Oh gods they broke the adventure! So hard I'm scrambling to fix it.

They forced an ork ship to surrender to them and then took over a station that was supposed to be full of orks by torpedoing to death.

And bypassed the planet completely.

And just 1 shotted my boss character.

And are planning on killing the 3 RTs they are racing against?

A group after my own heart.

I keep forgetting that your PC's are mostly Xeno. If you really don't want them to outright kill the other RT's (it's considered bad sportsmanship in some circles), and since none of them are the actual RT Warrant Holder, he/she/the council/the NPC shadowy boss/etc could "request" the PC's simply damage, injury, and/or "convince" the other RT's to abandon their efforts on Grace. This would also have the added benefit of not drawing attention to your crews more diverse origins.

Kill someone, and someone else will seek vengeance. Humiliate and degrade someone, especially when it's completed by the crew of a vessel with no RT immediately governing them, gives that ship bragging rights for all eternity.

Remember that all boss characters should have fate points, and burning a fate point allows them to survive the scene. Do their crew pull off a dramatic orbital extraction? Is there a reserve teleportarium or souped-up displacer field around? Was this actually just a well-crafted gene clone being controlled through Stryxis tech? All are possible!

You have begun the process of realising that Rogue Trader can get quite broken if you just use the stats from the books for enemies, but the Nemesis career path from Hostile Acquisitions can build some truly frightening enemies. Alternatively you can look sad, congratulate your Dynasty on murdering a prominent Rogue Trader, and then have a loyal retainer sic an Eversor assassin on them six sessions later as a reminder that people don't take kindly to you murdering their bosses.

My players did similar except they:

• first found the Wydening Gyre and secured that
• bypassed the Ork ship (which they gutted with Fire! criticals later on, annihilating the crew and leaving a drifting hulk)
• found the Dagger of Fate, snuck on board via guncutter after pummeling the station from range with their ships guns
• found the cargo and extracted it while fighting off orks (including the missionary burning a fate to not have her head exploded by a rocket and the RT burning a fate not to die from his arm being blown off from another rocket)
• barely managed to take off in the guncutter and fly to safety back on their ship as the Fire! criticals consumed the cargo bay of the Dagger of Fate
• then finally bothered to go check out this colony that was the whole reason they accepted this contract.

Took them a couple sessions to resolve the dirtside plot of Grace, including recruiting an Arch-Militant (made the 'The Road' reference NPC father and daughter into a PC and NPC daughter).

Players seemed to enjoy it overall and found it challenging in places, but i didn't try and get too bogged down in the adventure as written in the book and winged a lot of it.

My experience/solutions on preparing a game and players messing it up completely:

I usually focus on the NPCs of importance and on constant variables. Only thing I ask of the players is what's their objective, so I can prepare more constant variables to keep the adventure rich and not completely built on the fly.

If they, for example, bomb the temple in Quppa Psi 12 from Lure of the Expanse. I won't scramble to fix the adventure for them. They lost the trail to the Dread Pearl, possibly permanently.

If they board Blitz in Frozen Reaches and take his ship, Orleans will abandon the fight (making it much harder) and Damaris will also retaliate as soon as possible.

Depending on how great the reward is, that's how much I will increase the game difficulty.

So.... You want to salvage that Grand Cruiser using your Frigate's crew? Let's see... Uuuh boneconquerors are pretty cool aren't they?

After all, if it was that easy to get that ship, other more powerful RTs would already have it.

Also, whenever I have a strong NPC (RT), I always try to out-think the explorers on fail-safes they may have in case of betrayals. And also to remind the explorers how bad taking out another RT/dynasty would be for their reputation and contracts with other RTs.

My Koronus Expanse's factions usually hit back pretty hard on turncoats. And also usually knows what gratefulness is. This has taught my players to behave most of times.

Also, whenever I have a strong NPC (RT), I always try to out-think the explorers on fail-safes they may have in case of betrayals. And also to remind the explorers how bad taking out another RT/dynasty would be for their reputation and contracts with other RTs.

My Koronus Expanse's factions usually hit back pretty hard on turncoats. And also usually knows what gratefulness is. This has taught my players to behave most of times.

I understand this bit, but sometimes players, or maybe just me, feel that it CAN BE a flaw in the system when only the players are hindered by the rules, and not the NPCs the GM controls. There are many Rogue Trader NPCs who are presented as grizzled a-holes, pitiless monsters, or selfish d-bags, who would be instantly willing to murder the players openly, and not worry about it; if the players were well-known and powerful enough, it might even go to make the NPC better , as he or she has now demonstrated their might, and should not be trifled with. As this can work for the players, too, what's your way to make the players feel like they aren't the only ones to suffer for acing competition? The GM just arbitrates what happens to Hadarak Fel; if he kills the party, it's game over, anyway, and his rep be unimportant/damned, but if they kill him, it was bad to kill another RT. Maybe this isn't really an issue, and I'm just over-thinking it.

So you go out of your way to mention the sh*tty things that happen to the nastier people.

• Fel is renowned throughout the Expanse as a brute who'll go through anyone in his way to get what he wants. Consequently, other Rogue Traders refuse to have dealings with him, with Chorda and Winterscale outright refusing to let his ships into port without hefty tariffs and sealed gun-ports.
• Djanko's indiscriminate slave-trading has brought him under strict eye of the Inquisition, as a number of rogue psykers have been found with his trade-brand in the Imperium.
• Bastille's tendency to shoot from orbit first and ask the craters some questions later has recently led to strained relations with the Adeptus Mechanicus, as a lance-strike miss that damaged a Mechanicus vessel led to the loss of highly valuable archeofacts from a datastore carried aboard. He is currently excommunicated from all Mechanicus drydocks within the Koronus Expanse for the next 25 years.

They're all able to deal with these issues because they're incredibly wealthy rogue traders who have spent years cultivating deals and projects that compensate for their missteps.

But players may not feel that suffering. The NPCs punishment happens in the background, and the players don't feel it, like when it happens to them, unless Fel's limitations now open up an enterprise for the players. Sorry, I'm just sitting here spouting crap, but players usually feel special, and it can be hard to make them feel that NPCs, whose actions are purely arbitrary of the GM, are held to the same standard as PCs who have built characters, worked hard, earned bonuses and penalties, yadadada. As said, I'm giving this too much unnecessary thought. Thanks for the examples, though. Those are cool.

I dunno about your players - every group is different, after all - but I find that if I stay consistent with the NPC's reputations and assets, relations to other groups and so on, and don't arbitrarily change things around when the players find a way to exploit their situation, that just makes it all the sweeter when they pull **** off successfully.

Of course, I don't want my players to feel special. I want them to feel like the biggest scrubs in the galaxy, and if they wanna be special, they'll have to fight for it tooth and nail.

DEAR "WALDORF" GROUP, IF YOU ARE READING THIS (even though I asked you not to visit the GM's area in the forum) , DON'T READ THE BELOW AS IT WILL SPOIL THE FUN (and I will reward less exp if I find out anyone read this) .

I feel the need to explain myself for the hatred I've caused.

<spoiler>

When I say I try to outthink the players, I do so using the knowledge that the opposing RT would have about the players, and not me personally.

Armelan brought the explorers and their Dictator-class to the search for the Dread Pearl, offering her extensive experience and know-how in Koronus while agreeing to a smaller margin in the profit if the pearl is found. Bastille and his array of spies, learned about Armelan's intention and queried for information on the Waldorf Dynasty - once he learned that they were heavily connected with the Imperial Navy (currently one of Bastille's enemies) and had a Dictator heading towards the Heathen Stars, he spent some cash in the Breaking Yards for retrofitting one of his transports with hold hangar bays with whatever interceptors he could get, while preparing an ambush in Naduesh (where he expects the Waldorf ship to resupply sooner or later for food and water).

In the group's trajectory to the heathen stars, they allied themselves with 2 other RTs in order to capture Krawkin Feckward, who had just broke some Rogue Trader gentlemen's agreement with one of Winterscale's associates - and use this as leverage for that "associate" to provide them with some coordinates they needed (the nexus temples).

Bastille and Chorda are allies, and they are manouvering Djanko much like the Eldars usually manouver Orks. They don't know it yet, but Sun Lee is doing the same with the Explorers (Waldorf) & Armelan.

Krawkin (an a*hole) was well connected to Chorda however, and this fight gave them Good Reputation (Winterscale, Chuikov, Makao - they don't know this one for now ) and Bad Reputation (Chorda, Bastille - they don't know this one for now ) for now.

I think that if they wanted to play the "bad guys" (like Krawkin, Chorda, Bastille, etc...), they could - but they just don't have yet the know-how needed to keep their backs covered from getting into trouble with/mistrust from Imperial Organizations or RTs/Free Traders. They have to play it safe while they are weak - I won't save them as GM if they let themselves be ambushed by Bastille and Djanko whilst they have only 1 ship.

In the background of it all, you have Eldar farseers who foreseen that if they provided Bastille with the information that Armelan was after allies, they would fight between themselves until the point they are weak enough to be attacked by the Eldar's own ships.

What Eldars don't know yet, is that Sun Lee is behind the Waldorf and Armelan and will double-double cross the Eldars when the moment comes (unintentionally).

</spoiler>

So you go out of your way to mention the sh*tty things that happen to the nastier people.

• Fel is renowned throughout the Expanse as a brute who'll go through anyone in his way to get what he wants. Consequently, other Rogue Traders refuse to have dealings with him, with Chorda and Winterscale outright refusing to let his ships into port without hefty tariffs and sealed gun-ports.
• Djanko's indiscriminate slave-trading has brought him under strict eye of the Inquisition, as a number of rogue psykers have been found with his trade-brand in the Imperium.
• Bastille's tendency to shoot from orbit first and ask the craters some questions later has recently led to strained relations with the Adeptus Mechanicus, as a lance-strike miss that damaged a Mechanicus vessel led to the loss of highly valuable archeofacts from a datastore carried aboard. He is currently excommunicated from all Mechanicus drydocks within the Koronus Expanse for the next 25 years.

They're all able to deal with these issues because they're incredibly wealthy rogue traders who have spent years cultivating deals and projects that compensate for their missteps.

Exactly!

The thing is, I have my players play safe because they know they are not the "incredibly wealthy rogue traders" yet .

Honestly, I started doing a lot of that stuff in the background to nudge the players into doing things more proactively. Sort of like "Here, look what this guy did! He may have caught some flak for doing it, but he just tattooed his name on a moon with gold-plated macrocannon, so it's obviously not hindering him too much. Now what are YOU going to try and do?"

And then they went out and stole a titan.

Okay things went a lot better tonight. As I throw out the idea of following the script/module and mostly winged it. The party explored the lower decks of the Dagger of Fate, which is where I said the cargo bays were. Also the party had blasted the upper portion to smithereens.

So I divided up the bottom to 7 rooms and they explored that. I even managed to do two back to back combats that took more then 1 round to resolve.

And one of my players demanded gold coins last session so I gave them to him. In the form of gold colored tin foil covering a stash of chocolate they found.

EDIT: So parts of a station that are exposed to the void are not a deterrent to players...

Edit 2: So they are just going NOPE to the planet itself...

Okay things went a lot better tonight. As I throw out the idea of following the script/module and mostly winged it. The party explored the lower decks of the Dagger of Fate, which is where I said the cargo bays were. Also the party had blasted the upper portion to smithereens.

.....

Edit 2: So they are just going NOPE to the planet itself...

Sounds like it was awesome work Lady Kataline. Congrats to surviving "PC's ruin the best of plans 101." As long as fun was had by all, then everything worked out perfectly.

As for not going to the planet, I think this is why I had pictures of the Estates/Mansion for my players. Having the underworld and other vagabonds on Footfall wonder about the riches that could be hidden in the estates enticed them also (Table 2, Grace Tidbits)

A picture I used was this one , though I can't find the rest. I could take pictures of the ones I printed off and used, but to much work. Similar ones I would of used instead of the ones I did are here and here.

I also influenced them by saying it would take weeks searching for the Dagger of Fate in the void, unless they knew it's exact coordinates. Which could possibly be obtained from the colony on Grace, one of the outlying Estates, or some other place of importance that was communicating with the space station. The book did say it deviated from it's normal orbital trajectory.

If the other RT's are plundering the Estates, then you could have the PC's pick up vox signals from the planets surface of men/workers requesting more cargo ships to get all of the artifacts/loot/heirlooms/stuff back to the ship. Maybe a one of the RT's say "Leave it, I got what I came for. Get aboard the next shuttle or your staying there."

My PC's received vox calls from a Missionary asking for aid, who was trapped with his remaining flock at a decrepit Mansion fighting off Reavers. Initially him and his flock were in hiding until they heard shuttles flying overhead. Seeing a bunch of Reavers head off in the direction of the shuttles, he took his only chance and assaulted their now almost empty hideout to use their vox and radio for help. Which was the PC's first trip to the planet after surveying it for like two days. After that, they split into two groups. One started raiding the Estates, with the other went to Port Chorda (all with additional information from the Missionary, some true, some not).

For what my PC's never explored/found, was Signal Station One (the one transmitting most on the planet) and the Wydening Gyre (which they would of found if going to Signal Station One). Though I give them credit. They had plans to return and explore Grace further. With also the intent to reclaim a hulked RT ship they fought off, whom attempted to raid their cargo the PC's so rightfully plundered from the Dagger.

Anyhoot, best of luck to you and your players. In retrospect, I should of posted these snippets when I first thought about them, to give you a sense of what other players did. Looks like it worked out really well for you though.

Thanks for the long reply Nameless2all.

I suppose I can take a minute to give a more comprehensive account of what happened in this little adventure as run by a newbie GM.

Footfall:

The command crew, if it can be called that was made up of the following. A Kroot, whose player sadly missed most session due to work. My sister played the Cosair Eldar. We also had a Tau that no one is quite sure how that happened. An Ork Mek boy finished out the xenos, who were all sanctioned as part of their background packages. The lone human was the senechal, who had to baby sit them all and was the default leader of the group.

Their contact with Cromwell went easily enough. I one had a DH character named Flavion "Dakka" Cromwell so he played that part. My sister hit me for that. I think all things considered the meeting with Chorda went well. I had her rather unhappy with Cromwell but no one picked up on that and I had her be as brief as possible with the party. They took it in stride and then hit the streets looking for information.

Then we find out that the party's best means of getting said information is for the Mekboy to loom over their victim, I mean informant and scare the piss out of them. So I through a lot of info at the party, some good, some bad, some utterly useless. Oh all the various bits dropped on them, the one they latch onto is the fact that people are being press ganged. So what they do is get the Senechal to gather a mob together and whip them into a foaming from the mouth fury. Only problem is they lost control of the crowd. Fortunately they managed to get the crowd to not kill them and instead take their anger out on one of the random RTs who were press ganging.

The RTs I put in were Feckward, Gerrit and Armelan from LotE. Just cause the party had a raider and the original module called for things like frigates and LCs. Which after seeing the tiny terror they build they probably could have handled but I didn't want to kill them on instantly so I stuck to my new smaller ships. In any case the mob they lost control off rampaged through Footfall and to the docks and attacked Gerrit's ship. He doesn't like the party much now.

After losing control of the mob the part quickly left Footfall. And made the jump to Grace. I wanted them to have to make some decisions so I had the party and their competition all exit the warp at the same time right next to each other near the Teardrop. And I build an overland (system?) map and divided ship speeds by 3, rounding down. They could push the engines to double their speed with a tech use test that the party regularly abused.

Though there was some talk about just killing everyone immediately, the party spent so much time on it I simply had time pass and the other ships moved away. And then the party got ambushed by the ork ship in the Teardrop. And then stupid happened. Their first shot knocked out the sensors. Which was great cause Crew of 30 with a shooting penalty of 30, yeah.

Well since I was still trying to follow the module at this point so after the ship got all busted up from the party's TORPEDOES they offered up the location of the Dagger of Fate and their allegiance to the Mekboy. Well unsure how much you can trust orks, the party took the location and beelined for it the station, which I had placed beyond Grace itself.

Feckward and Gerrit made a beeline for the planet but their paths never crossed with the party. Armelan I had wander off as I decided to have her chase down the Wydening Grye. Partly cause I sort of feel sorry for her and giving her another transport would be nice. That and I thought it might draw the players to wonder what the hell she is doing.

But as the players headed to the station, their torps wrecked the ever loving crap out of it. So much so that I had to rule that the upper levels were completely and utterly destroyed. Fortunately, I figured cargo bays would be on the lower levels so I let them explore that.At this point I also threw the module out the window and just winged it all from there. I have them 6/7 rooms to explore. The hanger in which they initially landed. To the west was an arboretum that was overrun by squigs. The east had a cargo bay with the package they were hired to get and the Ork Nob in charge of the station. Which the party put a marker light on and then light up the Nob like a xmas tree. Then proceeded to loot everything not nailed down.

They didn't even look around that much. They figured out which cryotube Anastasia Chorda was in and then took everything. It's sitting in their cargo hold now. North of their landing site was the generator room which had been quite kustomized and thus dangerous to cross if in a hurry. North of that was a cargo bay that had been converted to a refrigerator room. I thought it would be immensely cruel for those on Grace if there was a huge locker full of food not far from them.

West of the central generator room was another cargo bay filled with orks beating the tar out of each other. The party fought a few groups to establish dominance over the orks. Which they did though I did manage to hurt each party member and almost killed my sister.

The last "room" was to the East of the generator room and it was sealed by a bulkhead. Really I had run out of ideas so I just decided that that cargo bay had been blown up. So despite my best attempts to show the players there is nothing but cold hard void on the other side, they still blow the bulkhead. They made their rolls to not bet sucked out and I just had a bunch of orks plug the hole eventually.

So that was the station. Next they suddenly took an interesting in Armelan and the Wydening Gyre. So much so that they broke through the blockade I set up with Gerrit and Feckward's ships, just straight moving from one end of the combat map to the other.

Only to go racing up to Armelan and making a deal with her. Get her two transports to help take out Feckward and Gerrit and the party would let her keep the Gyre with no fuss. She takes the deal and then does nothing as the party warplode Feckward's ship and hulk Gerrit's on their own.