I just recently bought a copy of Rogue Trader from one of my local hobby stores and everything makes sense till I starting reading the Lull of the Void. Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't criminal Lure of the Void be under Hive World and duty bound be under the Void Born Orgin Path because when I read Dark Hersey Core and the Intro to this book everything seemed to fit into place. IE Rogue Traders in Starships bound for duty for the Emperorer or Inquisition. Also on Hive Worlds I think of underbelly criminal activity within a populace that is brimming with Scum, Gangers...etc. Was this corrected in our Errata.

Keep in mind that the path is just a guide. If you read the black/grey box you'll note that you don't have to follow the strict path. If it fits your character's background.

Thing is, a criminal on a hive world can remain a criminal on that hive world as it has plenty of places to hide. But as a criminal on a ship, it is much more likely that you anger the wrong person and have to flee the ship or die.

As for duty, that is more likely to bind the void-born to the ship they grew up on, not lure them away to another vessel. There are a lot more hive worlders, so you will find more hive worlders lured into space through a sense of duty than you would find voidborn who left the ship they were born on for the same reason.

There will be exceptions, but for the general case the options are good where they are.

Ok thank you for your responses. That is great that one can plug and play any orgin of their choosing. I guess the freedom to mix and match has cool applications. I can pick a Noble Born Rogue Trader who is a scavenger and a criminal and his motivation is vengence. Thank you I must have missed that gray box. Also I get what your saying Bilaterope. Rogue Trader is focusing on careers aboard a space ship.

The Origin Path works as a journey down the path and you can deviate one box to the left or right of the box directly underneath your current location on the chart; I.E. it's not mix and match, as such, you must steer a very specific path to be noble-born and also wind up at the bottom left of the Origin Path, by going "down and left" everytime and even then, you cannot reach Endurance from Noble Born , nor can you start with Death World and reach Prestige .

That's up to the GM. There's a grey-box houserule that lets you have one free row. I rule that as being 're-arrange one row however you like' so you have quite a bit of freedom.

In another game, the GM has ruled that as long as you justify it with background, you can take it. We don't have the sort of players who would abuse that, but they are out there so I'd use that one sparingly.

House-rules are house-rules but this is the Rules section and the rules are as I stated, even with the free row you'd need to keep going down and left to get from a noble birth to the scavenger entry and the Origin Path is not "mix and match", sorry.

Gaidheal said:

Except that the chart is a mix and match if the GM and players so desire as stated in the rules and all that. That little gray box thing says so right above the part about "free row". Not really a house rule if it's in the rules. If a player comes to the GM with a good character concept involving a Noble Born -> Scavenger -> Renegade -> High Vendetta -> Fortune -> Rogue Trader set-up, then, by the rules (specifically the third sentence in that little box) such a path is perfectly feasible.

Oh, and fallowing the path with only one free row, you could do the noble -> scavenger down the right if birthright was your free row ;-)

As the path goes, there seems to be a few oddities when it comes to home worlds vs birthrights. I always kind of felt that Forge World and Hive world should be switched among other things, but, in the end, adhering so strictly to the paths structure is only needed when dealing with players who are new to the setting or have no idea at all as to what they want to play. For those situations, it's arrangement works fine as any oddities or, more like lacking options, won't be that evident in-game -new characters made by folks unaccustomed to the setting should really only happen once, twice at most. After that, they should be accustomed enough with the setting to come up with a decent story or character to fit most any combination off that chart and more.

In the end, it's just a tool to help those new to the setting and those who have no idea what they want to play but want a character in under 10 minutes. It doesn't need to be perfect to fulfill those two roles.

"If the GM say... " doesn't really count as a game system rule, you know? That would the underlying rule 0 of all games. Good point about taking Birthright as the free row, though. In any case, the point is that as strcutured by default the paths are deliberately limited, which probably works best with novice players, many of us are steeped in 40K lore though and in that case a GM and player are going to be working together extensively right from the start making Origin Path almost irrelevant, I'd say. Just agree the options you take with the GM and tot up the acquired bonuses, penalties and traits.