The rules on Teleportariums in the RT rulebook span a whopping 2 paragraphs. Thus, I felt since they're given 3/4th of a page in the original RT, I should let you guys know how they originally functioned for that "authentic 40k feel". I have, of course, interpreted the rules into "modern" RT. If you have the original RT, they're on pages 125 and 128.

1. Line of Sight only. That is, you can't pick up an object from Hive A and drop it in Hive B. You have to beam it aboard, then beam it a second time.

2. Teleportarium beams can only penetrate 5 meters of solid material. Atmosphere counts, so the curvature of the planet and/or atmospheric effects could limit the Teleportarium's range. Planet to planet teleportation is not possible due to this.

3. 6 man-sized objects can be teleported at once from a single Teleportarium chamber. However, I'm not sure how many chambers are in an RT Teleportarium. I'm going with 10 per chamber, as this is a full squad and is just easier...

4. There is a base 15% chance that the object(s) transported will arrive on target. Yep, that's right! Roll d100. 16+ and the payload lands d6" in a random direction! For RT, pick the target location and automatically deviate 2d10 meters in a random direction. Make a Tech-Use Roll (you may want to limit this to characters with the appropriate background, Void Born or Tech Priests for example) and for each Level of Success the payload lands 3 meters closer to the target location.

5. To teleport BACK, the Teleportarium operator must lock on to a homing signal. Acceptable signals include the Teleporter Beacon (naturally), a Vox signal powerful enough to reach a ship in orbit, or a "Communicator". Please note that while WH40k:RT had 'Star Trek' style Communicators, they disappeared somewhere around the Book of the Astronomicon and technically don't exist anymore (Archeotech!).

The signal must be stationary for at least one turn or more until the Teleportarium operator successfully "locks-on" by making a Tech-Use roll with 3 levels of success. As long as the signal is stationary, the LoS's carry over to the next turn until 3 are achieved. All movable items within 3 meters of the signal are then teleported. Two or more levels of Failure, however, indicate a problem.....

1. Atomized! (Fate Point time!) That's the smell of pure awesome!

2. Protoplamic Goo! (Fate Point time!) Diarrhea, cha, cha, cha!

3. Everything comes back...wrong! Twisted limbs attached in the wrong places...sickening malformations! All attributes permanently reduced to 5.

4. Damaged random limb! Bust out the bone saw, it's amputation time.

5. Twisted flesh and horrific scarring! Reduce Fellowship by d10 Permanently.

6. If it's just one person, they're now a bag of heaving flesh. Unfortunately only their WS, BS and AGI are reduced to 0. Everything else stays the same and they are alive...unless someone mistakes them for a Minion of Nurgle, that is. If multiple people/critters are teleported, they're now one huge protoplasmic entity with the highest stats from each and at least one functioning limb from each person/creature. Players have a roll-off to see who gets to have the "new" creature for their Character....

6. Harmful weapons and/or creatures are trapped in a Power Field where automatic lasers/whatever can dispose of them. Grenades or other explosives will not harm the teleporter, but will affect all people who were teleported with it inside the Power Field. The exception is Vortex Grenades, which will put the hurt on your Teleportarium...and decks 7-19... permanently...

7. A Teleportarium has a maximum range of 100 Kilometers.

8. A Teleport Homer will allow the Teleportarium operator to lock onto it with only one LoS and the carrier of the Homer can select whether just he/she teleports or the normal "everything within 3 meters". I'm not sure how big a Teleport Homer is, but it's big enough that not everyone would feasibly carry one and I read somewhere it needs to be set up on a stand, like the Star Trek ones.

9. In 1987, the Teleportarium was the "standard" method of transporting troops to the ground or cargo from ship to ship. Of course, in 2009 it is invaluable Archeotech!

10. A Teleporter (Teleportarium, if you will) is rated "Technical Level (console use) 8" and the Teleport Homer is "Technical Level 7" if that means anything to you. Perhaps I'll research it sometime and post some more realistic methods for Tech-Use rolls.

11. According to BFG, Teleportariums will not function through operational Void Shields. I would also include Power Shields too.

4. There is a base 15% chance that the object(s) transported will arrive on target. Yep, that's right! Roll d100. 16+ and the payload lands d6" in a random direction! For RT, pick the target location and automatically deviate 2d10 meters in a random direction. Make a Tech-Use Roll (you may want to limit this to characters with the appropriate background, Void Born or Tech Priests for example) and for each Level of Success the payload lands 3 meters closer to the target location.

For this I would state "If the test fails by 5 or more degrees then roll on the mishap chart below"

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Not trying to be "that guy" here, but I think most would say that the original Rogue Trader does not contain that "authentic 40K feel", because most of the stuff in it has since long been abandoned.

Squats and Zoats are being dispatched to hunt you down. You'll never see them coming if you don't know what they are...

Varnias Tybalt said:

Some of us refuse to move on from the old 40K:RT because it was the coolest version of the game.

(and hadn't been simplified for the kiddies yet! )

I will say that the Original WH40K is indeed not the same feeling universe as 4th ed (which I have a copy of the core of, as well. I've 2 RT's...neither intact anymore... both spines disintegrated... now if only I could find them). And the guys at FFG seem to be trying to capture a bit of both with both the DH and RT lines... nifty tidbits here and there for us "Not yet Graybeards who picked up WH40K:RT in 1987..."

HappyDaze said:

Oh I know what they are, I just don't like them and I consider the decision of removing them from the setting to be a good move.

aramis said:

Fluffwise I have to say that I like the feeling of the 4th ed a lot better than the original Rogue Trader. It must be the stronger emphasis on the grimdark or something that does it for me, I don't know.

Ruleswise, Rogue Trader "worked", but not really for very large battles, which is why I like the 3rd and 4th editions best.

The 5th has nice core rules, but the Codex books have been way too over-simplified (and blatantly obvious to garner a younger demographic who "can't understand a Codex book with too many choices"). Pretty much every Codex released for 5th edition, aside from Imperial Guard have been extremely boring. Especially the most recent incarnation of Codex: Chaos Spacemarines.

The previous Chaos codex was really fun and you had access to a very extensive variety of flavours to give to your army. This was all taken away in the 5th edition. They can't even include decent daemons in their armies anymore.

So if you consider the transition from the original WH40K: Rogue Trader to the 2nd edition to be "too kid friendly", just check out the newest Codex books. It's enough to make you sick and bored of the game...

It's enough to make you sick and bored of the game...

Which is why us old coots still love to work the old stuff into RT. I was delighted when I saw the "Archeotech Laspistol"! I think FFG has done a great job of mixing the feel of the "old" and the "new" 40k. Alas, this is an RPG, which modern 40k is not. The old game had a definite RPG feel, although it lacked a Skill System, which is why there is a treasure trove of re-usable coolness in it's sacred, unbound pages.

Rick Priestly told me that the original plan was that you would 3-hole punch RT and put it into a binder. That way future updates, supplements and rules errata could be simply inserted into the correct place....They got the idea from Star Fleet Battles rulebook. So I asked, "Then why HARDBACK?!?" It was so funny the embarassed look on his face. Didn't pan out too well, eh?

But I like the old Teleporter rules. They add a sense of danger and strip my 16 year old players of their "gimme gimme" attitude toward over-using them Star Trek-Style. As my son said during their first Teleportarium "Mishap", "Ok, from now on, the Teleportarium is for Emergency Use Only!!!"

I find the original RT invaluable in describing the "Dark Age of Technology" to my younger players, who don't remember when TV had knobs and only 12 channels, or when Cell Phones were the size and weight of a brick... O-RT went into great detail on how technology worked in the 40k Universe, but seeing as it was written in 1987 it may be difficult to see how unintentionally brilliant and "Jules Verne" it was, unless you're over 35. My beard might not be grey, but my nosehairs are and I do unapologetically love the old RT!

...and the new RT. Hell, I've been waiting for this book for 20+ years. Finally I have an RPG I can use all the old RT stuff in...and a lot of it is posthumously cooler.

It hasn't been long-abandoned, it's Archeotech !

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Yeah as for the Teleportarium stuff, that bit about "The Teleportarium has a maximum range of 100 kilometers" doesn't sit well with me. Mainly because you can use a Teleportarium for Hit and Run attacks in the RPG without having to do a Pilot check (because you teleport onboard the enemy vessel), and last time I checked you can do a Hit and Run attack as long as the enemy vessel is within a range of five void units.

A void unit is described as quite capable of being several thousands of kilometers large, which means that a Teleportarium with a meagre range of just 100 kilometers would be completely useless for pretty much 99 percent of all boarding actions. In fact I have a hard time of seeing how you would even be able to send down a Squad of Space Marine Terminators from orbit with such a tiny range (which they frequently do).

I agree with the need of a homing beacon though to be able to teleport back. But it would be difficult to do it with just a vox, especially if you're aboard an enemy vessel wreaking havoc. Radio Waves will take some time to travel the distance of five void units, so if you would like to have any hope of a safe teleportation you'd have to transmit your present coordinates and then stand around and wait for several minutes for the home vessel to recieve your signal and attempt to teleport you back.

I envision teleported personel to carry a specialized homing beacon for the job, probably powered by an energy source the size of a heavy backpack which delivers a massive pulse signal to the home vessel that enables instantaneous lock-on for the Teleportariums cogitator systems. It would be the only way to be "beamed back" without having to suffer a huge time delay.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Radio waves travel at about 18 million kilometres per minute so I'm not sure about the whole taking minutes thing. I'd agree with the need for a homing signal but assume that most teleportariums come with a few as standard.

I like the rules originally posted although I find them a little harsh, I'd probably allow for an automatic success in limited circumstances and then require the teleportarium operator to make a Tech-Use roll to push beyond the automatic. My own observations are:

• If we allow teleporters to penetrate 5 to 10 metres of solid rock/metal/armour then we can happily allow that this allows most boarding actions by punching through the weak points of the hull. For dramatic usage we could just say that the operator adds a few metres onto the best location for beam out (say the doors to the docking bays)
• A range through Void of 50,000 km fits with the combat rules and makes a nice range for void-based senarios, it works out at a high orbit around an Earth-like object (a geo-stationary orbit is approximately 35,786km from the Earth's surface and 42,164km from the Earth's center)
• A range of a few hundred km through atmosphere would require a vessel to enter a Low Orbit over an Earth-like planet and probably bring the ship into range of ground cannons and planetary defences. I like this, I'd probably mention something about unpredictable atmospheric interference to square it with being able to teleport through 5 metres of rock from 50,000km away but not a few kilometres of whispy atmosphere from more than 100km away.
• Beacons (and strong vox signals) are good and I like the idea of making them a requirement for teleporting back.
• I'd probably allow three degrees of failure before really bad things happened on a poorly rolled teleporter signal, this is more in line with a few other failures in the skill list. Lower failures should be something along the lines of (degrees of failure × d100 metres of scatter in a random direction)
• Yeah, the squad thing sounds right. It's the kind of volume you can transport some serious cargo over a few hours from the surface but not instantly an army onto an enemy position from.
• Rather than instant death for higher degrees of failure how about some pretty heavy damage or insanity/corruption. I agree that using a teleporter (outside certain safe limits) should be very risky but a table which boils down to "roll a d6 to discover the manner of your grizly death" isn't as interesting as "Roll a d6 to determine exactly how this device leaves you a tortured but still breathing wreck" I'm thinking of things like "Ooops! we forgot to teleport your arm!" or "you capture a glimpse of the screaming maelstrom of the warp, gain 3d10 corruption" or "Your brain is slightly scrambled from the teleportation, perhaps some bits weren't put together right afterwards, gain 3d10 insanity" or... well you get the idea

Teleportarium

Teleportariums require a successful Tech Use(+10) roll to work successfully. A failure on this roll will result in the transport being successful, but the final destination of the travellers will 1d10 + 1d10 per degree of failure meters from the intended location. Should the Tech Use roll be a critical failure, however, a malfunction or a warp disturbance causes something disturbing to occur:

Teleportarium Mishaps

Roll 1d10 and apply the result from this table

1 - Hmm, nothing happened. The transporter appears to be off-line, and half of a critical component appears to have vanished. The teleportarium is effectively destroyed until it can be repaired.

2-3 - It's going to blow! The teleporter sparks, fizzes, makes a rising humm and then explodes. Any crew in the Teleportarium must make a successful Dodge(+0) test or take 1d10+5R wounds to the torso. Any cargo being transported is destroyed. The teleportarium is destroyed, though it may be repaired.

4-5 - Brief excursion. All the intended teleportees disappear as expected, but re-appear moment later having aged 1d10 years. Each teleportee gains 1d10 insanity and 1d10 corruption points having been caught in a warp eddie for what seems like a lifetime. They will probably choose never to talk of the things they saw.

6-7 - Did anyone bring a map? Forces unknown (or just incompetence) have steered your passage far from its intended destination. At the GMs discretion the party can be relocated anywhere and anywhen at all. If the GM can't think of anywhere interesting, the party find that they are1d100km from their intended destination - not great if you are beaming on to a starship.

8-9 - Where am I? You aren't sure what gave you the idea that you had a teleportarium, but you'd better snap out of it and find a way to deal with the current situation before it gets out of hand. All teleportees gain 1d10 insanity points and find themselves standing in a large open space within the starship. The teleportarium has erased itself from reality - the ship no longer has a teleportarium and anyone within it at the time has no memory of it ever existing.

0 - Lost forever All teleportees must make a Willpower(+0) test, or be lost in the warp for all time - that's way worse than dead. If successful, gain 1d10 corruption points as malevolent minds try to tear you from your path. On the bright side, the teleport was pin-point accurate.

Teleport Homing Beacon

This device contains the scanners and cogitators required to allow Teleportariums to safely beam subjects from a remote location to the Teleportarium. Most Teleportariums, being ancient Archeotech devices, have a means to construct beacons specific to the frequencies and warp-phase signatures that the specific transport uses. The beacon weighs in at 10kg, and has power for 24 hours continuous use. As it's final act in a location, the beacon can include itself in the transport.

The device requires 5 rounds to deploy, and a Tech Use (-30) check to configure correctly, this process is a Full Round action. Once the system is deployed, the checks can be made continuously round after round until the beacon reports ready. At this point, teleportation can occur immediately. The beacon allows the teleportation of anyone within 10m.

Beaming to a beacon

Teleport Homing Beacons can also be used to establish a very firm lock on a location. When beaming to a location with an active beacon from your Teleportarium there is no need to make a Tech Use check to initiate the beam-down. The process succeeds and is centered directly on the beacon.

I agree. 100km is too short. Of course O-RT didn't have "Void Units". But the idea was (for planetary landings) that the ship needed to be in low-orbit almost directly over the target area. Personally, I agree this doesn't work well for Hit'N'Run and I plan to give my players a bit more flexibility.

Also, the mishap chart is pretty harsh as there are multiple entries (while extremely entertaining in WH40K-RT...) require a Fate Point, so it's kind of redundant. I like the "Hmm...nothing happened" entry!