS, T, WP, Knowledge, Leadership	S, Fel, Social

Remember, you get a total of six aptitudes. You get what’s in the Mandatory list automatically, and can then choose from the Optional list until you’ve got your six.

Now, actually pricing advances is tough. In WFRP, everything is basically 100 XP / advance. In the 40K RPGs, they’re all over the place: Characteristics (which are generally more broadly useful) cost more than Skills and Talents. The more advances you take in a Characteristic or Skill, the more expensive it is.

This makes quite a bit of sense, but dang: I like the simplicity of a common cost.  It does allow a character to rocket up to +40% WS with their first 800 XP, though. Furthermore, there’s probably an argument to be made that Additional Attacks should cost more or be spaced out more as well.  So, flat costs are problematic… but after a point, I think you just have to let go.

My inclination runs strongly towards doing 100/200/300 XP for advances that share 2/1/0 Aptitudes with the character.  This is substantially less than what things cost in Only War, but is about what things cost in WFRP 2E, as I’ve got Careers & Aptitudes mapped.

Near-term, I’ll probably collapse all of this into a Google doc (minus thought-process stuff), which will vastly help its readability.

So: that was a big f’ing chunk of something.  I’m curious as to what other people think.  I both have and haven’t put a lot of thought into this. In terms of complexity, it looks like it might be needlessly complex, but I expect that after character creation, it fades into the background.  I’m not entirely sure if I’m going to adopt it in my game; the other two options are certainly simpler, if less interesting.

Very interested in any and all thoughts and opinions.  Let me know what you think.