WFRP 1e & 2e Careers: The Bawd, The Rogue & Container Careers

 WFRP 1e contained a number of careers which didn't exist in WFRP 2e; or rather, they were merged into so-called container careers which merged a number of careers which were considered similar.  The 1e Bawd was put into the 2e Rogue container career along with the Gambler and Raconteur.  There is in fairness a common theme of semi-criminality merging fast talk with violence that makes sense of this and they mainly point to the Charlatan advanced career.

I am certainly not the first person to ever notice this but the issue was that this concept was by no means universally applied.  The 'fighting' and 'fantasy' careers were largely kept intact, or even extended, whereas the more civilian careers were the ones which were put into container careers.  Only 'fantasy' careers which no longer applied in the setting e.g. Druids and Alchemists were incorporated into other careers.  Contrast this with Maelstrom, which differentiated between all kinds of artisans and traders and gave them unique relevant skills, whilst all fighters were subsumed into "mercenary".

In any case, the concept of a Bawd is strong and unique enough to stand alone, I think, to justify retaining.  The 1e Bawd can take some suitable skills from the 2e Rogue, but without intruding so heavily in the game-space of Gamblers and Raconteurs, so:

Skills: Blather, Bribery, Charm, Evaluate, Secret Language - Thieves' Tongue, Secret Signs (Thief), Street Fighting, 50% chance of Gamble, 25% chance of Flee!, 25% chance of Haggle, 25% chance of Luck, 25% chance of Sixth Sense, 25% chance of Speak Language (Reikspiel), 25% chance of Wit

The Raconteur has a raft of skills which the Bawd does not have, so that is fine.  The proposed skillset above does look quite close to the Gambler though...it can stay for the present, but I may come back and revise this one at some point.

More generally, the concept of the container career seems to have been regarded as a mistake by 2e designers eventually as more and more careers were added during the course of 2e, some of them in quite niche roles and some seeming to explicitly move back from the logic of the container career. Both 1e and 2e also used explicitly (e.g. The Thief and The Entertainer in 1e) or implicitly (e.g. Wizards in 2e, Clerics in both) the idea of sub-careers, in which there were slightly different options to customize a career without making an entirely separate career.  The organizing principle here should really be the characteristic Advance Scheme rather than the skills, since it is easy enough to add 'if/or' clauses into careers but a separate Advance Scheme is more difficult to do that with.  But that being so, it was perhaps surprising that there wasn't a 'soldier' career that contained Marine, Mercenary, Soldier and then all the one-off flavour soldier-type careers. Overall though, the container careers were largely a mistake, despite the logic behind them, since careers are the currency within the game.