Hello

New GM here stepping up to the plate and attempting to run a game.

I have run into a bit of a snag and I wanted to know how experienced GM's handle this.

I use that lovely map of the Koronus sector to help my players conceptualize where they are and such

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/3/30/Koronus_Expanse_of_the_Halo_Stars.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130414195550

However I am not sure how to properly handle the issue when they go "I want to go from here to here".

How do I handle this? I have tried asking my current Mentor, but he wasn't much help in getting me to understand.

Do I take distance in as a factor when or dont I ? If I do how do I take it in as a factor?

How do you handle the issue of the player pointing and going "I want to go there!". Then transferring that into game mechanics.

Any help would be much appreciated.

EDIT: To Further expand on this. There is a lot of "At GM's Discretion" when you try to follow the steps of warp travel in the core rulebook. That doesn't really help a guy without experience. And to further confuse the subject, I feel that it is fairly poorly presented in the core rulebook. If anyone could go through the steps they would go through when making the players go through a warp route it would be most appreciated.

In the Navis Primer sourcebook you can find the warp travel described in detail, including examples for transit times, accessibility to systems, etc.

If you don't have access to it, then here is a very rough guide (based on what i think and what I can remember from the book):

To "well" explored areas like the Winterscale realm, your players should have relatively easy access. Warp routes are normally well established, low risk compared to the rest of the Expanse. Navigator maps are more or less accessible for this region, but IMO they shouldn't be a must have to travel here. If I remember correctly to Navis Primer, no route should take longer than 15-30 days (default time, modified by the Navigator's rolls) in warp in this area.

As you travel deeper in the expanse, regions are less known. Warp routes get more shaky, uncertain. You can say to your players that to travel to this and this area, you first need to have a map, otherwise the chances are you'll get lost. You can introduce bonuses or penalties to the acquisition test to find a map, depending on the remoteness of the system. Or you can make a whole endeavour for the players when they try to get their hands on a map: doing favors, stealing, killing or etc.
Travel times are from 30-60 days in warp by default, however (even though real space distance does not necessarily have to do anything with warp travel times) some of the far regions like parts in Rifts of Hectacon or Heathen Stars can take 150 days, and there might not be direct routes from Footfall, so they'll have to make 2-3 jumps.

Of course navigating in less explored regions or more turbulent areas in warp are more difficult, you can give some penalties to navigation tests when you feel the need.

There is an "AutoNav" .exe out there somewhere which I find fantastically useful.

if there isn't a PC navigator, gloss over it, make one dice roll. its unimportant.

if there is one, then learn the simplified way to do things, make him feel important.

make the warp one of the campaign adversaries they must often over come

IMHO the Navis Primer adds little to the game.

So much of it depends on the flavor of the campaign and the nature of the ship your RT is using.

From time to time your campaign might call for a scripted event to occur during warp transit, in which case you can probably gloss over most of the rest of the process and jump straight to the interesting bit (adapted according to the ship and PC capabilities/actions - if you have a tricked-out ship and a l33t PC Navigator, you might need to put a lot more work into explaining just how the bad stuff happened despite the players' precautions).

Warp transit is also a great way to add random encounters, if your group likes them. It takes the place of road travel in a DnD setting, and random encounters can range anywhere from passing a space-hulk in the warp, to getting hit by Raiders, to a malfunction in the Geller Field, to a Hive Fleet Splinter crossing the ship's path.

As for logistical bits, remember that the warp is crazy and unpredictable at best. Even a well-known "stable" transit lane that has a lot of traffic can have random occurances. A ship might arrive at its destination before it left its port of origin, or it might arrive a century later than planned, or it might arrive on the wrong side of the galaxy, or any number of other weirdnesses could occur. If it serves the plot and the players are on board, then you can use warp transit for any number of fun and interesting complications.

Sort of a dumb set of questions, but can you be attacked in the warp? I suppose it isn't hyperspace, or ST "warp travel", where you are cheating lightspeed, but I wasn't sure you, and enemies, could square off in the warp, like daemons and you might. The second, does 40K have the equivalent of grav-well generators? Again, I know that it isn't quite the same variety of travel, but gravity fields do seem to play some parts in it (you can't jump to the warp near worlds, for instance), so could someone, say the AdMech, or a group of the aforementioned raiders, use some sort of artificial gravity well generator to pull unsuspecting ships out of the warp, and assault them? I know that grav weapons are a thing, but other than Necrons, I'm not sure of anyone who might be able to do that (my brain isn't remembering examples, if I've priorly read them), and I'm only giving it to the Necrons because I can see them, with their High Science, non-warp tech doing it, to fight those who CAN use the warp; I actually don't KNOW if they can, either.

Alright. I house-ruled the Warp Travel rules quite a lot - I found the Navis Primer rules to be a little excessive when it comes to dice rolling. I'll tell you how I do it and you can ignore it or not at your leisure.
I find it amazing to have an actual map and then let the Navigator plot the route and make note of the time each jump took and the problems encountered etc.

Estimate the travel time based on the distance. I do 50ly = 25 days (I know in Universe that's quite slow but then Navigator skill comes into play)
Navigator rolls (at the start of a jump) to see how well he'd plot the route. For each degree of success, remove 10 days and the reverse is true for degrees of failure. If he rolls a natural 1, they go back in time and/or arrive instantly at your discretion. F

or each 10 days of journey, roll a D10 and see if there's a warp encounter (Modifiers change based on the warp route. A well travelled route would have less chances of warp encounters etc.)
If the Navigator rolled a failure on plotting the route then have them hit a warp storm/squall/eddy at your discretion (which would mean loads of potential warp encounters).

I find that this streamlines things and yet keeps Warp Travel sufficiently scary for your players.

In my current Campaign I've had them hit two Warp Storms, one of which ended up killing a few thousand of their crew and the second ended up killing their Navigator (possession). Both times they thought it was game over but they came through by the skin of their teeth.