Chapter 17 — Step 3: Careers

This is the heart of character creation. Careers represent the life your character lived before play begins — military service, years on the drifter circuit, academic study, a stint in the criminal underground. Each term shapes who your Wanderer is when the game starts, and the dice have as much say as you do. The reference spreads for each of the twelve careers — their D66 benefit tables — live in Part IV; this chapter is the procedure that drives them.

Advantage and Disadvantage are free in this step. Throughout careers, the characteristic a career applies to its entry test and term rolls grants Advantage or Disadvantage at no cost. The Momentum price for Advantage is a play resource, neither spent nor tracked during creation (Chapter 7).

Index§

• Age
• Entering a career
• Taking a term
• Continuing, stopping, or changing careers
• Where creation trauma lands
• Life Events
• Rolling careers at random

Age§

Your character begins at 18 years old. Every term ages them 4 years — including a wandering term from a failed entry test, which counts as an attempted term for aging. Four terms puts a character at 34; six terms at 42. Age has no mechanical effect by default — it is a record of the life lived and a hook for who your Wanderer is at the start of play.

Optional rule — the years catch up. Groups who want long careers to cost something can age characters in earnest. Starting with the fifth term a character takes (served or wandering), make an Endurance test (8+) at the end of each such term. On a failure, take an age-related Bane of your and the GM's invention — Stiffening Joints, Dimming Eyes, Short Wind, Failing Memory. It works like any Bane beyond your first two (no up-front XP, 1 XP each session it's invoked) and keeps "knowing when to stop" a real decision even for characters whose luck never runs out.

Entering a career§

Choose a career and attempt its entry test: roll 2D6 and meet the target (8+), with the career's specified characteristic applying Advantage or Disadvantage.

• On a pass: You enter the career. Immediately gain the career's four fixed starting skills at Trained rank (if you don't already have them higher). Then take a term.
• On a failure: You take 1 trauma and spend the term wandering instead. Each of your first two failed entry tests also grants 5 XP — a consolation for a term spent knocking, not a reward to chase; beyond two, a failed entry still costs you the wandering term, the trauma, and the four years, but pays no further XP. (The consecutive-failure bonus below still ensures even a cursed run lands somewhere.) A wandering term grants no fixed skills and rolls no career D66 event — but it still ages you 4 years and, like every term, still ends with a Life Event roll. The door isn't closed: you may attempt that career again next time you're choosing a career, but any later attempt to enter a career that is already behind you — one you failed to enter, or served in and left, whether by your own choice or by a forced exit — takes a flat −2 to the entry test, the same −2 however many times. Once a career is in your past, its door sticks. A bad roll delays a concept; it no longer forecloses it.

Persistence pays — the consecutive-failure bonus. Each time you fail an entry test, your next entry test gains a cumulative +1, and another +1 for each further failure in a row — a door you keep knocking on eventually gives. This bonus is separate from the −2 re-entry penalty above and stacks with it: a second crack at a career you already failed is at −2 and +1, a net −1. The streak resets to zero the moment you successfully enter a career — once you're in, the slate is clean. The effect is small for the lucky and a lifeline for the cursed: a long run of slammed doors becomes self-correcting, since by the fifth or sixth failure the bonus all but guarantees you land somewhere. It cannot, on its own, push a single roll past the 8+ target — it accrues only across genuine, repeated failure.

Taking a term§

Your first term in any career always succeeds. When you enter a new career, your first term automatically counts as a Success (8+): make no term roll, take no risk of Setback, Hard Exit, or Disaster, and roll once on the career's D66 Events table — then choose to take another term or retire safely. The danger of that first term is already priced into the entry test you passed. This applies to every career. (A D66 event can still carry the occasional trauma on dangerous careers — the guarantee removes the term-roll risk, not every hazard.) Like every term, your first term ends with a Life Event roll.

For your second and every later term in the same career, make the term roll with a baseline Advantage — the foothold you've already gained makes staying in easier than breaking in was. Roll 3D6 and keep the highest two. The career's characteristic still bears on the roll, but only a Disadvantage changes anything: if you are at a Disadvantage in that characteristic it cancels the baseline Advantage to a flat 2D6 (Chapter 6); a neutral or Advantage characteristic leaves you rolling with Advantage (it does not stack). Read the result:

Results modified below 2 count as ≤ 2. Events tables hold skill advances, XP bonuses, contacts, and equipment — plus the occasional trauma on low results for dangerous careers. Only a Disaster ends a term with no event at all; every other outcome, even the trauma-bearing Hard Exit, still rolls once on the D66 table.

On a skill advance listed as "+1 (min Trained)": if you are Untrained, the skill becomes Trained; otherwise it goes up one rank. The advance never stacks on top of Untrained — it brings you to Trained or moves you up from there.

Continuing, stopping, or changing careers§

• A Setback, Hard Exit, or Disaster ends your career. You may then enter a new career (subject to its entry test) and take another term. The career just ended is now behind you — re-entering it later takes the flat −2, like any career you leave.
• A Success (8+) keeps the door open: take another term in the same career, stop here, or leave to attempt a different career (subject to its entry test). Any career you leave — by walking away here, by a forced exit, or by failing its entry test — is flagged −2 to re-enter later (see Entering a career); once a career is behind you, the door doesn't stay warm.

Stopping is always your choice and is always safe. After a Success, leaving the career is a free narrative choice — you keep everything the term gave you and take no trauma for stopping. You never roll to "retire." Only a term roll of 7 or lower forces a career to end: a Setback (5–7) ends it cleanly against your will, a Hard Exit (3–4) or Disaster (≤2) ends it with trauma.

There is no limit to the number of terms — but every term roll from the second onward risks a Hard Exit or Disaster, and that trauma carries into play. The potential rewards are real, but so is the gamble. Knowing when to walk away is the real decision of this step.

Broken to the edge — no fresh starts. Once you have all four trauma nodes filled (four points of trauma) and have already served at least one career, you may no longer apply to a new career — a Wanderer that battered has nothing left to sell a new employer. You may still take another term in a career you are currently in after a Success, but at four nodes that is a mortal gamble: a Hard Exit or Disaster has nowhere left to put its trauma and kills you (Chapter 10). A forced exit at this point simply ends your creation. The "already served one career" clause is the safety valve — a character who reached four nodes purely from failed entries, never having gotten in, may keep applying, since the consecutive-failure bonus will eventually land them somewhere.

Where creation trauma lands§

Every point of trauma taken during creation — failed entry test, Hard Exit, Disaster, or D66 event — is marked exactly as in play: for each point, you choose which open node to fill, on either track (Chapter 10). A point need not go to Physical just because it came from an injury; you may mark Mental instead. The overflow rule forces a point onto the other track only when your chosen track is already full. Because the first node on each track clears at the end of creation (Chapter 19), keep your points in Wounded and Shaken wherever you can — only the second nodes (Maimed, Broken) follow you into play.

Dying in creation. Filling all four nodes does not kill you here — you are at your limit, and ordinary trauma beyond it is simply absorbed. Only a point that overflows with nowhere to go and comes from a Hard Exit or a Disaster ends a Wanderer for good; if that happens, mark them deceased and stop. It is rare by design — the price of pushing a broken character through one term too many. See Chapter 10, Trauma from careers.

Capstone "becomes Advantage" results. A career's 66 event often reads "[Characteristic] becomes Advantage — if already Advantage or at a Disadvantage, gain 10 XP instead." Resolve by your current state of that characteristic: neutral → it permanently becomes Advantage (a sanctioned exception to the equal-pairs rule); already Advantage → gain 10 XP instead; Disadvantage → the creation Disadvantage is permanent, so gain 10 XP instead. The Advantage lands only on a neutral characteristic.

Life Events§

A career term records the work your character did across four years. A Life Event records everything else — the loves, losses, windfalls, and revelations of the same span.

After every term, roll one Life Event — no exceptions. Once a term's career outcome is fully resolved, roll a single Life Event. This applies to your guaranteed first term, any later term of any outcome, and a wandering term from a failed entry test. A Disaster skips only the career D66 event; the Life Event still happens. Roll 1D6 to choose a table, then 2D6 read as a D66 to find the event, and apply its result. The full tables are in Chapter 22.

Resolve a Life Event under the same rulings as everything else in this step: Advantage/Disadvantage applies free of Momentum, and you choose where any trauma lands. Life Events can grant skills, XP, credits, contacts, Boons, and Banes; each table also has a 66 capstone resolved exactly like a career capstone. Because each term now yields both a career result and a Life Event, expect your Wanderer to leave creation with plenty of contacts, texture, and the occasional extra scar.

When you've stopped taking careers — by choice or because the dice forced you out and you're ready to begin play — move on to Chapter 18 to outfit your Wanderer and spend their experience.

Rolling careers at random§

The procedure above assumes you choose which careers to attempt and decide when to walk away — the two real decisions of this step. When you'd rather hand both to the dice and generate a Wanderer entirely from the tables, use the three rolls below in place of those choices. Everything else — entry tests, term rolls, D66 events, Life Events — already runs on dice as written.

Which career to attempt. When it's time to enter a career — your first, or a new one after a forced exit — roll D66 for the field. The twelve careers split the table evenly, three results each.

Then attempt that career's entry test as normal (Chapter 21 for each career's characteristic and fixed skills). If the dice send you back to a career already behind you — failed, left, or forced out of — the flat −2 re-entry penalty applies; if you'd rather a different life, reroll a repeat of the career you just left.

When to press on or walk away. Whenever the rules let you continue — after a Success (another term in the same career) or after a forced exit (a fresh career) — roll 2D6 with Advantage to decide, applying a cumulative −1 for each point of trauma . Always press on if you have less than 2 trauma or you haven't entered a career yet.

The broken-to-the-edge rule still applies: if all four nodes are filled and you have already served a career, you cannot attempt a new one whatever this roll says — press on only continues a career you're still in, and a forced exit ends creation.

Where trauma lands. When creation deals you a point of trauma and you'd rather not choose the node, roll 1D6: on 1–3 mark Physical, on 4–6 mark Mental. Fill the lowest open node on that track — Wounded before Maimed, Shaken before Broken — and let it overflow to the other track only if yours is full (Chapter 10). Since the first node on each track clears at the end of creation (Chapter 19), random placement usually costs you nothing unless several points stack onto one track.