Hi, I have been posting here now and then, but I am trying to set up a RT game and trying my hand at GM-ing it. I have previously run a 1st Edition Dark Heresy game and played in a Rogue Trader game, so I think I have some idea of what I am doing, but there is a lot of stuff I am not sure about.

For starters, one of the players seems interested in playing an Astropath. Cool. He wants to make him a sniper of sorts, using divination for called shots with a heavy weapon. That's...hmm. Okay, I spent some time reading up the divination powers, and here is my first sticking point. Several of them do almost the same thing. In Harm's way, Walking the Path, and Blessed by the Emperor are nearly identical, except the first cannot be sustained, and the third has a wider range. None of them require learning the other first, so they are not "upgrades". Am I reading it right and is this how you are playing it in your games?

Also, what techniques do you use to limit acquisitions? The party seems to be going for a fairly rich dynasty (starting profit factor around 60), and I expect they will want to use it every way they can . In a game I played we were limited to one roll per player per stay in a station, which felt a bit artificial at times but seemed to work overall. Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance for the help .

My group has essentially scrapped the various distinct powers and instead allows Psykers to pick up schools or affinities, and then simply describe what they want to do narratively. For psy attacks, we have several weapon profiles set up, and each school gets a selection of them, with certain tweaks (things like secondary effects and such).

For an Astropath Sniper, we'd do something like have him buy the Divination pack and then describe how he uses his powers to aim. Then, he hopes he doesn't run into any daemons, nulls, or illuminati (the former will corrupt his soul when he tries to shoot them, the latter two are invisible to him).

Ok, what focus tests do you use for Biomancy and Piromancy?

I recommend a sit-down with the players to discover what kind of game they intend to play. If they aren't the types that land in the first wave, then an Astropath focusing on becoming a sniper might be spending a lot of XP on situations that won't happen very often. Find out what people want to do inside the game, then design your sandbox. Give them some pre-game hints and then let them draw up their characters. Having people draw characters first might pigeonhole what you can draw up and if the person doing the lion's share of the work isn't having fun the game won't last long.

Assuming you're playing by the rules, then a starting PF of 60 means the starting ship is a raider or transport, and a scantily-equipped one at that. I wouldn't be limiting their acquisitions at all. All the personal equipment in the world isn't going to help them if they have a staring contest with a cruiser-equipped dynasty.

Sounds like you have an experienced party. You should get all your house rules together first, so your players know ahead of time what RAW cheese won't be flying.

Those are my suggestions.

I recommend a sit-down with the players to discover what kind of game they intend to play. If they aren't the types that land in the first wave, then an Astropath focusing on becoming a sniper might be spending a lot of XP on situations that won't happen very often. Find out what people want to do inside the game, then design your sandbox. Give them some pre-game hints and then let them draw up their characters. Having people draw characters first might pigeonhole what you can draw up and if the person doing the lion's share of the work isn't having fun the game won't last long.

Assuming you're playing by the rules, then a starting PF of 60 means the starting ship is a raider or transport, and a scantily-equipped one at that. I wouldn't be limiting their acquisitions at all. All the personal equipment in the world isn't going to help them if they have a staring contest with a cruiser-equipped dynasty.

Sounds like you have an experienced party. You should get all your house rules together first, so your players know ahead of time what RAW cheese won't be flying.

Those are my suggestions.

I have to agree you got to pre-game. But really, ask your people what they want the most, and give it to them in unexpected ways. How much profit factor to start, that should depend on you the GM because profit factor is your biggest number to watch in terms of game length; 2nd only to number of current wounds.

Your players can work up origin paths that make sense and give credibility to the point- why have you banded together in the first place? Pick the rogue trader yourself, or get a volunteer in my opinion.

Now if they really fear the emperor they would best serve him doing things like colonization, trade....exploration, and conquest. Their ship is going to carry out the mission/endeavor with them and get upgraded or replaced so you either start small or think up some complication. If their starting ship is not a symbol of status to them don't worry about it - they can still get rich sailing around the 'Expanse in a Mass-Conveyor - Besides what rogue trader didn't have 2 or 3 types of ships in his flotilla. I got a lot of enjoyment making the ship sheets for my group because it saved time and made the seizure of a new ship that much more interesting.

Create your sandbox! Take a leaf from this book and that to structure your campaign. Making stuff up on your own is ten times better than any warpstorm trilogy.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about RT stuff I am just so committed to my group though.

Well, we set up 3 of the characters so far. We have a dynasty child rogue trader who never expected to inherit the warrant and busied herself in the pursuits of the idle rich (including a fair bit more xenology than generally appropriate), a former military seneschal who seems a bit too obsessed with keeping enemies far away from him (and a player who takes pains to max his balistic skill) and a relatively gruff and martial missionary. So far, it looks like a decent start, but I need to pressure the players for more backstory.The seneschal insists that his character saved the Trader by killing the previous seneschal who was trying to usurp her, and got recruited as a result. We will see how that gets... modified by the RT trader. I am expecting a chirurgeon techpriest and one other character.

My biggest issue mechanicallzy is that the Rogue Trader rolled abysmally for wounds and starts with 7 (2x3+1)... I think it may be a good idea to remind the player that sound constitution is a very good idea. Other than that, the player of the RT seems to want a bit of everything, one of the other players there is new to 40k and doesn't seem to have any preferences (but seems to have a thing for making mechanically optimized characters and doing whatever he feels with them) and the rest have not given me a clearer idea of what sort of a game they want, so I will prod them a bit more on the topic.