Missing Traveller OGC: Career Paths, A Discussion...

Good Afternoon, All:

With the exception of the Scout career path, the Traveller System Reference Document (TSRD) provides no additional information on career paths. Therefore, any publisher seeking to publish such details must either create his own Open Game Content or make due with a reference to the core rulebook and leave it at that.

As you well know, I'm not the kind of guy that would leave it at that, particularly if I want to someday have a Player's Guide to Azri Drakara. That pretty much means that I am obliged to create my own career path write-ups for the Azri Drakara campaign setting. Of course, that begs the next question: What career paths should I create for the setting?

Below, you can see a list of the various career paths that my personal favorite versions of the Traveller system. Obviously, I want to provide the basic career paths for the Azri Drakara setting in such a manner that traditional Traveller character concepts can still be created, but I don't want to violate the Closed Content clause of the OGL. The names of the career paths are Open Game Content, since they can be found in the TSRD, and more information can be extracted with a little difficulty from the Open Game Content from Traveller T20, but really, a lot of this is just going to be my own creation.

The core career paths from Classic Traveller:

• Army
• Navy
• Marines
• Merchant
• Scout
• Other

The career paths added to Classic Traveller via the Citizens of the Imperium supplement:

• Barbarian
• Belter
• Bureaucrat
• Diplomat
• Doctor
• Flyer
• Hunter
• Noble
• Pirate
• Rogue
• Sailor
• Scientist

The core career paths from MegaTraveller:

• Army
• Barbarian
• Belter
• Bureaucrat
• Diplomat
• Doctor
• Flyer
• Hunter
• Law Enforcer
• Marine
• Merchant
• Navy
• Noble
• Pirate
• Rogue
• Sailor
• Scientist
• Scout

The core career paths from Traveller T20:

• Academic
• Army
• Barbarian
• Belter
• Marines
• Mercenary
• Merchant
• Navy
• Noble
• Professional
• Rogue
• Scout
• Traveller

The core career paths from Mongoose Traveller:

• Agent
• Army
• Citizen
• Drifter
• Entertainer
• Marine
• Merchant
• Navy
• Nobility
• Rogue
• Scholar
• Scout

Given the commonalities, I am inclined to start with the following core career path list:

• Academic (Doctor, Scholar, Scientist)
• Central Security Service (Agent, Law Enforcer)
• Colonist (Barbarian, Citizen, Hunter, Professional)
• Merchant House (Merchants)
• Public Service (Bureaucrat, Diplomat, Noble)
• Republic Rangers (Scouts)
• Stellar Navy (Navy, Marines)
• System Defense (Army, Flyers, Sailors)
• Traveller (Belter, Drifter, Rogue)

If I had to go with an even smaller list, I'd just use Merchant House, Republic Rangers, Stellar Navy, System Defense and Traveller, since these reflect the contents of the original core career paths from Classic Traveller.

What do you think?

With Regards,
Flynn