I just purchased UW last night and already read through most of it. It looks like a great game! However, I was a little disappointed to not find a section on creating custom careers or skills. Any guidelines or tips on creating custom careers or even new skills for existing ones? Would you say it is enough to follow the guidelines that other *World games have established for custom moves?
I just purchased UW last night and already read through most of it.
I just purchased UW last night and already read through most of it.
I was thinking of this question too.
Besides creating careers for things that would be very obvious powers focused, like psionics for example… What new careers can you think of that’s missing that can fill in any gaps?
I just ask because the ones in the book do a fantastic job covering all the major possibilities and stereotypes that are most common.
Jason Coffin – what types of new careers were you thinking you would need? Also. I feel like you could always borrow skills from other professions if you need to. If feel like the list can accommodate most things already with a little bit of narrative reskinning
I’m worried about players feeling unique and not overlapping on skills; especially after advancing a bit. I think you are right about careers being thorough but I think there are too few skills per career. Of course keep in mind that we haven’t played the game yet so I may be way off.
BTW: I’m aware of Far Beyond Humanity that will be adding stuff, and I’m looking forward to that.
Jason Coffin I get that. I think that the uniqueness will be in how they portray their characters. But I can see where it could get similar after a while.
Jason Coffin while they’re not official yet, please feel free to try out the preview Far Beyond Humanity careers at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/atd0ygpwhur5yp6/AAB140jz3usjE3imwUkkCTLia?dl=0
As for making your own careers or skills, I find it works best if you remember that a career is half an archetype. Thus every skill in a career should “play nice” with at least 2 or 3 other careers, either thematically or mechanically.
For example, Scapegoat (Scoundrel) can work thematically with Bribe (Commercial), Assassinate (Clandestine) or almost any of the Personality abilities.
Furthermore, it’s preferable that each skill compliments or synergizes with a different set of secondary careers, to give the opportunity to have as many combinations as possible.
Finally, it’s important to not limit what the characters could do by default. The skills are meant to be bonuses. As an example, the old Technocrat (during playtests) had the ability to Access systems… until I realized this meant (implicitly) that others couldn’t. But I wanted people to hack/access systems with cool floating holographic UI, it’s part of the whole Space Opera vibe. Instead I gave the new “Program” skill a free conditional If/Then statement.
Sean Gomes thanks for the tips! And the new careers look great! I can’t wait to see the rest. Do you have an idea of when Far Beyond Humanity will be ready?
Oh God I have no idea. Between my day job (which will be going into extended crunch time, yay video game industry) and taking care of the baby, I really can’t predict how long it’ll take me to do anything. My hope is to complete Carta Galaxia before summer, and FBH by fall. We’ll see how that goes.
No pressure here; a baby is more than enough to keep one busy! You put together a great game and should be proud. Thanks for the response.