Quote:
Originally Posted by tbrock1031
And spend a few years working as a guard (or as a soldier, or a sailor, or inside any organization for that matter), you learn how to deal with your higher-ups.
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At least if things are organized. Things at TL3 usually aren't, but things at TL4 might very well be. So good point. I sit corrected.
As for Previous Job Lenses, I don't know of any for GURPS (GURPs Historical Folks contains
Templates, not Lenses), but if you can find a Warhammer Fantasy RP core book, I think you'd fine huge selections of medieval professions (well, more like TL4'ish than genuinely medieval) that you can use for inspiration, although you'll have to convert the skills to GURPS (and probably very loosely).
If I were to make a set of "previous job" Lenses for an action-adventuring TL3 or TL4 GURPs campaign, I think I'd go about it in a very systematic and rigid way, by assuming that it's always a "previous job" with the character no longer on active duty (thus Rank and so forth isn't needed), and always the exact same point and skill/trait structure, for instance something like this:
2 points in one Primary Skill
1 point in one Secondary Skill
1 Dabbler Perk split 2 ways between two Tertiary Skills
1 Perk representing a lasting benefit of the job, e.g. Courtesy Rank or a Perk-grade Contact
Thus all Previous Job Lenses would be
exactly five points and would have the
exact same structure, and I, wearing my
worldbuilder hat, would be forced to work within the structure and make hard choices about which one (always one) skill to assign as Primary, and so forth (including only those four skills that are most likely to be retained after the character no longer holds the job that the Lens is based on). As a method to kickstart the creative process.
It also wouldn't be able to include disadvantages (such as lack of Literacy) or even most advantages, although if you define iliteracy as being the setting norm (that is, if you define everybody as defaulting to -3 Iliterate) then you could spend the "Perk" point on upgrading Iliterate to Broken (e.g. for a town guard
officer).
You could also make the rigid structure slightly more flexibly by deciding to have both Minor Previous Job Lenses and Major Previous Job Lenses. Minor ones are structured as above and are 5 points, while Major ones could have a different structure and be 10 or even 12 or 15 points.
That way, a Minor Lens could be really mostly just flavour, while a Major Lens would be more expensive but also more likely to contain adventuring-useful stuff that is attractive to player (e.g. former Town Guard vs former Farm Hand).