This is a short account of my Rogue Trader game that was run on Saturday, November 28th. I recently received my copy of the book, and I introduced my players to the game through the Forsaken Bounty introductory adventure. We are all aware of the 40K universe. None of us have read any of the novels or played the table-top wargame, but we are familiar with the cool lines of miniatures. We have also played Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (1st and 2nd editions) and some Dark Heresy.

*****WARNING!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!*****

If you are a player who is, or is going to, play through this adventure, you should stop reading now, or certain surprises might be ruined for you.

I have five players, so all of the premade PCs and bonus additional PCs were used. As to keep with the spirit of the game I read the introduction on page two of the adventure, verbatim, making sure they knew exactly what a Rogue Trader is. We were all set to go… well… not exactly…

The first sign of trouble began with the first narrative explaining the endeavor. My players are use to playing games like Call of Cthulhu and WFRP, so the fact that “the Rogue Trader himself must be the first to set foot upon the derelict vessel” immediately rose red flags of suspicion. I reassured them that this sort of thing was normal for a RT, and then I went back and reiterated the setting of 40K and what kind of characters they were and the resources at their disposal. This was not new to them. They have played Dark Heresy before. Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing?

Surprisingly they arrived at the decision of crewing a guncutter packed with an armed work party and going over to the Emperor’s Bounty themselves. This was unlike them, but I thought that maybe they “got” the spirit of the game. Not all of the PCs were on board with this idea. The missionary and seneschal stayed behind to monitor things from the bridge while the RT, arch-militant and void-master went over. The VM successfully piloted the guncutter himself. Everything was still fine until they docked. The RT was the first to set foot upon the Emperor’s Bounty… and then stepped back onto the guncutter and ordered the AM to take the armed work party and clear the ship. The RT and VM left them there and returned to the Sovereign Venture.

There was no tom-foolery about it. The mission was planned out very precisely and technically. The AM would clear out the ship of any hostiles. Once the vessel was secure, then the seneschal would go over with another work party of technicians and begin salvaging. The VM would handle transportation. The RT would oversee the operation from the bridge, and player playing the missionary would pick up the pizza, because he had no idea why a missionary would be brought on a mission like this. That seemed like the plan until the AM reached the bridge.

The AM had a total of 30 armed crew. He split them up into three groups of ten, taking one group with him to the bridge. Even with the use of Fate Points, the arch-militant only prolonged his death, trapped in an airless corridor with warp puppets. Everyone is killed, and nobody aboard the Sovereign Venture knows about it. Assuming a communications failure, the RT sends over the seneschal with the technicians. They find the airlock locked this time, but I allow the seneschal to use his skills to override the security. Waiting on the other side of the door, however, is a horde of warp puppets. They kill the seneschal, VM, and the 30 technicians crowded helplessly in the guncutter’s cargo hold. With the use of a Fate Point the void-master is able to get a brief warning back to the Sovereign Venture. The missionary declares that the Emperor’s Bounty is a blasphemous hell-hole that must be purged, and the RT agrees. I interrupt at this point and restated that the whole point of this was the endeavor and profit factor. I was told to go f**k myself, and then the RT ordered the “zombie ship” blasted into so many small pieces.

During post-game wrap-up there were definite questions that I had to ask:

1. Why did you split up the party in the beginning?
Answer: It didn’t seem natural not to. If it weren’t for the clause in the contract, I wouldn’t have sent any of us over there. I would have packed that hulk with transport after transport of armed crew, but you killed everyone before I got back to my ship.

2. Why didn’t you all go over after you lost communication?
Answer: For the same reason. Why get bent out of shape over what probably is a broken communicator? You said that things work like crap in 40K. Why shouldn’t we think otherwise? Would you rather we meta-game?

3. If we were to continue this scenario, you would have returned to port in disgrace. Your crew would have been ashamed of you, and you would have lost profit. What would you have done to change things?
Answer: ?... ?... <estranged looks> ?... We lost 3 PCs! I don’t give a rat’s ass what the NPCs think! I play a game for me, not for the NPCs. Do you really think we care? NPCs are plot devices, nothing more!

4. Finally, what did you think of the game?
Answer: It was ok. The scenario played like a classic sci-fi horror movie, and that was cool. It was a hell of a lot better than the Dark Heresy demo! I don’t know about running this as a campaign? I don’t think the setting and our play style mesh very well? The setting’s presence is much more in your face than it was in Dark Heresy.

Well, that was it. We haven’t decided if we’re going to try this again. I was thinking that maybe if they made their own characters, and I ran them through the adventure in the book, that it might seem more personal to them? They might “get it” then? I don’t know? What do you think?

Hmmmm I don't think they 'get it'

Maybe try and impress upon them that Rogue Trader is like Pirates of the Caribbean, a 60's heist movie, Indiana Jones and Cowboy Bebop all rolled into one

Then add a dash of Lovecraftian horror... And set to simmer.

Personally i found the written adventures restrictive, and it looks like your players are somewhat of the same mind.

I would suggest starting with something of a more freeform nature. The Rogue Trader's flagship is in orbit around a planet, ships are half-way down, loaded with three regiments of mercenaries, the macrocannon batteries are firing on landing zones to soften them up, a warp emergence of some unknown number of ships is happening at the system edge.

Then go. You don't do any work other than keep up with the player's brains. When they ask for info, ask them what the PC presently thinks the answer is, and why. Award 50xp for each good fact the players establish about recent history through play. "Good" goes by popular acclaim. If someone comes up with a good lead-in to a flash-back that explains some crucial point, then interrupt current events and do a scene of flashback. By the end of the first session, you should have the seed of a good campaign, based around what they want to do, or have done.

Can I ask you change the title of this thread. I was planning on running that adventure, but this thread gives away the badguys somewhat, and my players visit this forum.

Funny write up, sounds like typical players reactions to coming up against a railroad situation to me. ;-)

I'm 9 sessions into my campaign, and in today's game the pcs are finally reaching their ship at high anchor above Spectoris, they are going to do a 3 part adventure (probably taking 3 sessions) revolving around setting up a trade route inside Calixis space, but I have already laid a lot of ground work in preparation for playing Forsaken Bounty thereafter. The pc's have learnt that the Bounty was one of his dynasty's flotilla (a Sword Class Frigate), that mutineed after the death of the previous Rogue Trader, and they have learnt it ended up in the Battlefield ... so they have a personal interest in the ship ... in that in theory it already actually legally belongs to them.

I'm not planning on using that clumsy 'first man to set foot' nonsense.

Here's a bit of fluff I wrote setting up Forsaken Bounty and it's sequel, that they found beside the ruined corpse of a former Ship Master of their Dynasty Flotilla who they had to kill on Scintilla in Adventure 6;

++ Danfries's Tale - The Fate of the Fortuna ++
I lay out my confession here before I am unable to discern the truth of what passed after we broke our compact with the House of Rakespur, from the black nightmares that plague me now both night and day. My mind becomes ever more enmeshed in the maze, or rather the Labyrinth, which consumes me. A maze you see only confuses and misdirects, it is constructed with that intention, to puzzle those who walk it's ways, to baffle them with myriad choices of direction ... a labyrinth may seem so too, but unlike a maze, a labyrinth by it's nature in fact has an inevitable ending, it is designed to trick that is true, to give a false impression of choice, but it is ultimately built to bring it's victims to it's centre, it's heart. A maze is an honest puzzle, a labyrinth is a lie.
Janvers is here with me tonight, he is eager for me to start, to tell the tale. I fear his visits. He is in a bad way. The blood drips from him. He tells me that it's cold where he is. That Hyort won't let Janvers and the others rest, that he's trying to get back, back to that prison system, that trap, that snare. I ignore him now, he is dead after all, he should expect the living to shun him. I am living at least, I have that over him. Small comfort. **** Rakespur, we should have listened to him. His warnings were right. **** him still, for taking us there in the first place.
So then, the life and times, the rise and fall, of Captain Barquin Danfries, Vassal-Baron of the Sinophian Fisheries of Mandasteen, Lord-Commander of the Rakespur Frigate Fortuna , mutineer and desserter. Oathbreaker and thief. Heretic and damned soul. Fast joining the ranks of the insane.
I was born into my role in life, it was inevitable from the moment I was spat from my mother's ****. We Danfries's have served the House of Rakespur for a thousand years or more, we have shared in their victories, their wealth, their struggles and travails. My father and his before him, and so on back into the dim past, all sat at the command throne of the Fortuna in their time, as was our inheritance and duty. In the past the Liege-line of Danfries was based on that ship.
I personally came into my position as Lord-Commander of the Fortuna twenty four years ago, in the year 790. My father had fallen in honour that year and been buried in space out in the Expanse, I never learnt exactly how or where he was killed, for I was back on Sinophia visiting my family at the time. Lord Mazarin swore the flotilla to silence on the matter, but I heard whispers that father had been killed while exploring one of Mazarin's damned ruins. I never forgave Mazarin Rakespur for that, for leading my father to a secret death in a xeno-dungeon on some dead world, then for burying him as if ashamed before returning to the Sector.
Upon assuming my patrimonal position at the throne of the Fortuna Mazarin took me aside, he told me tales of how we were about a mission to save the Imperium. He raved and ranted about gods and daemons, about dark star beings and ancient races of light and dark.
I thought him a fool then and worse; a madman. No better than that insane buffoon Brail, who plays his violin through his battles and keeps a council of mad prophets and cranks with him at all times. Or indeed that murderous psychopath Faulkes, who was clearly twisted into a broken shell of a man by the Primuls during his years of imprisonment by them.
For twenty years I served him without question or complaint though, in my defence, despite what came later I was loyal to the crazy bastard through war and Warp-storm, through alien hell-worlds, ruins, and pitched space battles. When the flotilla was wracked by a justifiable mutiny, that spread across all our ships, I stood at his side, despite sympathising with the essentially pious and Emperor-fearing sentiments and aims of the mutineers.
I tried to steer him away from his damned Accord, his foul dalliances with the alien eldar, his dangerous reliance on them, his friendship with some of them. Oh yes, do not doubt, we officers of the flotilla could have had Rakespur up before an Inquisitorial enquiry many times over for what we witnessed. Mazarin Rakespur, hard and capricious swine that he could be, had xenophile taint staining his hands like ink on a scrivener's fingers I can attest to that.
We tolerated him though, we all looked the other way at times, all of us. Well, we thought there was no heir you see, no one to replace him, our good fortune was tied to his, and for all else we were doing a booming trade in xenotech items, what with the amount of ruin delving and archeotech scrounging he had us about. Oh, our honest mines, colonies, and trade routes all went to wrack and ruin to be sure from lack of attention, but still we were surviving, without a Lord Rakespur we might all fall.
So we waited, we did what we were told, which was never much, Mazarin always kept his secrets close, and we held our tongues. He was Lord Rakespur and we his servants.
It was during my fourteenth year as Commander of the Fortuna (804.M41) that Mazarin Rakespur took us upon one of his perilous and risky ventures, this time into the Ragged Worlds, beyond Winterscale's Realm, where the fringes of the Screaming Vortex warp storms lash realspace and the veil is very thin. Rakespur knew where we were bound, but he kept it between himself and his Navigators, still we were damned lucky to get there in one piece, though it took the various ship's of the flotilla wildly differing times to do so.
'There' was a fell place indeed. Lit by a false black star, a star that wasn't a star, but an alien construct, a thing built by some dead species, perhaps a space station, perhaps something else. Whatever, it was thousands of kilometers across, like a black ball of liquid molten darkness seething at the heart of that corrupted system. It's surface seemed made of a rippling black diamond substance, and only when we got closer could we discern great structures upthrust from a sea of maze-works that covered it.
Mazarin and a few others went down to that thing, that black sun-station, while we in the flotilla shivered above. We were attacked while Mazarin was down below, it seemed the station-thing exerted a gravity like a planet, and other forces besides, and it trapped ships in it's sway. Two Saynay renegados struck at us, desperate and wild, but fast and deadly nevertheless.
They fought us hard and even boarded us, and a sharp fight raged through our middle decks. After they had been wiped out I recall walking the decks, they had been starving that was clear, their bodies wasted to skin and bones. Some wore gnawed human bones on their belts, and they must have been adrift in that system, becalmed as it were, for long years.
Mazarin and his team returned laden with xenotech loot, and the word was there was plenty more down below, more than they could carry. We assumed we would set up a shuttle system and begin to load the ships until our cargo decks were groaning, fools that we were for following a madman.
"No." Mazarin Rakespur had said to our quieries. "Noone else goes down. Nothing else comes back up. We are leaving now, or we shall never leave this place." And so we left, a moon sized hoard of xenotech loot abandoned behind us.
Six years later, while trying to draw the filthy Eldar Corsairs known as the Crow Spirits into his damned Accord, Lord Mazarin was killed when he learnt the error of his xeno-loving ways. The battle, which erupted without warning that I could discern, took place in the Foundling Worlds while we were chasing rumours of a sighting of the Space Hulk Twilight , and the 'Widow was lucky indeed to fight it's way clear. Mazarin and his Captain both died in the same barrage and it was all the rest of us could do to provide cover for the flagship to get away into the Warp. Afterwards we rendezvoused and learnt our Lord was dead and as he had no heir, in real terms out there in the Halo Stars, beyond the reach of stifling Imperial Law we were free men and free men with ships.
Oh Lord Mazarin's clique of pet hangers on, such as that bastard cogdog Explorator Maroth, called on us to escort them and the ' Widow back to the Imperium, that a new heir would be found, that we should honour our oaths. We did not respond, I can't speak for the others, who I believe may have had plans of their own leaning towards piracy, but for myself and Lord-Commander Janvers Starling of the Bounty we meant to become free-traders for a time. We had a plan that we believed would make us rich you see, one quick and dangerous job and then we could retire safe in the heart of Calixis Sector or elsewhere in the Imperium.
Such mutinous actions might seem shocking to those who have never crossed the margin, I assure you they are all too common out there, the law is very distant you see.
We forced our Navigators to take us back to that system in the Ragged Worlds, the system of the black-sun station. Together, fuelled by our greed, we sailed into madness. I cannot focus enough now to talk of what we saw there, I try but the walls of veined black diamond rise around me, and I can see only another corner ahead, the angles wrong, the geometry sickening. I am watched from all sides, the Labyrinth draws me on.
The Keening Tower, bones everywhere, we waded through them, knee deep. It was there Janvers found it, suspended in a column of blue-purple light. We had enough by then, sacks of gems, shards of black diamonds big enough to buy us our retirements twice over, but he had to possess it. The bones. They tried to stop us, they killed many of us. I still hear the screams when I close my eyes, the roar of it's breath. The bones.
We escaped, exactly how or how long it took I cannot say, in my memory it feels like it must have been months at least that we were trapped there. Escape we did however, that tower is the hub of it's control, we tried to destroy it, we failed, but won a brief moment to flee the system. After that we ran, we ran for the Maw as fast as our engines could push us. It was at the Battleground Maroons that the Bounty first showed signs of trouble, it dropped out of the Warp after Janvers sent us a garbled distress message, we turned around and arrived perhaps a day later, just in time to see roiling fires and thunderous explosions tearing out the ship's guts. Scuttling charges without a doubt.
There were clouds of bodies floating in space amongst the far flung debris, as if the ship had vented it's decks and most of the crew had been blasted out into the void. Our signals went unanswered and a boarding party I sent over to the crippled hulk vanished without trace after a short strangled burst of shouting and screaming. The last I saw of that ship, of my friend's tomb, it was drifting, ruined, a wreck, into the larger swirl of such hulks that drift at coordinates (xxx).
It was the worm, Janver tells me now.
For myself I was lucky I suppose, the loot we carried seemed safe. I even kept a crate of the black diamond shards for myself, after we sold the rest at the Court of the Dead. Our profits were high indeed, and my own more so after I sold the Fortuna itself to an unscrupulous nomad derelicter baron to be broken for parts, the crew sold into slavery, or onto other ships.
Returning quietly to civilisation I made my way here to Scintilla and paid certain unscrupulous officials at the Court of Marque, Ignim Pinn and Kolim Naphelcis, to register me as the surviving captain of the Fortuna which had been lost in the same battle that saw the death of my Lord Rakespur, or so our fiction went. This was three years ago, and I was already dreaming, I returned each night to that system, I felt the bones piled around my bed ... and moving, I could hear the screams again, the roaring, the cold fire of Warp flame licking at me. Increasingly though I was in the Labyrinth again, enemies stalking me just out of sight, running in terror as they gained on me, running through it's false Maze of Lies, toward my doom, toward the Lord of the Labyrinth. The Sleeper. The God of the Maze Builders.'

- The pc's had tracked Danfries to Hammerhead House, a heavily fortified manision in Hive Sibellus's eerie and near deserted Paradise Park district, (aka 'Paralysed Park') - drawing on their Vigil Senioris's contacts with a local Magistratum officer they co-opted the aid of about 40 Magistratum enforcers in 12 Chimera APCs to attack the mansion and get at Danfries. There followed a fearsome and bloody battle, as firstly the grounds were smothered in biowire mines, and patrolled by flocks of gun-skulls, then secondly inside the huge house had been turned into a bizarre maze studded with mines, pitfalls, and automated servitor gun emplacements.

The enforcers took heavy casualties 12 dead, 13 wounded, but by using the team psyker's location sense they breached Danfrie's sanctum at the heart of the labyrinth, to find him a frail weak and insane wreck surrounded by strange black crystal inlaid cogitators, his journal laying beside him.

Errant said:

That sounds like a very interesting solution; thanks. They are creative in that respect, so I just my try that.