Hello:

This just happened on RPG net, check it out (maybe join in):

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14574.phtml

If it's reposted, sorry (I forget)!

L

I think the reviewer missed a lot of things about the dynasty dynamic between characters in the game, and that he or she isn't very familiar with the 40K setting.

Sure the Rogue Trader might be the one with the Writ of Trade in his or her possession, but Profit Factor is a group effort, not just something that belongs to the Rogue Trader. And even if it isn't explicitly stated in the rules, I'd say that if certain PC's decides to leave the group due to an extremely bossy Rogue Trader, then the group's Profit Factor would be reduced by a certain percentage that was contributed by that player character.

For instance, if Explorator A doesn't like Rogue Trader B's tyranic rule and lording over the other PC's and decides to leave, and the group consists of four player characters. The group would lose 25 percent of their total profit factor because that's all the PF that the disgruntled Explorator takes with him as he leaves. Something that smart Rogue Traders would want to avoid (having to reduce your current Profit Factor by 25 percent is a HUGE blow to ones economy after all).

Granted that's my personal ruling over the matter as a GM, and the rulebook could have included a similar mechanic from the get go. But based on all the info of how PF works, I'd say it is pretty obvious that it is something that comes from a group effort, and that it is NOT something that the Rogue Trader has absolute authority over. Which will effectively prevent an NPC or PC Rogue Trader from being "too bossy" from the start, and it seems that the reviewer missed that.

The writ of trade and the deed to a personal starship doesn't necessarily grant you profit, or even enough economy to actually sustaion your operations, only the means to acquire profit. The Rogue Trader provides these means, but it is the group effort of the Explorers that generate profit.

I think the reviewer missed a lot of things about the dynasty dynamic between characters in the game, and that he or she isn't very familiar with the 40K setting.

Got to agree here. The funniest thing is that the author's preconceptions about how it should look like ("Like Star Wars with little freighters and lovable small time scoundrels") are pretty much exactly how the fandom feared the whole thing would turn out before the first Designer Diaries came ("No way will we be able to play as actual Rogue Traders with our own frigates or cruisers!").

Cifer said:

Hehe, yeah I gotta admit I chuckled a little when I read:

Surely there are a myriad of types of ships in the 40K galaxy and they’re not all monstrously enormous with crews of 200. Where are the Pintos and Smart Cars of the 40K galaxy? Surely theres something more affordable to fly than a battle cruiser. And if they don’t exist in the mythos, why didn’t the writers do they something cool called “make them up.”

All I could think of was the angry mob of redclad, redemptionist WH40K fans, banging at the doors of Fantasy Flight Games HQ screaming:

-"Blasphemers! Heretics! Everybody knows there are no such things as Pintos and Smart Cars of the 40K galaxy! You can't fit the required warp engines and geller field generators to such puny vessels like the ones in Star Wars!"

Also, "Crews of 200"!? Surely that must be a type-o on the reviewers part. A crew of 200 people is nothing in WH40K. It's barely enough to clean a single macro cannon let alone running an entire starship.

Like I said, clearly this reviewer wasn't very familiar with the 40K setting. He might have made a more or less correct analogy of Warhammer Fantasy Role Play being a nitty, gritty version of AD&D. But Rogue Trader is by no means a nitty, gritty version of Star Wars. The 40K setting makes it impossible.

Varnias Tybalt said:

I'm not sure the Explorator leaving would put such a dent in the Profit factor of group. The tech priest isn't any where as rich as the Rogue Trader. The real problem is that the Explorator would take all the tech priests with him. No tech priests no working ship. The RT would need to work out a new deal with another group of tech priests or heritechs.

Dalnor Surloc said:

Considering that the individual choices for each PC on the Origin Path can either contribute or decrease the entire group's total profit factor, then it stands to reason that the profit factor isn't merely a measurement of the Rogue Trader's personal wealth, but rather the amount of wealth, contacts, banked favors, I.O.U's etc. etc. pooled together by the entire party.

Thus if one character decides to leave, he or she takes his or her share of the total profit factor with him/her.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Your argument completely fails as:

1)Choices in the orgin path can only move the group's profit up or down 1 or 2 points. Given the combined Ship Points and Profit Factor is score is 90. 1 or 2 points is a drop in the bucket.

2)A group with 3 PCs have the same profit factor as 8 PCs other than the above differences.

PS- I never said it wouldn't effect the overall profit factor, but that simply going by. You have 4 players thus if one guy leaves the ship he take 1/4 of the profit factor. Makes no sense at all.

Personally I handle the RT vs the rest of the group as the rest of the groups PCs represent various faction on the ship or investors. The navigator for example represents the interests of his house, and if he goes on strike the ship is limited to 4 light jumps. The voidmaster for example represents many of the skilled voidmen....

Dalnor Surloc said:

Yes, but those only represent minute differences due to particular freak instances occuring in the origin path. It still proves that individual PC's have a significant impact on the overall profit factor. And the system even extrapolates upon this due to the fact that certain talents possessed only by individual PC's can contribute with additional achievment points during endavours.

The system blatantly screams that all PC's have an equal stake in the dynasty's business, so no my argument doesn't "fail completely" at all.

And I haven't even started on extrapolating upon the obvious benefits of using a consistent system of rules that will actively prohibit players playing certain classes (like the Rogue Trader) from suffering from delisions of grandeur mid-game and take those delusions out on the other players and their characters.

The Rogue Trader has something very tangible to lose by unfairly mistreating his closest associates, and it makes sense on so many levels. Both in game and out of game...

Hmmm, it seemed to me that the reveiwer was almost talking about a differant RPG not RT!

I felt many of the things he/she critisised are just not true, for instance claiming that 'having' to play a Rogue Trader was restrictive, now I'm not sure why you'd play RT unless playing a Rogue Trader or his/her crew appealed to you, but Rogue Traders enjoy much more freedom than the majority of citizens of The Imperium!

Also some of the review seemed controdictory, for example at first he/she is suggesting that RT should be like 'a nitty-gritty Star Wars', then criticises it for supposedly been more 'Star-Wars-ish' than the original Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, odd when you think that it sites Star Wars as a film which you could recreate the battles with 40k and even had a character called Obi-Wan in it!

I kind of understand where the reviewer is coming from on ship sizes. Not everything is going to have thousands of crew members. Even the Black Library novels include smaller, in some cases much smaller, ships.

In the Ravenor series, the Inquistor travels on a tiny ship, only a crew of 20 or so, but was still capable of warp travel. That is probably a bit of an extreme example, but I was quite surprised to not see smaller hull types, or lifters and gun cutters and the like, though i'm guessing that'll all be in later books.

Quite honestly while I'd like to discuss that review in rational terms, it's simply the dumbest piece of reviewing I have yet encountered.

The reviewer had a preconcieved idea of what he wanted, Warhammer Fantasy in space, and is thus annoyed that it didn't turn out that way. It's fairly obvious he hasn't actually PLAYED a game of Rogue Trader.

Lastly, his points on player dynamics and the Rogue Trader are idiotic. Don't play with morons and if you do, don't let a moron play the Rogue Trader. Pretty damned simple.

This isn't a game for whiny children who still think 'attacking the darkness' is they height of RP humor.

I was... utterly disgusted by this reviewer's lack of imagination. I shudder for his player's...

And if you don't trust your players to handle the dynamics of a rogue trader leader role why should that make you have to off-screen one?!?! Use imagination, I have 4 players and not one is a RT, so I devised a way for the warrant to fall into the hands of the group (the RT died under suspicious circumstances)

Casamyr said:

Which ship would that be?

In Ravenor he spend most of his travels aboard two Rogue Trader vessels. Either Cynia Preest's Hinterlight or Sholto Unwerth's Arethusa. Non of which are "tiny ship's with a crew of only 20 or so". The Hinterlight was most definetly of a raider or frigate size at least, and the Arethusa was clearly a transport vessel of some kind.

Not one of these were ever described as being of "Millenium Falcon size", and I'd say that your number of 20 crewmembers is a bit arbitrary.

There are still lifters and gun cutters in Rogue Trader, but they aren't described because these vessels aren't warp capable.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Sholto's Arethusa. In the 3rd book, or page 819 of the Omnibus Sholto makes a comment that the entire crew of the Arethusa takes a gig down to Gudrun after mutinying. Sholto even comments a little earlier that he doesn't have any cutters, or even landers, just a couple of old gigs. Since Thonius and his band took one, there was only the one and I assume, maybe wrongly, that the lander was very small, certainly not big enough to take thousands, maybe a hundred, but even then I suspect that is too big. Hence my '20 or so'. Plus I'm sure that Sholto gives his entire crew shore leave somewhere and it is a small number.

Arbitrary maybe, maybe just my interpretation of the text. It was just the vision I have had in my head of the Arethusa . The Hinterlight I alwyas envisioned being much bigger.

Casamyr said:

While Sholto's vessel do seem rather undercrewed (heck, everything about his vessel seemed sub par compared to all Imperial standards), one have to remember that landing- and shuttlecraft can be quite big (some big enough to ferry several companies of Guardsmen and even big things like Imperator Titans).

Also, didn't several crew members die because of the mutiny and thus the remaining crew would have been pretty decimated?

Varnias Tybalt said:

Yep. But earlier in the book, Sholto sends his crew ashore to Eustis Majoris. "Besides, he'd sent the twenty men of his crew ashore for relaxation at the habour taverns," (page399). Chances are you're probably more right than me and the Arethusa is hideously under-crewed and can barely make its journeys through the warp. i also see Sholto as a RT whose dynasty has waned and is barely holding on to his writ.

I'd be interested to know the smallest size that a ship needs to be to have the capacity to enter and travel through the warp.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Hinterlight is mentioned as having a crew of 48 in Ravenor. [Thirty less than the Allure]. That matches with the number of people captured or killed by Skoh when he boards.

I'd be interested to know the smallest size that a ship needs to be to have the capacity to enter and travel through the warp.

That's directly antiproportional to the tech-level you're using. If we dive deeply (and I mean "AdMech will burn worlds in order to obtain even just a hint of such a vessel" deeply) into the DAoT, I think we could arrive at the Millenium Falcon.

To go back to the review and to toss in my thoughts....

In some ways the reviewer is right. The game lacks some depth and is a change of flavor from the Dark Heresy version of the game (and I do consider Dark Heresy simply a different version of the same rule system). Rogue Trader seems to minimize the daemons and warp creatures and does not replace it with Xenos or other major adversaries. I agree with an earlier poster who indicated that RT has lost a little of the Cthulhu-esque certain doom and gleam of insanity present in Dark Heresy - but that can be easily be added back by the GM.

However, the reviewer gives no credit to the fact that Rogue Trader is an RPG based upon one book. While there is a lot of printed information in existence for the 40k universe, most is either for Warhammer 40k or a novel / short story / etc based upon that game. I think the support for this game will be here, meaning additional books and other material will be issued - this can only help the success of the game.

RPGs played in a fantasy environment benefit from thousands of volumes of support, from probably hundreds of game systems. Sci Fi simply lacks that depth at the moment.

I played Traveller back in the day when it was a box set with 3 half size books. That was a system with minimal support in the beginning - but if the group needed something not covered in the rules, we made it up, following the theme of the system as much as possible.

I think the reviewer misses that key fact with Rogue Trader. And while I see a lot of discussion (arguement?) regarding rules or the nature of the 41st millinium on these forums, the posters seem to understand that they need to make things up to fit their vision of the 40k universe and to provide for the enjoyment of their players. The game is limited only by the imagination and thoughts of the GM and players.

Godwinne Van Meer said:

IMO, I felt that the Koronus Expanse adequately covered that angle - a place that takes the infinite promise of the unknown and ensures that the only things being promised are madness and death.

Plenty of room for Cthulhu-esque, but less the fearful investigators reading from dusty tomes and insane doomsday cultists, and more the dead cities of slumbering gods that lay waiting to be disturbed.

Point taken and I hoist a beer in your general direction.

I stopped reading the review when it started saying things that were objectively false. it was something like "if no one wants to play the rogue trader, then the rogue trader is an NPC and their is an NPC bossing the players around".

Since the book has a side bar addressing this issue, and give almost exactly the opposite advice, I could no longer take the review seriously at all.

Sorry, but there is plenty of prescedent for smaller warp-craft in the 40k background. The size limitation is due largely to the costs involved in personell rather than the need for space. The Navis Nobilite don't hire their services out cheap and it stands to reason that most with the funds to afford them will expect a return on it and so (being traders) favour larger ships.

You are correct about the 'Mercucio' I believe it is from the Eisenhorn trilogy. That is in fact a pretty standard trader-ship it's only distinguishing characteristic being that it is almost exclusively crewed by servitors. However there are other ships in the background with extremely small crews (the scow from the novel 'Eye of Terror' by Barrington J Bailey for example) which are noted for having warp capability. The DH Inquisitor's Handbook mentions such craft - tramp-freighters - on page 158 (second paragraph of 'Transports').

I would like to refer you to the following for other ships of smaller classes than those represented in RT (rpg) which are capable of warp travel:
The short story 'Lacrymata' from the origional Deathwing compillation. The graphic novel 'Blood Quest'. Daemonworld - novel (the Word-Bearer's Craft).

Small crews and much smaller ships than your smallest 'raider' class escort, but not nearly as small as the Millenium Falcon.

Cifer said:

Don't know of anything quite that small, but there's still a fair amount of STC left to be recovered from the Golden/Dark Age of Technology. Of course the Mechanicus aren't the only Adeptus Terra that would be willing to burn worlds for that kind of tech.