Hello. I am currently new to Rogue Trader. I have Gmed DnD, Pathfinder, Only War and this will be my first time using Rogue Trader. My players want t have a open world experience and travel, explore, get rich, make empires and crash them. I am capable of allowing them to do this but I would love advice and tips on how to keep them occupied in case they lose ideas or need some prodding. Any Advice is good advice.

If your willing to put a little money down, get Stars of Inequity. It's designed for this kind of thing with it's colony and system generation rules. Otherwise, I'll put forward the following advice/ideas:

1) Make Rivals Dynamic : Think of a few major NPC/groups you want to be a force in your campaign and figure out what they're goals are. Then, as the game progresses, have them accomplish some, and shift others. For Example, perhaps you want the Fel Dynasty to be a on-again-off-again peer or the Ork Kaptain GreenBeard to be building his pirate fleet. These help keep the sector from feeling stagnant, and also give you a group to cause problems for the players without them appearing out of left field.

2) Your Great-Grandfather : Most Rogue Trader dynasties are ancient and have had their power wax and wain over the years. The Imperial is also really good at misplacing records of things. This is a great excuse to have fragmented documents act as adventure seeds. Even better, they can be presented in a way that doesn't make them urgent, so the group can come back to them when they "have a month or two to spare".

3) Misforture: This is as important in sandbox games as it is unimportant in linear games. Being a Rogue Trader isn't easy, and there's a reason why very few gain the level of influence Winterscale did, and even fewer maintain it for more then a Generation. Bad stuff happens to good Dynasties, and if you ever need something to get them moving again, create a problem. Or if they're doing to well. Or if you just want to complicated their current situation - after all not all problems happen when they're convenient to deal with.

(ok, this is really just Sandbox advice:)

4) Pre-Build, Pre-Build, Pre-Build : If you're running a sandbox, you have to be able to provide your players with something on the fly. That means being prepared for any action they might take, having a lot of things premade can help with that. Make yourself a half-dozen pending systems incase they decide to explore. Make a dozen Archetype NPCs you can toss in as someone important at a moment's notice. Have a couple challenges or even micro-adventures (flashpoints?) built you can toss in at a moments notice with minor adjustments. And if they do something totally unexpected, don't be afraid to say "Oh, ok. Give me ten minutes to come up with something."

Quick has some great tips there. I second them and add the following:

• Make the ship come alive. It's a small city. Populate it. Give some key people names and personalties. Have a list of names ready to assign to NPCs that get called upon by the crew. Make up some encounters for the ship, even if your PCs don't go for the bait (e.g. hullghasts are eating the crew on Deck #43; something has to be done) and send squads of their troopers to fix the problem. Make some holidays, weddings, births in the crew, a jilted lover commits murder, etc. Don't go to town, though. Your PCs will probably run with it if you just start the atmosphere. That will save you time.

• The Warp - The rules are insufficient if you want that creepy feeling. Either make some house rule charts or find some around here. Make minor setbacks common and don't hit them with major setbacks from these journeys. You want conflict from this source. It adds flavor. But, don't let it command the flow of your game.

• Don't just draw up some rival RTs. Give them significant sidekicks. Most ships don't just fly the Dynasty's flag, they also fly the flags of the Navis Nobilite. If they don't, there's a reason...

• Download or have ready drawing and photos of alien landscapes, Imperial edifices, and planets from orbit. This adds immensely to the flavor of any sci-fi game, but especially RT. Imperial edifices are MASSIVE.

• I'm stingy with the XP (except at the beginning of the game) because I don't want the players to max out at Rank 8 too quickly. That ends the game (talk to your players about how to deal with this). Conversely, I permit LOTS of Acquisition rolls, especially for personal gear (I'm a bit more stringent on Acquisition rolls for starship components - I make those take more time). Sci-fi games and their characters tend to be defined by their sci-fi gear. Let your players have their high tech toys.

• Make the skills count for something. If Secret Tongue (Rogue Trader) has no use, why would people spend XP on it? And those that start with an unused skill have wasted XP before the game even starts. One of my favorites is to give a PC Navigator some inherited charts they only obtain at the game's beginning (Port Wander?). I give them an actual map. The chart is marked with unknown symbols - Ciphers (their Nobilite family). They get to make rolls to decipher the map. What they succeed at I unveil for them. What they fail at, I don't give them another chance to figure out until they raise that skill or have it interpreted by someone in the family with higher skill.

• Don't do too much homework. Be ready to wing stuff. If you use the Endeavor system, the players will practically write the encounters for you. It takes some getting used to. People with a D&D background sometimes have difficulty with this. They like maps and linear plots. Cut yourself loose.

Thanks guys. These are all great ideas and I will get to work on using them. My RT Player already has it out on what he wants to do and I've asked my players what goals they want their characters to accomplish. I think this will be a great game.