I'm trying to understand whether it would be useful to add training packages to a version of RM that does not have them, OR remove training packages from a version that does have them.
NB! In the following, the difference in capitalization of "profession" is intentional.
My take on training packages is that they remove focus from the names of the Professions, allowing for more specialized "profession titles". By doing this, the Professions are reduced to being mainly development templates (and should, IMHO, no longer be termed Professions), and effectively provide both a lot of different professions and an easy and painless way of allowing for profession changes for characters.
For example, the character Alpha has the Profession Fighter. This determines the development costs and similar aspects of him. Alpha's player states that Alpha has been a soldier, purchasing the relevant Soldier TP; Alpha's profession is Soldier. Years later Alpha retires to a life of horticulture, and Alpha's player purchases the Farmer TP, obtaining the profession Farmer.
This all works well with non-spell casters. For spell casters, I think the association of spell lists to Professions is wrong, and would much rather have spell lists on the Training Packages. Thereby, a Greek Elementalist who travels to live in China could purchase the Chinese Elementalist TP and start learning Chinese elementalism spells, giving up further development of his Greek elementalism spells. Or the Elementalist could even join a religious order, learning spells relevant to that order instead of the elementalism spells! I'm well aware that this places a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the GM, but that should not stop us or ICE from producing the best system possible!
//K