Taking a regiment as an option

By player359820, in Rogue Trader

Posted at

I would suggest you send the book back then, as you seem adamant that you aren't going to like it, that it's "weak sauce", or whatever. You aren't going to enjoy it because you don't want to. If you aren't even going to try to accept the setting, you aren't going to enjoy playing in it, which invalidates the point in your complaining here, as nothing we say is gonna change your mind.

RT is an awesomely fun game, if you have the right group for it. Seems like you don't, so you'd be better off spending your time playing something you will enjoy. Not all games are for everyone.

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calibur1 said:

Nobody thinks that giving the PCs resources like that is a total buzzkill to any game? I’m not understanding what Rogue Trader wants to be? I believe that the scale of the game is way too high for PCs. Why would you give them power like that with the only motivation behind it is greed and pride? Assuming that the RT is successful, what does a vain, megalomaniac billionaire do with more power and money? Buy a bigger ship? Buy a fleet of ships? Become a supervillian?

Yes.

Really, I mean it. Look at the Motivations section of the Origin Path. They are, strange as it may seem, the reasons that a PC is willing to put his own life on the line for the sake of wealth and power, though they are only a small selection of the conceivable possibilities.

Also bear in mind that the starting characters are still very much at the starts of their careers - a Rogue Trader at that point is certainly wealthy and powerful, but compared to many or even most Rogue Traders, he's still a small fish in an extremely large ocean. A Rogue Trader is at the point where he's just inherited his Warrant of Trade and setting forth into unexplored regions of space; there are still worlds to exploit, unimaginable riches to obtain, and legends to make. It's not enough to be comfortably successful - if that was all that was desired, the Rogue Trader would never have bothered leaving home.

Rogue Traders and the men and women that accompany them (that is, the group of Player Characters) are a rare breed by any stretch of the imagination. The willingness to face unspeakable horrors for the chance to become incredibly wealthy, powerful and famous is something that few have, and the reasons for that willingness, the motivations behind it, differ for each person. Consequently, it can't so easily be pinned down, because it is an individual matter.

Posted at

calibur1 said:

Nobody thinks that giving the PCs resources like that is a total buzzkill to any game? I’m not understanding what Rogue Trader wants to be? I believe that the scale of the game is way too high for PCs. Why would you give them power like that with the only motivation behind it is greed and pride? Assuming that the RT is successful, what does a vain, megalomaniac billionaire do with more power and money? Buy a bigger ship? Buy a fleet of ships? Become a supervillian? When does the character say, “OK, I have enough wealth and power I can retire?” Most rpgs end when the PCs can afford their own fleet of ships and personal trained armies. Why?

The same reason that people in Vegas keep going when they are up thirty grand at the craps table, they are greedy and believe their luck will never run out. Rogue Traders are, by their definition, privateers, they are greedy and want fame. Most of them come from noble well off families that, if they thought the way you are describing, would just try and become planetary governors. Instead they choose the high flying, swashbuckling lifestyle of a Rogue Trader, they want the money, infamy, front line fighting and adrenaline they wouldn't get anywhere else. Honestly, these guys are playing for stake like having whole subsectors named after them... getting rich and going home just plain isn't their style.

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calibur1 said:

Maybe this was mentioned or not, but isn’t this discussion defeating the purpose of Rogue Trader? I’ve been told over and over and over again that the proper way to play this game is for the RT, and his senior officers, to swing into the hordes of the enemy with guns a blazing and a cutlass between his teeth like swashbucklers. If not, the incredibly incompetent crew will lose faith, accuse their superiors of cowardice, mutiny, desert, cry, and poo themselves. Now you’re discussing how Rogue Traders might do something logical and crew a contingent of highly trained and equipped fighting troops? You dare to apply logic to a game that the consensus argues that you can’t? How presumptuous of you! Your collector’s editions should be stripped from you and your profit margins slashed! Like I’ve been told; you obviously have no idea how this game is suppose to be played! Maybe you should be sitting in your battle bridges, filling out paperwork, and playing Settlers of Catan?

Compare with what I wrote on the first page:

"Also you have to make a special effort to not call the cavalry to save your ass every time you think you should have broght something better than a stub gun to a fight. You say you want the arch militant to be in command of the troops rather than say the trader. Well you either have him heroically lead from the front with four trusted veterans ( a IG command squad) to complete missions he cant trust the grunts to do, leaving the actual deployment to the regiments second in command. All you have him sit on the ship issuing orders and planning stuff to make sure the whole military action without a hitch. What you cant do is just park a thousand men in front of the explorators, just because you want to intimidate some narco trader, and youve failed a intimidate percentile test. Or maybe you can, but if youre gonna be like that then the GM has every right to have them fall for a genestealer ambush planned by the narco trader who turns out to be a nid hybrid."

This game is heavily dependant on the games master to balance out.As the Rogue trader gets more and more powerfull so it would be not unusual for him bigger and bigger challenges. Also what is this consensus you are talking about? Even from the earliest days of Rogue Trader in the 40K setting they had armies behind them to conquer worlds. Hell thats the rogue traders MAIN point.The oldest charter go back to when the emperor needed enterprising men to conquer regions of the galaxy his great crusade couldnt be bothered with or had to overlook. To explore and conquer for the imperium.Now take a warrant holder whos main ambition is to conquer new worlds. Hes hardly going to conquer a lost human hive world of billions of well armed men with a frigate, his mates and 23000 crew most who have to work 24 hours a day just to keep the ship void worthy. Hell have a job to conquer even a paticulary stubbon feral world without trained troops.

The endevours can be catagorised in the following subheadings.

TRADE

CRIMINAL

CREED

MILITARY

EXPLORATION

On the whole how you confgure your spaceship determines what you rogue trader is more intrested. I like Hernando Cortez type Imperial conquests, so I pump for Miitary and exploration.

Scoundrel han solo/Firefly types will prefer Crminal/Trade. It depends on what you want. But bear in mind this. If youre pumping for the Trading/Criminal career as you get more powerfull you may not have a regiment behind you, but you might have informants, paid officials, hidden warehouses on planets, a nice holding on port wander to impress the guests to get a trade deal going etc...Personally, keeping tags on trade and merchandise leaves me cold. Il rather just conquer worlds..but each to their own. The game is all about ambition and growing till your dynasty befalls a catastrophe due to over ambition but then you start again from scratch...

Posted at

calibur1 said:

Nobody thinks that giving the PCs resources like that is a total buzzkill to any game? I’m not understanding what Rogue Trader wants to be? I believe that the scale of the game is way too high for PCs. Why would you give them power like that with the only motivation behind it is greed and pride? Assuming that the RT is successful, what does a vain, megalomaniac billionaire do with more power and money? Buy a bigger ship? Buy a fleet of ships? Become a supervillian? When does the character say, “OK, I have enough wealth and power I can retire?” Most rpgs end when the PCs can afford their own fleet of ships and personal trained armies. Why? Because the challenge is over. Now you’re crossing over from an rpg to a wargame. At least in rpgs like Star Wars, Serenity, and Traveller there is room to “go up”, but in Rogue Trader it’s assumed you’re already at the top. I’m not saying that’s a bad game, but it certainly is the odd one.

"Challenge over"?

It's never gonna be over. There will always be someone of greater wealth and greater strength than you.

So no, I don't see it as a "total buzzkill" giving the PC's resources like that from the start. In fact, im glad it does, because that means the players can focus more on cool character- and story development rather than being distracted by getting as much "cool lewtz" as possible, as characters of lower power levels tend to be extremely concerned about.

It's nothing odd about that. It's just an RPG situated on a different scale than usual. That doesn't make it into a wargame, nor a "total buzzkil". It's just a new way of thinking things through...

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calibur1 said:

I’m also not buying the crew breaking down into tears and deserting, because the RT rather count his baubles in the royal jacuzzi than personally setting foot on a dunghole in the middle nowhere to explore. I don’t believe that even 1% of a crew of 20,000 would know who the RT was if they accidently bumped into him. At best they would mistake him for a noble passenger or senior officer. The “story” told back at port is what the RT and his officers decide it to be, everything else is just rumor by disgruntled crew who no one of importance would listen to anyway because they’re nothing more than faceless common scum. And that is coming from the setting itself. I’m not making that assumption.

In a ship with a crew of more than 20.000 people, none of which are any sort of professional military folk, run by a couple of "megalomanic billionaires" who aren't professional military types either, the risk of mutiny is going to be extremely high.

Rogue Trader vessels have more in common with a pirate ship than most people think. Because once the **** hits the fan, it's going to bottle down to how much the crew respect it's captain. ANd you can bet your last penny on that his reputation aboard the vessel will travel, FAST. I mean we're talking about a micro-community, stuck in a spaceship with no communication of the outside world. Gossip is going to be an extremely popular pass time for these people, so whatever the Rogue Trader and his explorers ever do aboard or away from the vessel, the news will spread, from bilge to bridge. Heck there's even an extended action in the starship combat rules that use this predisposition of gossip spreading to the Rogue Trader's favor called "Disinformation".

Of course, there's always gonna be disgruntled crew members (who have more anger issues with the local ships enforcers beating them with sticks rather than the ruling Rogue Trader), but all it takes is a slip in respect towards the Rogue Trader and a full blown case of mutiny will ensue. In a place like the Koronus Expanse, getting away with mutiny would be extremely easy. There is next to no Imperial control over that sector at all, because it is still pretty much uncharted territory. There are plenty of uncontrolled ports where officials don't ask questions, and there's pretty much no one caring about another persons warrant of trade, or whose the "real owner" of a particular vessel. So if the morale aboard any vessel suffer just a little, mutiny will be a very real possibility. The only thing you can do to keep the risk of mutiny down, is to establish respect. Both by cracking down on potential mutineers, and by inspiring the people serving you by not acting like a self-absorbed coward and just send thousands to their deaths only because "you don't feel like" going down yourself and instead choose to "count precious baubles in your jacuzzi" instead.

Like you said yourself, most of the crew are going to consist of faceless common scum. That's a whole lot of scum working just one deck below who are all just itching to steal the leader position away from you if you ever show signs of weakness.

calibur1 said:

In social situations where diplomacy, etiquette and negotiations are necessary the RT and his entourage should be better off handling the situation rather than an army of 10,000 troops. But that takes the fun out of carrying boltguns and powered armor. I ran into this same problem with the Star Trek rpg by FASA. What’s acceptable for movies, tv and novels doesn’t necessarily work in rpgs. PCs never follow scripts, and this terrible thing called “logic” has a habit of creeping into games. Realistically speaking, it wasn’t logical for the senior officers (PCs) to be taking unnecessary risks, but thinking logically undermined the spirit of the game. Claiming that is just the way it is because the setting dictates it so isn’t good enough and has never worked out for me in the long haul.

I finally received my copy of Rogue Trader, and I will be introducing my players to it with Forsaken Bounty over the Thanksgiving holiday. However, my players are like sharks when it comes to weak sauce, so I’m not keeping my hopes up too high.

Read the book through, and apply the very logical philosophy presented to you here, and Im sure that no manner of "sharkish logic " on your player's part will ever clash with the "spirit" of the game.

They can try to rationalize all they want, if they don't take these so called "unecessary risks" their careers as Explorers of the void will be cut very short. A Rogue Trader who can't establish respect and inspire his crew will be a dead Rogue Trader rather quick. These are not the "Starfleet" of Star Trek where all sailors have to follow orders because it is protocol to do so, and the ranking officers can easily send them to their deaths if they don't have the balls to check things out themselves. This is the grimdark forty-first millenium, where the only inclination of any crew member to follow orders depends on who indoctrinated that crew member has gotten to respect his superior officers.