[Spica Publishing] Career Books

[Mirja]

Are these PDF books worth the cost, I mean almost $20? That is what I usually pay for a 120-150 page hard back RPG book.

[hiro]

If you do a search of this forum you find plenty of positive comments on Spica and their career books. Not all is positive tho, Dragoner had me not use them to create a character for his game as he felt the careers were off balance with the stock MgT.

Overall, I like Spica career books and to me they are worth the cost. Like all the Spica books I own (I think about 12 or 13 books) they're well presented and thought thru.

$20 buys a round of drinks for 3 round here, it's really not that much money and Spica books might be better for your liver

[dragoner]

To be fair, you were rolling up characters and Phil, out the gate had 2x the skills, which I didn't (and don't) agree with. So I gave them a chance. Maybe I just like my TU to be a little more gritty.

[hiro]

To be fair a little further, I can't recall if Phil was interpreting the rules all by himself or if the rules were actually written that way. I think it was the former but would need to check the details

Since then tho Mongoose have their own higher education rules, I think in the new version of Mercenary. (I'm pretty sure it was Phil's interpretation that was throwing things out of whack).

If the career books are indeed bumping up the number of skills then I'd be a little surprised but nothing that a little house ruling wouldn't take care of - I don't believe the careers themselves unbalance things, I think it was the first term at university.

[dragoner]

Just don't put this on me, I gave them a chance. I have heard others say stuff, but they will have to speak for themselves.

[hiro]

To clarify, here's Spica's response to my question on their forum: http://www.spicapublishing.co.uk/phpbb3 ... =90&t=2505

I agree with Dragoner, my character was blocked from using the career books as he would have had an unfair advantage over others not using them, in hindsight I'm not so keen on the doubling of basic training skills, it would be pretty easy to drop this addition, the careers themselves I like.

[dragoner]

There is one Spica book I can recommend it's the Field Manual, I like it a lot.

[atpollard]

If you can find Gruffy the Hiver, ask him to put the PDFs on sale.

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I wrote most of the careers in the three Career books by Spica and I don't understand the interpretation that gave the character more skills. While some of the careers might have given a character a couple more skills, we never intended any of the careers to be unbalanced with the standard MGT careers.

We worked very hard to keep the number of skills roughly equal to what could be earned using the MGT books. There were ALTERNATE ways to generate Pre-Service skills, but they were never meant to be used together; a player could pick one or the other; not use both (I assume you are talking about the Intelligence vs. Education based skill lists).