Is it a career?

No, I don’t mean what my family asked me when I told them I wanted to work in the gaming industry. Instead, this is a question that often gets asked during the production of outlines for the Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game. Building new careers is one of the most time-consuming parts of any book’s development.

The process usually starts when we throw together a bunch of ideas for gear, adventuring companies, and careers. Some of the talented freelancers who work on the RPG chip in too, pitching concepts for us to evaluate and pare down.

Next, we go through all these concepts and begin the process of evaluation. This can be challenging because it involves determining what makes a particular career stand out from similar ones—or a combination of careers—that’s already in the game. For instance, we probably wouldn’t make a new Fencer career because so much of that concept is already in the DNA of the Duelist.

That’s where career options come in; they’re great from a design perspective. First, they’re efficient. If we want to create a Llaelese Fencer, for instance, we could begin with the Duelist, strip out the things that don’t fit the fencing concept, and then toss in a new element or two to reinforce the concept and make the fencer distinct. (We covered dueling in our Full Metal Fridays segment, part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) A career option allows us to introduce the fencer without bloating the choices a player has to make during character creation as much as a full career does and refines the concept to what it’s really about.

Career options are also short. A full-fledged career requires a full page in layout, but we can fit four or five career options in the same space. Figuring out which concepts work better as options to existing careers gives us more flexibility and lets us include many more concepts in a single book. Career options can also be incredibly specific, letting us provide greater detail about the inhabitants of the Iron Kingdoms.

Of course, not every career can be a career option. Some require so much new material to get right or are so different from any existing career that they need to be built from the ground up (see basically everything in Skorne Empire). These are the really meaty parts of the book from a development perspective and are where the author gets to stretch his or her creative muscles. Even fairly seemingly straightforward careers, like the Rifleman or Warrior, include a ton of abilities that are dynamic and fun to write. The job of writing these all-new careers is a challenge, as it requires you to come up with a whole package of new abilities, to consider which skills to allow or forbid, and to keep in mind the wide range of interactions that could occur when the career is let out into the wild. Finishing one is among the most rewarding experiences involved in writing for the roleplaying game.



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So, why all this pontification about careers and options thereof? Well, the new ones found in Iron Kingdoms Unleashed: Wild Adventure are about to reach you when the book releases early this May. Check them out, and let us know what you think on the forums!