We are about to start our first RT campaign and I still wonder whether it would be more fitting to start with Forsaken Bounty or with Into the Maw or to somehow combine/inertwine the two. Both adventures somehow assume that it is the first time the group ventures into (or in the direction of) the Koronous Expanse.

Any suggestions in which order it is best to play the official adventures or any experiences how it worked well for you?

Thanks in advance for any helpful input.

"Forsaken Bounty" seems to be like a stripped down version of "into the maw" to me... and having played "into the maw", I have to say, that it's not really a good start for an inexperienced group or gm. There are too many loose ends and easy story-killer-traps in it. It's way to easy for the group to kill the plot just with some common sense and easy quick thinking. I don't want to go into too much details, but me and my group didn't do anything fancy and still killed the whole plot twice and since our GM is still a bit inexperienced he didn't find a way to save the final battle... it simply didn't took place at all. And I don't want to think about what kind of powerfull artifact that Xeno-mirror-structure actually is... As a GM I would definitly don't let such a powerfull thing survive the adventure... especially not a STARTING adventure. Something like this could be the centerpiece of a whole campagne for some very well-seasoned explorers, but for a group of freshmen in the trader-business? No!

My advise would be, to read both adventures carefully and build your own starting adventure. Salvaging a treasure-ship is for the start is a great idea, same with another trader on the same trail... but leave out that Xeno-stuff for the start... Leave a piece of the ships-log in a trashed starfighter on one of the planets or in the hands of some orc freebooterz to lead the players to their price or something like that.

I don't say those starting adventures are totally crap, they are full of great potential, but also full of easy taken dead ends.

It should be noted that Dark Frontier on the RT support page continues where Forsaken leaves off. I don't see Forsaken as that bad. I'd have the PCs play out discovering the ship through contacts, and getting salvage rights. The addition of Frontier rounds out this adventure, and makes the PCs chickening out less a game killer.

Maw can be tricky with the 2 raider ambush. A light cruiser+, a well equiped frigate, or a ship designed to do boarding* will simply defeat the raiders. Now you have to figure how to deal with their desire to salvage the ships. This can be avoided by having the ship's be heretical or have prior owners*1. Also smart pirates will disengauge when the battle goes badly. On the other hand players who roll/plan poorly with space combat or have an under powered freighter can get torn apart by the raiders.

* Allowing your players to just get the teleporter, murder servitors, and barracks is a really bad idea!!!

*1 If some punks tried to car jack you. You wouldn't be able to keep their stolen car. A pirate vessel surely has prior owners. Certainly you'd get a reward for the pirates, and an award from a Salvage Court. (See the various fleet of ship threads.)

I ran all 3 adventures on my group. Forsaken bounty we just tried to test the setting then made som fresh char and wrote up the dynasty and i ran them through dark frontier and after that into the maw.

In dark frontier they persuaded the penance to join their dynasty which played out rather nice after finishing the adventure they now had to repair the penance and get a working relationship with Lynara and get a new crew it was a nice little story helped make the players get into things.

The thing i liked about forsaken bounty and dark frontier as startup adventures is that alot of action takes place on their ship or deep in space there is not a whole lot of setting or countless NPC (except for the 20k big crew) to distract things gives more focus to the players. The end fight in frontier is lame and needs some tweaking but can be done ok.

Into the maw played nicely as a sequell i recommend making a few tweaks though. I personally ditched the whole raiders thing and put more into the buildup on port wanderer and the end fight with Hadrak. He survived the fight and after a long fight got away from the pc so i decided to make him a pawn of my main villain for my campaign. I made had a nice profit factor duel between hadrak and the pc rogue trader where they tried to bribe various officials and workers in part wandere to make life missirable and delay eachothers departure.

The end fight i toned down to i decided to make lady Ash more in favour of the pc after they actually helped rescue her from the orks. She left one servitor in ambush in a corridor after pc was on the bridge. This allowed me a more peacefull setting on the bridge but all mayhem in the hall way as the servitor sprayed suppression fire i narrow hallway with virtually no cover was rather interesting

These products are ok but you really need to give them your own life. For me it was fleshing out abit more history on captain Ryn and his fight in the Angevin crusades. Besides the treasures anboard the ship i let the playes loot the captains personal items he had saved tossing all else of his mighty army to make room for treasure.

This included a Valkyrie, a lemann russ executioner tank, his personal power armor, a captains baton and a 50 meter high 100 meter long gold plated aquila and other stuff of army ceremony.

I also left a the remains of a exterminatus load - i wanted the pc to have the moral option to commit genocide or turn it in to the inqusition or other things.

In the aftermath of the adventure my pc decided to salvage the rightous path. I made it a grand endevour that for now plays out in the background as they try to get enough things together to do this.

It was nice to have the start adventures while i worked on building my own campaign and they are really open and can give almost countless new adventures hooks so i can recommend running them but definatly you should build or alter them to serve your own needs. The adventure with the least fuss and loose ends is prob forsaken bounty.