Twenty-four ways to spend a term

What each column of a career table means, and when it is thrown.

A career is a block of four years and a column of numbers. Every career prints the same five throws in the same order, a ladder of seven ranks, four tables of skills it can teach you, and two columns of what it pays when you walk away. Read the column top to bottom and you have read the career.

You do not start play at eighteen with your background skills and nothing else. You spend terms in one of twenty-four careers first, and the longer you spend the more you know and the older you are. How that goes is partly your choice and largely the dice.

Most of those throws are ordinary characteristic throws: roll 2D6, add the modifier for the characteristic named, and meet the number printed beside it. A few throws elsewhere in the game are skill throws instead, where the level you hold in the named skill is added too. Re-enlistment is the odd one — it is the raw dice against the printed target, with nothing added.

A career throw

2D6 + the modifier for the named characteristic, against the printed target

Twenty-four careers are printed, and each gets one sentence saying what the work is. Six of them carry a second, plainer name in that sentence, and those are the names most people in the setting actually use — five of the six are the military services, which is why nobody in a bar calls them by their formal titles.

The rank ladders, the titles, and the skills each rung grants.

Every career prints a ladder of seven rungs, numbered 0 to 6. You join at rank 0. A commission takes you to rank 1 and an advancement moves you one rung further, and some of those rungs hand you a skill at level 1 the moment you reach them.

A rung carries a title, a bonus skill, both or neither. A title is what you are called and does nothing mechanical on its own — it is the vocabulary the referee narrates you with, and the thing other people in the setting react to. A bonus skill arrives at level 1 and is free: it is not one of your skill-table rolls for the term and it does not use one up.

A dash in a rank cell means the career prints nothing there. Seven careers print a dash at every rung above 0 because they have no commission and no advancement to climb with, and one career prints a dash at all seven — it has no rank ladder at all, and serving in it never gives you a title or a rank bonus.

Some careers print a rank-0 cell with a bonus skill and no title. That is a rank you hold and a skill you get; it simply has no name attached. Do not read the missing title as a missing rung.

Personal development, service, advanced and specialist tables.

Every career prints four tables of six skills: Personal Development, Service Skills, Specialist and Advanced Education. Each term you pick one of the four, roll one die, and take what it gives you.

Personal Development is where the characteristic increases live, and it is the table to take when you want the character rather than the résumé. Service Skills is what the job teaches everybody. Specialist is the narrower trade of that career. Advanced Education is the schooled end of it, and it is closed to you until your Education is good enough.

Some of the skills these tables grant are cascade skills, which means they resolve into a speciality rather than being held in their own right. When you take one, the speciality is chosen there and then.

One roll a term is the baseline, and three things change it. Seven careers have neither a commission nor an advancement to throw for, and they get two rolls every term instead of one. A successful commission earns a roll. A successful advancement earns a roll. Those two can land in the same term.

The credits a muster-out roll pays, by career and roll.

Cash is one of the two tables a muster-out roll can be taken on, and it is the simple one: roll 1D6, read your career’s column, and take that many credits. The columns are printed per career: at five of the seven rows the same die pays a Noble ten times what it pays a Drifter, at the fourth row four times, and at the first the Drifter’s column pays nothing at all.

One modifier reaches this table, and it is worth +1 on the die: holding any level of Gambling, or having retired. It does not stack to +2 if both are true.

The columns print seven rows and one die reaches six of them. Row 7 exists only for a roll of 6 with the modifier applied. Two-thirds of the careers print row 7 identical to row 6, so for them the modifier buys a better chance at the top figure rather than a higher one; for the other third it is genuinely another step up. Every career prints a figure at row 7 — the dashes are on the material table, not this one.

The gear, ships and characteristic gains a muster-out roll grants.

Material is the other table a muster-out roll can be taken on, and it is the interesting one. Roll 1D6, read your career’s column, and take what it says: a characteristic increase, a ticket, a weapon, a stake in a hull, a membership, or in two careers an actual vessel.

Everything you do not take on cash comes here, so most characters roll on this table more than on the other one. It has the same seven rows and the same shape: one die reaches six of them, and row 7 is only reachable with a modifier.

Weapon appears more than once in several columns, and the second one is a choice rather than a duplicate. You take a weapon of an appropriate kind the first time; every later weapon result may be taken as a level of skill in that weapon instead. You are always free to take the physical weapon again if you would rather have two.

Defending a world from orbit and atmosphere.

One world’s air force, flying inside its own atmosphere and just above it. This is a full military career with a commission, a promotion ladder seven rungs deep, and a service that teaches you to fly and to shoot.

Intelligence work, law enforcement and corporate security.

Intelligence work, in whatever form the employer takes — a government, a police service or a corporation. It is a career you talk your way into rather than fight your way into, and the ladder above rank 0 is a bureau’s rather than an army’s.

Competitive sport, on a world or between them.

A professional sportsperson, famous for it. There is no rank ladder here and nothing to be promoted into — so instead of a commission throw you get a second skill roll every single term, which is the trade this career makes.

Life on a world with little technology and less mercy.

Surviving on a low-technology world without any of the support a developed one gives. No ranks, no promotions, two skill rolls a term — and the harshest cash column in the book, which starts at nothing.

Prospecting and mining the rocks between worlds.

Working the rocks: prospecting asteroid belts for ore and salvage, alone or nearly so. It ties for the easiest door in the book to get through and stands in front of one of the hardest terms to come out of intact — the largest gap between qualifying and surviving that any career prints.

Administration, and the power that comes with paperwork.

Administration, and the quiet power that comes with running the process everybody else has to go through. A full ladder from Assistant to Minister, and no combat skill in any of its four tables — this career never teaches you to fight and its benefits never arm you.

Building a settlement on a world that has none.

Settling a world that has nobody on it yet, and then governing what grows there. The ladder runs from Citizen to Governor, which is the only rank track in the book that starts at a word meaning nothing more than being one of the people.

Representing a power to another, and reading the room.

Representing one power to another, formally, in a service that runs from Attaché to Ambassador. Everything here is talking: the qualification is social, the survival is educational, and there is not a single combat skill in any of its four tables.

No qualification, no service, and nowhere to be.

No fixed home and no fixed job. This is the career with no rank ladder at all — not a dash above rank 0 like the other six, but a dash at every rung including the first, so it is the one career that never gives you a title or a rank bonus.

A career you leave is a career you can never re-enter — the rule prints two exceptions to that, the Draft and this career. What sets the Drifter apart is that its exception is unconditional: it stays open no matter how many times you have already been in it, which together with the unconditional entry above makes it the floor a character can always stand on — whatever else has happened, there is a next term available.

Performing for a living, on stage or on screen.

Famous for performing. One of the three hardest qualifications in the book stands in front of the softest survival throw in it — getting noticed is the whole difficulty, and once you are noticed the work rarely kills anybody.

Tracking and taking dangerous animals.

Taking large and dangerous animals for meat, materials or sport. This career prints the hardest survival throw in the book, which is the whole character of it — anybody can qualify, and the work is what might not let you leave.

Boarding actions, planetary assault and shipboard security.

Soldiers carried aboard warships: boarding actions, planetary assault, and holding a ship when somebody else tries the same thing to you. A full military ladder from Trooper to Brigadier, and one of only three careers whose tables teach you to fight in powered armour.

Defending a world across its oceans.

One world’s navy, working on and under its own oceans rather than in space. A full military career with a commission and a seven-rung ladder, and the only career in the book that throws the same characteristic at the same target to get in as it does to stay alive.

Soldiering for whoever is paying.

A soldier who fights for whoever hired them. Almost anybody can sign on — the qualification ties for the easiest in the book — and the price of that open door is a survival throw in the harder half of the book, thrown every four years for as long as you keep taking work.

Hauling freight and passengers for profit.

Interstellar trade, crewing the ships that carry it. It ties for the easiest career to enter and, with the Rogue, prints the easiest re-enlistment target the book has, so it is the career you can stay in longest — and it makes you pay for the top of its ladder with an advancement target nothing in the book exceeds.

Serving aboard the warships of an interstellar power.

The warships of an interstellar power, and the people who crew them. The most conventional career column in the book — a full seven-rung ladder, every rung named, a bonus at two of them, and none of the printed oddities that mark the pages around it.

Born or raised to rank, and everything that follows.

Rank by birth or by grant, and the life that goes with it. One of the three hardest doors in the book stands in front of one of the softest terms — surviving is nearly automatic — and its rank ladder is the one column in the book the book prints twice.

Practising medicine, in a hospital or a field.

Medicine, practised in a hospital or wherever the patient is. Its skill tables reach the medical skill at four separate rows and the rank ladder hands you a level of it on the day you start, so this is the career that makes a character who can actually keep other characters alive.

Taking ships and cargo that are not yours.

Taking ships in space, and living off what is aboard them. Dexterity gets you in and Dexterity keeps you alive, the ladder runs on naval titles, and the promotion that hands you a piloting skill comes two rungs up rather than at the door.

Crime, and the skills that go with it.

Making a living outside the law. It prints the easiest re-enlistment in the book and the softest survival throw of any career with a criminal ladder, and its promotions run through an organisation rather than a service — the only ladder of its kind printed.

Research, in a laboratory or in the field.

Research, in a laboratory or in the field. It reaches the sciences skill at four separate table rows as well as through a rank bonus, and it is one of only two careers whose muster-out column can hand you an actual starship.

Surveying, couriering and exploring the edge of the map.

Surveying unfamiliar space, and carrying what needs carrying between the places nobody else goes. There is no commission and no advancement, so every term gives two skill rolls instead of one — and rank 0 still hands you a piloting skill, which is the thing about this career most readings get wrong.

Defending a world on the ground.

One world’s army, fighting on its ground. The third of the three planetary defence careers, sharing their qualification, their advancement and their re-enlistment — and printing the only commission in the book thrown on Endurance.

Keeping machines, ships and stations running.

Keeping machines working — ships, stations, industry, anything that breaks. Its rank ladder is the only corporate one printed, running from a team lead to an executive officer, and it makes you climb to the top of it against the hardest advancement in the book.