Foreven Worlds: Careers Beyond the Claw (Traveller)

This supplement clocks in at 30 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 25 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue as a prioritized review at the request of my patreon supporters.

As an aside: Man, it’s been too long since I got to review a Traveller supplement! I really love this game.

So, we get new careers here, and the book explains them all in the beginning, before going on to depict them. All careers have in common that they have a DM -1 for every previous career. System guards also have a DM-2 if aged 34 or more.

The first career would be the Athlete – the assignments covered here are electronic, physical and vehicle sports, with qualification being DEX or END 6+. Interesting: The Career Progress for e.g. electronic sports requires EDU 5+, and DEX 7+, vehicle sports requires INT 5+ for survival, SOC 7+ for advancement. These career progress notes are provided for all careers, just fyi. 7 ranks of muster out benefits are provided per job (including cash), and each career comes with 6-entry skills and training notes that list proper personal development benefits and service skills. Provided you have a minimum EDU of 10, you also have 6 advanced education entries here – all of the careers feature this. The three assignments each come with 6 entries as well – vehicle sports could, e.g., be vacc suits, while physical sports might be recon or even carousing.

Progress in ranks is noted in its own table, with 6 ranks provided – vehicle sports would e.g. net you Drive 1 or Flyer 1, Persuade 1 and SOC+1 over its course, while physical sports would net STR+1, END+1 and SOC+1. These make sense to make, and from some names for a couple of ranks to the benefits, these made sense to me. A 6-entry mishap table and a d66 event-table complements each of these jobs.

To give you an example regarding the Athlete: Among the mishaps, we have exposing corruption among the owners, which results in not being hired anymore, illegal drug use, or standing up for a cause the public doesn’t like – these mishaps can also have benefits. The latter, for example, reduces your SOC by 1, but also nets you D3 Contacts! I like these as conductive to roleplaying and character development.

Events can range from a mishap sans being ejected, and also some risky bits – such as e.g. being offered performance enhancers, which might blow up in your face…or not. You might gain a Rival, or your clubbing nets you some seedy tricks, like Streetwise 1, Carouse 1, etc. You might gain an experienced promoter, noble contacts, etc. These are surprisingly diverse and mechanically (and roleplaying-wise) interesting.

The second career is customer service, which requires INT 4+, and uses assignment skills instead of Service Skills. The assignments featured are company representative, corporate prostitute and waitstaff. At this point: Kudos for a tasteful and non-explicit rendition of sexwork! For Survival, these require INT 4+, END 6+ and DEX 5+, respectively, with SOC 8+, SOC 6+ and EDU 7+ required for advancement. At the 6^th rank of personal development, we have Jack-Of-All-Trades here, which makes sense. Company Rep and corp prostitute btw. share the ranks and bonuses, which, I admit, makes sense.

The mishaps here are interesting as well: Sticking up for a co-worker might cost you both your jobs, but also nets you an increase of Advocate by one level, and an Ally. Conversely, the event table here may net you an Enemy among the customers. Toxic work culture can happen, and you might, by accident, kick the president’s dog – which might net you a Rival, but also Animals and Steward increases by one level. I also liked the emergency entry – on a successful DEX 5+, you gain Medic 1…on a failure, you roll twice on the Injury table and take the lower result, but become better known – gaining SOC +1. The entries are plausible and make sense, and yes, they include streaming.

The Frontierist might be archaeologist, prospector or terraformer, and required EDU 6+, with EDU 5+, DEX 6+ and EDU 5+ requires for survival, respectively. For advancement, we have SOC 7+, INT 6+ and END 7+ – which, once more, make sense to me. In this career, the dispersal of skills and training is particularly nice: Electronics, Science, Gun Combat, Broker, Mechanic, Investigate for the prospector? Makes sense. The mishaps here are particularly interesting if you’re like me and sometimes lean towards running an experimental solo-adventure – you can be left for dead, for a year, as one of the Mishaps, and running this as a one-show survival? Heck yeah. Among the events, we have incarceration due to being thought of as a spy, and uncommon issues, like the encroachment of civilization interfering with your work – nice!

The medical professional requires INT 6+, and the assignments are surgeon/nurse, long-term caregiver, physical therapy, with EDU 4+, END 6+, EDU 5+ being required for survival, respectively. For advancement, we need EDU 8+, SOC 6+ and INT 7+. Once more, there is obviously a LOT of thought that went into these – long-term caregivers can get, for example, Mechanic and Electronics as well. For ranks and bonuses, to give you an idea, the physical therapist not only gets Medic 1, but also Athletics 1 and Admin 1. As for mishaps, they similarly make perfect sense for the career: Being friends with a couple of medical professionals, I can attest that burnouts in particularly make sense. In the event section, we have also some rather cool ones, such as medical care used as art.

Finally, system guards have a Qualification of INt 6+, commission SOC 8+, and is used instead of the Navy/Scout careers on the Draft table in the Foreven Sector. The assignments are crew/line, inspectors, and planetary patrol, with DEX 7+, INT 6+ and INT 5+ required for survival, and EDU 5+, EDU 6+ and EDU 7+ required for advancement, respectively. Special here: Beyond the personal development, service skills and advanced educations, we have an additional column of skills and training for officers (Comm only). Kudos! The mishaps here respect the harsh realities of the job – a comrade might die for you; you might be fired by accident as an admiral’s last order, but come out of this with the repentant admiral as a Contact…you get the idea. The events include inspections, being adrift in space for a while, or finding an abandoned ship.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules language level. Layout adheres to roughly a 2-column standard, but ultimately, everything is subject to the demands of the table. The supplement is laid out in a pretty printer-friendly manner, with white background. The artworks used range in quality from high (vast majority; see cover for the style used) to somewhat uncanny valley (the final one for the system guard is a CGI piece I really didn’t like). The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience, making navigation simple, smooth and painless.

Dale McCoy Jr.’s career collection was a pleasant surprise to me; I expected a well-designed offering, but this manages more, namely that difficult tight-rope walk between being universally applicable and widely-useful, and yet maintaining pronounced and interesting roleplaying angles. There is always a chance inherent in the mishaps, one that makes sense; from the survival and advancement requirements to the personal skills to the muster out benefits, this book shows that a lot of genuine thought went into these. The careers may be crunchy, but they offer a lot of roleplaying opportunities, and going in-depth, are on par regarding their benefits as well. All in all, a great little supplement, well worth checking out. I am pretty much bereft of means to complain about this, and the material works in play; there is so much care in the small details here – not necessarily evident at first, but once you get into it, you notice how carefully this was crafted. My final verdict will be 5 stars.

You can find this cool supplement here on OBS!

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Endzeitgeist out.

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