This week, we continue with our previews of The Day After Ragnarok, moving into some of the actual crunchy parts of the setting. We’ll start off with a look at the specific professions that make the world tick. From the text:
The Professional Edges of the Savage Worlds rulebook imply, well, a professional career, past or present. Here’s some examples of how those careers might play out in the world of The Day After Ragnarok.
- Ace: A former RAF pilot during the War, now flying bush in the Outback; an Amarillo stock-car racer who runs cargoes (and salvaged cars) out of the Poisoned Lands for the thrill of it; a Zambezi river pilot used to dodging crocodiles and shooting whitewater (and the occasional bandit).
- Acrobat: An Indian temple dancer, on the run from an arranged marriage back home; a Mohawk “high steel” worker brought West in the Evacuation of ’46; a “grease man” for a criminal ring in France, now seeking new opportunities where the cops don’t speak French.
- Champion: A Turkish dervish who battles godless Communism in the name of Allah; a Mormon Son of Dan who kills monsters to help decent folk survive on the frontiers of Utah; a Navajo medicine man who works for the U.S. government because his father was treated well in the Army.
- Gadgeteer: A black-market scrounger on the docks in Capetown, tossed out of Rhodes University for…um…personal reasons; a garage inventor in Dallas with a lifelong dream of going to Mars; a visionary technical genius who defected to Australia from Bulgaria just ahead of the Red Army.
- Holy Warrior: A mambo of the Rada rite of Voodoo, fighting zombies in nearly-drowned Haiti; a Presbyterian missionary deep in the Chinese interior, working with the Nationalist resistance and banishing demons he’s never heard of; a Jewish kabbalist rabbi who got out of Lisbon just ahead of Franco’s troops with his notes on ghosts.
- Investigator: A tough-as-nails P.I. on the mean streets of Los Angeles; an unorthodox archaeologist attached to Rhodes University; a former SIS agent with a lot of contacts in the Middle East.
- Jack-of-all-Trades: A professor’s daughter from Bombay, spoiled with books and by scholars since infancy; an Australian autodidact with an eidetic memory; a fella in Oregon who touched a glowing meteorite and just “got smart.”
- McGyver: A former SOE-trained Maquis saboteur, politically purged in Algeria and looking for a new outlet for her skills; a village mechanic from Zululand who’s never had the right tools; an “improvisational engineer” who works as a railroad company trouble-shooter.
- Mentalist: A defector from the Soviet psi program, working for SIS now under deep cover; a pilot and playboy trained in a remote Himalayan lamasery; a Hungarian émigré who worked at Los Alamos with a lot of strange radioactive elements.
- Mr. Fix It: A U.S. Navy carrier air mechanic during the War, now on the beach on half-pay; a born jury-rigger keeping things running (just barely) somewhere in Newfoundland; a Scots engineer on a Pacific tramp steamer.
- Scholar: An émigré Dutch Rhodes University biochemist; a Caltech physicist interested in black magic; a civilian instructor at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, who wants some real-world experience.
- Thief: A gorgeous cat burglar in glamorous Rio de Janeiro; a “box man” recruited by the SOE during the War, given a pardon, and gone straight as a locksmith; a security expert (former ONI) in San Francisco.
- Wizard: The Romany seventh son of a seventh son from all over, but mostly from Sydney; a taciturn Finnish sorceress who somehow walked out of the Gulag and into Alaska; a fakir from Calcutta with family enemies in the Congress Party.
- Woodsman: A Filipino scout and resistance fighter; a “lone wolf” Wyoming monster-hunter; a trained Masai askari.
Next: Kenneth Hite answers some of your questions on The Day After Raganarok.