If your worried about diversity, you can allow each Rogue Trader to a second carear as a 'specialization' that they can also buy advances from. Though to be honest, even a Rogue Trader doesn't have to have the Rogue Trader carear. (Like in star wars, a jedi doen't have to take jedi...) And if they do have the Rogue Trader carear, they don't have to be a Rogue Trader - they could be a free captian or even the RT's Ship-Master.

In my playing group, the Rogue Trader was nominated and elected before the game started, much to the (soon to be) Rogue Trader's suprise. But yes, there are a lot of way to handle multiple people wanting to the Rogue Trader class.

True, you can a RT from the start, how ever i have learned from personal experiance that having multiple ships in the group does seem to help by no samll degree. this is particulary true if each rogue trader specializes in a particular role. example, my rogue trader has a ship built for combat, another has a raider thit bonuses to hit and run attacks. the third ship was a light crusier purposed for mining and had a commerce bridge( don't ask how).

What if nobody want to be RT ? We are about to start a game of RT and we are having issue deciding which one has to sacrifice himself and be a RT since nobody want to have that class. As a note have two noble born (they play two brothers).

Thaddius said:

I always wondered about this. Hopefully we will see ships smaller than a transport in the forthcomng supplements, like brigs and sloop Hulls. They would add I think a lot of flexibility...

No one wants to be the RT? EXCELLENT! You have the RT an NPC, and one that does not send thousands of troops down to do things. Make him super thrifty to the point of stingy, but make him stalwart and good to his crew. I wish I had this problem!

As for making everyone an RT, I do not think this would work. What I would do is make them all apprentices to a RT NPC, as listed above. They could even be "hostages" from rival houses who exchange such hostagest to guarantee treaties and agreements a la ancient China and Japan. Imagine a very powerful dynasty, to which these young heirs from rival houses are traded off to both learn and guarantee compliance with negotiated settlements. Eventually they would either return home, or get a ship of their own in the Expanse.

My thoughts on these situations...

In ship based games like Rogue Trader, Star Trek, or a tramp freighter focused Star Wars game character creation (and campaign design) has to be a group affair. The GM and the players need to work together to decide what "kind" of campaign is going to be run, what kind of experience it is going to be. It is a distinctly different affair from D&D character creation, where each player is creating a cool character and is internally focused on their own items and XP. The players don't meet together randomly in a tavern, they aren't adventuring together because they are friends or something. Rogue Trader is a player driven, group driven experience, and will benefit from being treated as such. It isn't so much the GM driving a campaign by coming up with goals and a campagin flavor as it is the players driving the campaign by deciding on flavor and pursuing goals. The GMs role is to provide context and reaction, not overarching plots, which will hopefully develop organically.

Your players (and you) need to meet together and decide what kind of campaign this is going to be: what kind of party dynamic they want, what kind of ship they are on, the groups goals, and the kind of adventures they want to partake in.

They need to decide on the flavor as a group. Here are some examples:

• Firefly: lower powered, old ship, surviving and thriving by the skin of their teeth, always out for the next con
• Corperate: focused on corperate intreague, trade arrangements, espionage, hostile takeovers, and legal loopholes.
• Star Trek: Bold explorers meeting new alien races, diplomatic situations, and crazy new problems of the week
• Dark Heresy: serving under a rogue trader, they do bidding rather than guide
• High powered: Each player is a scion/rogue trader/partial owner of a warrant, each with their own ship and army

If they come up with the game style together, as a group, and come up with their characters together, the problem will likely sort itself out, as well as give you valuable direction on how to run the game. They will elect one of their own as a captain, or decide they all want to be captains in their own right, or perhaps a council with group authority.

Finally, rember that classes aren't jobs. Into the Storm makes this VERY clear. You can let most any class be most any job. A RT would make an excellent first mate, a voidmaster an excellent ship commander, and an Arch-Militant a fantastic swashbuckler. Even if they ALL want to be captains they don't all have to take the RT class. An Arch-militant has a military style fleet, an explorator an archeo-tech ship, a missionary leads an Ecclesiarchy sponsored expedition, while an Astropath can be played as a Sanctioned Psyker Rogue Trader. Play around with it and don't feel overly restricted by the fine print of many of the rules.