Your RT vessel is a couple of miles long with a crew in the thousands, the vessel itself is likely to be older than 5000 years old - and having hundreds of captains in its time.

So, that begs the question. What kind of unique places would you expect to find on one of these ships? Shops, shrines? museums? An entire criminal underground? Training facilites, schools, graveyards, nurseries? A hall of fame, records, a scrap yard? Gladiator pits?

Any ideas?

All of the above? ;¬)

Limited only by imagination, since the best way to think of these things is an ancient city in space.

Oh, absolutely a gladiator pit. Probably two.

One is an illegal pit-fight run by the crews, their toughest fighters compete against captured duct beasts or other crewmen for money, or ship-bound equivalent. Of course the Lord Captain knows about it, and if a fighter makes enough of a name for himself he gets invited to...

The Grand Arena! Where the Lord Captain himself watches the best fighters on the ship go up against hideous beasts captured from death-worlds! Todays's guests of honour, the governor of Tarquin IV, who is considering buying some of these beasts himself. If the crewman survives, we have a new member of the Arch-militant's Black Ops team.

Also, there should always be rumours of treasure hidden by a previous owner. They call themselves treasure hunters, you call them duct-monster fighters. Everyone wins.

I like that, actually Jimmy. I was trying to come up with some off-the-cuff clever stuff but I'm being distracted by an episode of Sharpe . ;¬)

Since it is possible that a whole deathcult might exist somewhere in the depths of your vessel, the options and possibillities are endless. Actually you can play whole adventures just with exploring your own ship. Who knows... maybe some captain even hid some strange xeno artifact somewhere down there. And noone ever managed to open that darn locked door at level 15 right behind those airscrubbers. Do you really want to know what lies behind?

My RT campaign has only been going two sessions, and already we have the following locations mentioned on the Light Cruiser "Aesteban's Folly" without being on the components list:-

The Officer's Quarters, a small palace where the higher-ranking officers (i.e. player characters and their immediate lackeys) live, attended by a staff of dedicated servants. It also has guest quarters and function room, such as a large dining hall and a small ballroom, essentially forming the heart of the Rogue Trader's court.

Several different shuttle bays. There is the main Cargo bay where Lighters and such dock. There is a dedicated Dropship/Assault Craft bay attached to the ship's Barracks component. There are three small "civilian" docking bays all along the length of the vessel. And finally there is the Reception Bay, where everything is decorated in baroque gold filigree and red carpets line the floor. A wide and impressively decorates corridor hung with the Dynasty's trophies leads to the Officers Quarters. This is where important visitors are received, and it's meant to impress.

Two separate chapels at opposite ends of the ship. Neither is the size of a full Temple-Shrine, but any Imperial ship will have something similar. In this case, the merging of people from different places to give the initial staff of the ship when it was made functional again just before the campaign began has resulted in a demographic split in the crew. Half the crew are Void-Born space trash with strange borderline-heretical beliefs and the other half are dockworkers from the Hive Tarsus spaceport on Scintilla, all fairly devout and orthodox. The two temples represent these opposing beliefs, and a religious war has been brewing on the ship.

My player's first ship had a big library that had a similar function to the labratory component. Another one they aquired through an alliance had a large fighting pit-maze with electrified flooring, moving walls, and multiple displays. The captain would dump prisoners into the gauntlet to fight to the death for the entertainment of the crew.

Your ships is essentially a fully fledged, almost independent community. So it'll have all the necessary things that aren't routinely plugged by <however often you stop into port>. If you're venturing off into the great unknown, then you'd best have everything you'll need with you.

In my head I think of everything a typical human town'll have. Not necessarily 'Springfield', but with all those 'locations'. School, powerplant, shops, police, waste grounds, civil infrastructure, religious edifices, enterainment complexes, pubs, tourist attractions...whatever.

But then it's a case of weaving a particular theme. Highly religious crew, you can 'cut out' some of the more obvious things (brothels [or include them: holy brothels!]) whilst opting in for more of something else. I find each of the ship's components lends itself well to two or three 'distinct locations' on a ship. Hydroponics bays, storage vaults, datalooms, cathedrals, mech-shrines, enginariums, gun decks, magazines, conveyors, nova cannon loading bay, nova cannon crew chambers, nova cannon brace supports, nova cannon firing command, nova cannon magazine etc.

Which is to say: Those could all be 'just for the Nova Cannon component'. The trouble with RT is, focus on the detail too much and you'll end up lost in a hellish, deep world of your doing. Too little detail and your players'll feel you've not really thought things through...

It might help if you figure out a few of the NPCs you want your crew to interact with and stem off importat locales from them. So if you've the idea for a very priestly Machine Priest (as I had a few weeks back), then you'll be wanting a megashrine where he gives his massive culty sermons (complete with daycare nurseries, food courts, entertainment facilities, estate agents and gunshop), you'll be wanting the various suburbs of the ship to which he travels to do his 'hands on Machine healing' seminars, you'll be wanting the associated faux-academic institute from which he recieved all of his technomat training and so forth.

Which is to say: Even just considering things for a moment leads you down all sorts of bonkers paths. Go for it!

historians tell us that a nelsonan captain inspect his vessel once a week in a highly formal occasion, therefore he is separeted from his crew and can't always tell what's going on in his ship.

and that's for a 200 people community.

add a whole "0" to the count and yu will realize that there's whole quarters that you don't even know exists!

who can tell you of it?

maybe your fourth machine officier come out with a loss of power 3/4 of a mile starboard of unknow origin?

the helmsman register a strange vibration boway of the mizzen?

and then who knows what you will find there? 'cause there's no one else than the captain who can go there and see...

good luck captain, make the players have fun on your journey!

The separation had more to do with social stratification than anything, actually... but that is even more true in 40K, so it all stands. Tip: your Seneschal probably does know all this stuff, don't piss them off.

Here are some ideas that I had for unique places on the Rogue Trader vessel:
- Watching History Channel/Discovery Channel documentaries on life in submarines or aircraft carriers to find unique places on your vessel or to describe shipboard life.
- Finding out about the components needed to make the International Space Station work.
- Try looking at other science fiction sources to see what facilities they use in their starships.

The television show Starhunter had an episode called “Blacklight”. The PCs’ bounty hunting vessel is a converted military ship and the contractors did a piss poor job of gutting all the material that was supposed to have been removed. They missed the entire cryogenics bay operated with archeotechnology and three sleep chambers filled with Arch-militants in cold storage. Now, who here wants to press the defrost button? One of these old soldiers gets loose on the ship and thinks that his vessel (now the PCs) has been taken over by the enemy from the last war. There are huge portions of the ship that are sealed off or just not used that a good gamemaster can hide all sorts of goodies/disasters in. Best to make these encounters both a boon and a bane: delusional high-powered soldier still fighting the last war on the loose could with the right role-playing be recruited as the ship’s new Arch-militant; not to mention all the cool ancient technology and secret knowledge hidden away in the cryogenics bay.

The Star Trek: TOS episode “Space Seed” had the crew find a ship filled with cryogenically stored genetically enhanced people. If the PCs can keep these superhumans from taking over the ship, the lost knowledge on the ship or possessed by the superhumans could be quite valuable. If the PCs can keep the superhumans in suspended animation, there probably would be many factions that would like to get their hands on some genetically enhanced people as servants (with or without paying the PCs).

Is there no ego driven Lord Captain that has not raised up some monument to himself/herself or their dynasty somewhere on their ship? Think tourist trap or Mount Rushmore.

Try having a merchant bazaar on board like the Zocalo from Babylon 5 or The Promenade from Star Trek: DS9. A bazaar would give your PCs a significant bonus to Trade objectives and a minor bonus to Criminal objectives. It might give you an Interaction bonus when dealing with merchants.

A training academy would possible reduce loses to crew or increase crew morale or increase the skill level of the crew without spending as many SPs plus giving a minor bonus to Military objectives.

Your vessel could have parks, swimming pools, theatres, or recreational facilities to increase crew morale. I really loved the previously mentioned (by St. Jimmy) of a gladiatorial arena. How about a carnival where the servitors go insane and start killing the crew while being led by a heretek?

A hospital or medical facility of some sort would increase morale and reduce crew losses along with a bonus to Medicae tests.

A laboratory could give bonuses to Exploration objectives and to certain Scholastic Lore tests.

This has been my personal favorite and I fully admit that it is from another posting on this website (Rogue Trade forum, ship’s pets). You are probably going to need to visit a desert planet to get the sand to build this, but it is just six different flavors of awesome!
Sarlacc Nest (Ship’s Mascot):
Several holds have been converted to house this monstrous xenos creature, along with an observation platform and plank feeding structure. Permanently increase crew moral by 2, Permanently reduce crew by 5.
Negotiations taking place on the observation platform (intimidate tests) gain a +10, those conducted on the feeding planks gain one automatic success.
If this component takes a critical hit roll 1d10 and reduce crew points and moral by this number immediately. Roll again after the current combat is completed and once per week until this component is repaired. [i presume that this represents that “Spot” is now back in his cage and the related fear of having a large aggressive predator that is devouring the crew on the loose in now suppressed.]
Power: 1
Space: 3
SP: 1

This is one that I made up (feel free to use or alter it as you see fit):
Adeptus Arbites Star Precinct
1. -50 Achievement Points to Criminal Objectives
2. -5 to Interaction Tests with underworld/criminal/renegade/pirate figures while you are acting from the ship
3. +5 to Investigation Tests, to any Boarding or Hit and Run Test, and to interactions with the Arbitrators of the Adeptus Arbites
4. +15 to Command Tests to suppress a Mutiny
Power: 1
Space: 2
SP: 2

A little more prosaicly, it might be worth considering the unique industries which must exist on the vessel for it to exist: vats for bilge fungus, sweatshops where old void suits are patched and recycled, a carpool for the ship's internal transport system (or at least a place for storing the handcarts if you're going really low-tech)

Some really great ideas here - this would make a great chapter in a support book 'Life on Board'.

being that the ship is the size of a town - just consider what a town contains and then squeeze them into single locations (eg all butchers shops together, all food storage, all housing together, etc) then add shipboard requirments. Also there would be some areas strictly Mechanicus and others would be organised by houses, cults, guilds, etc We used the Roman Collegium System to run the various componants of our ship.

So some more ideas: Grox Pens, Slaughterhouse (The Slaughterman NPC in Dark heresy is a very intimidating looking chap), Algae & Fungus Vats, Water reclamation facilites, Machine shop, Servitor repair centre, Manufactoriums, External Resource gathering centre, drinking dives, pleasure houses, etc

Don't forget all the Black Hold's and sealed off/ interdeck spaces on your vessel.

In my own game the player's command the Lethean Dream, and part of the fun was coming up with the locations withing the neat stuff inside the ship.

Besides things like the Bridge, the Lord Captains' Palace, the Holy Enginarium, and the God Emperor's Cathedral, we have more unique locations within the ship. Like this one.

The Abandoned Luxury Quarters Wing

Long ago the vessel also ferried thee rich, noble, or just well to do about in decadently luxurious quarters. Unfortunately the ship has seen better days and eventually someone decided to seal off the wing from the rest of the vessel. Unbeknownst when the deck was sealed off, there were still passengers living there.

In the intervening centuries a degenerate civilization grew in isolation. Now decadent tribes battle each other over the various cabins and quarters for the use of never ending fountains, pools, and auto-pantries that still serve expensive delicacies.

That sounds like a fun endeavour - clear the luxury wing!!