by Jay Little
Why a Career Compendium?
Perhaps more than any other game element, the system of careers is a signature part of WFRP. The careers provide flavour and identity to player characters as well as NPCs. There’s a sense of realism the career system generates for the setting, filling the Old World with people from all walks of life, from the lowly Rat Catchers and Bone Pickers to Noble Lords and Warrior Priests.
It also provides a great tool to GMs to help create non-player characters for their campaigns. You don’t have to decide how to shoehorn the leader of a village into a broad, generic class like “Fighter.” Instead, you can find relevant careers that help create a fully fleshed out character concept and can populate your world with people that make sense.
Careers also help tell a story. As a character advances over the course of a WFRP campaign, the careers he adopts become a sort of journal of his life. The story behind the Rat Catcher who seizes an opportunity to strike it rich by becoming a Thief could be wholly different from the Rat Catcher who takes up arms and chooses to become a Shieldbreaker. Or the Apprentice Wizard who eschews the other wizardly careers to instead focus on acadaemia and becomes a Scholar. The countless other career combinations also have their own unique stories to tell.
The career system provides a more fluid, natural progression than many other advancement systems. Characters tend to advance more gradually over time, improving here by a bit, getting slightly better at that – as opposed to the jarring, sudden surges in ability by having everything change at once. This gradual process makes progression easier to integrate into the story, and makes it easier for a GM to find opportunities within a campaign to justify advancement.
Based on the career system’s importance to the WFRP experience, and seeing how much depth, flavour, and realism it adds to the setting, it is easy to see how valuable a sourcebook like the Career Compendium will be to your game.
Want to learn more? Download the Sneak Peek PDF (2 MB) now!
New Careers and Illustrations
In addition to hundreds of careers from other sourcebooks, the Career Compendium introduces a number of new careers and illustrations. New artwork was commissioned for existing careers that did not have illustrations, such as the Chimneysweep from Forges of Nuln or the iconic Warrior Priest from Tome of Salvation (shown here).
The new careers offer a variety of interesting options for players and GMs alike. Here is a brief look at two of the eight new careers you will find in the Career Compendium:
Animal Trainer (Advanced): Animal trainers breed and train animals for transport, hunting, or entertainment. Their most common job is breeding riding horses and destriers for the horse markets, but animal trainers are also skilled dog and bird handlers that accompany nobles’ hunting parties.
Cartographer (Basic): Cartographers chart the lay of the land for rich patrons, hardy explorers, and collectors. They accompany expeditions into the wild but also transpose the shoddy work of others into a more readable form.
For more details on what to find inside the Career Compendium, be sure to download this exclusive Sneak Peek PDF (2 MB).