I'm curently making a senario for my players,and the only experience i've got as GM (and RPG) is the core book senario, and a short start on the current senario. It starts on Malfi they investegate som cult activity, and then end up finding a lead that vill send them to Orbell Quill. So in the part i'm making right now they need to get ther. That leads me to my questions.

How big should a ship be? If i'm going to have somthing happen on there travel, it should be some sice to it, so they have a litle to explore. And what about crew? how manny and so on.

And do you have anny tips on encounters midflight? I was thinkin on somthing like the crew being corrupted by somthing and attacking the players. Sucseding in stopping/killing the crew leavs them alone on the ship, needing to navigate the ship them selves.

Anny pointers would be helpfull

Ship size? Freaking Ginormus. More accurately, most warp ships are in the area of 1-2 km's in length and half that in height. They tend to have a crew somewhere between 10,000 - 20,000 in number. There's so many decks and passage ways and most void ships have been sailing for so long that many areas have become lost. Sometimes they are sealed off for a good reason 1,000 years ago but no one's unsealed them and have since forgotten that they exist, sometimes they are simply forgotten about or a redesign to the layout hides them, etc. So, what you get is large sections of these massive ships that are considered 'black holds" -no man's land that sport all forms of legends in the crew. Stow-aways flee there and never return, cannibal mutants launch raids from such places, things that latch onto the ship in the void make nests there, mutated descendants of crew deserters 100 years ago have small tribal communities there, astral sectors of the 2,000 dead ratings that died because Crew Chief Bronson was drunk the shift that pressure valve #226 failed haunt those passages, etc.

Just treat the ship as you would a small town that the PC's have gone into and you should be golden.

As fr story ideas, well, there's those 1,000 dead ratings that aunt the halls, there's cannibal mutants (you can never ever go wrong with Inbred Cannibal Mutants no matter where, no mater why, Inbreed Cannibal Mutants, for all your Inbreed Cannibal Mutant Needs!), strange void creatures that have latched on, infestations of Warp Rats to deal with, classic murder mysteries can abound, smugglers in the crew trying to move illegal goods, smugglers who use one of the PC's as a patsy, strange rites of the crew, the Death Cult of the Underdecks that have targeted one of the PC's to be the sacrifice to insure a safe warp voyage, a rich gelder who lost her fluffy xeno-pet down that dark corridor and really wants it back, dealing with board nobles who've taken to kidnapping ratings and using them from sport in tucked away areas of the ship, a man sealed in the walls of the PC's cabin tapping out an S.O.S. before he starves to death before he can reveal why he was sealed up there, undercover arbiters tracking recidivists elements tracked back to the ship could get PC's caught in the cross-fire, wrongbad cargo that gets lose and begins a campaign of slaughter across the ship, and lets not forget Pirates!

A few questions, and then some ideas for you...

Are they booking passage on a Chartist Ship; licensed to only travel certain routes between systems? Are they able throw some Inquisitorial weight behind their need, and maybe second a Naval Destroyer or Frigate to play "ferryman?" Do they otherwise have the funds to book passage?

As an idea, the Jericho- class pilgrim ship presented in Rogue trader is approximately 2.25 kilometers; or about 1.4 miles, and has a crew nearing 20,000. They are converted cargo ships, and still contain massive amounts of hold space. Generally they are older hulls, so there can be a lot of dark secrets hidden within the depths of the ship, where the crew dare not tread alone and unarmed. The dark holds are places to be feared by the normal crew; filled with failing systems, noxious hazards, and subhuman dregs. And the ships are slow in real space.

Barring anything inherent to the ship, there could be a beach of the Gellar Field, and "something" gets on board. It depends on what you prefer really, but there at least a little bit for you to think on.

Cheers.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Older chartered ships that travel regularly from one system to another are pretty much flying cities. And I do mean "cities" as in normal, big cities with all the elements in it, just enclosed into a space ship hull. Ship like Misericord might well be 10+ kilometers long and house anything from half-a-million people up. The term "crew" actually loses meaning aboard such ships since its a full society in itself. How much is the "crew" of a medium size city? Well, there is maybe 10 to 20 people in local council, a couple of hundred in administration, several hundred in maintenance, thousand or two in constructions and so on...

If it is a chartist ship which the PCs are travelling on, then the idea of it being like a city warping through space, but one from which there is no escape can lead to an adventure in its own right, never mind where you are going.

The tried and trusted scenario is the spaceboard murder situation, where the PCs are involuntarily mixed up in a high society killing and have to solve it - this might be the work of a serial murderer, or an assassination, the unleashing of a xenos or warp being inside the ship (and somehow protected inside areas of the vessel from Gellar Fields) or simply a lone crazy. Writers and film-makers have been playing on this idea for years, but its always a winner on this kind of journey. Certainly the collossal size of most 40K space going vessels is so vast as to have areas of the ship that are derelict or unused, or where horrific events can take place.

In Rogue Trader, large ships often take on a 'character' as well over millennia, and it may be worth thinking about how the ship might reflect the nature of both its purpose (i.e. Chartist vessel, Rogue Trader, warship, transport vessel) and its owner too.

Thank you for your posts.

As for your questions Brother Praetus, i was thinking they were using ther Inquisitorial influence to get a lift. I wasn't aweare the ships were that massive, i was thinking somthing like the ship in mass effect (for you who have played it), Millenium Falcon or a smal shipp with like 10-20 crew members.

If the ships are this bigg i must reconsider som of the plott, and maby not have anny encounters on the ship. Having "side missions" seems to me like a bad thing to do, as this may distract the groop from the actualy onngoing plott. I'm trying to include Komus in the story, and was thinking of having it use it's influens on the crew, but if it's a flying city........ It may work, but i don't know.

I like to make either a subplot/sidequest during ship travels, but the times when it was needed but I didn't feel like making one (or when it wouldn't make sense), I gave a nice description of what they see (I do this on other types of travel as well, adjusted accordingly).

Describing pilgrims, wearing nothing but prayer seals, flogging themselves bloody, praising the glory of the Emperor and begging his forgiveness for their imperfection gives a nice backdrop.

Describing thousands and thousands of constantly-weary people dressed in dirty, ripped clothes, coughing and trying to keep to themselves (with little luck, as they fill most of the section) gives another image. If asked, they'll explain they're refugees from [Planet]. They've been there for months, waiting until they reach their promised destination, but the close quarters and poor hygiene has caused various diseases to spread, which combined with everyone having lost their homes and most of their family means that they're all tired and depressed.

A group of Imperial guardsmen drilling and excercising before their insertion on [Planet] to months hence gives another feel altogether. The mood is disciplined optimism. Guardsmen, after all, are instruments of the Emperor's Will and since they're only facing "puny Tyranids," they know they have little to fear. A well-liked Commissar even walk amongst the men, complimenting their efforts and saying the battle is as good as won.

When describing background elements in 40k, I tend towards the darker side of things. I try to show the compassion and efforts the Imperium are making and the grateful people it has saved, contrasted strongly by the many who will (with little doubt) die an agonising death for the same Imperium.
Let the PCs see the people they're helping and why the Imperium works. If they've talked to people who've lost their homes because a rogue psyker tried to kill her would-be captors and accidentally became an unbound daemonhost in the process, they're more likely to understand why that 6-year-old girl has to be taken to the Black Ships and face the tests of Sanctioning*.

* I ran just such a scenario as my intro-adventure to my old campaign. While the PCs had no trouble killing people, and had little sympathy for people who had been rendered into servitors, they agonised over a 6-year-old who just wanted to stay with her "mommy and daddy," two simple God-Emperor-fearing people.

In the core rulebook it says it's Malfi is 800 days from Scintilla. Is this in warp travel og slower then light travel? And ships traveling stl don't need to be huge, right?

Not to highjack the thread, but I have a question about space travel prices.

Me and the players looked up the prices for space travel in the Inquisitor's Handbook, and were dismayed. 2200 just for ONE person on a passenger ship? That's an insane amount of thrones. Yeah sure usually the Inquisition can pay for the acolytes, but in this case they're stranded on Quaddis (after Tattered Fates) and their Inquisitor is dead... they have earned about 2k for some assassination work and can sell some stuff to get a bit more, but still can't afford those exorbitant prices.

Pilgrim ships would be cheaper but no pilgrim in his right mind goes to Quaddis unless it is a Pilgrim of Hayte - and I don't think the PCs wants that kind of company.

Do you guys have some "revised" space travel prices? I was thinking on the lines of several hundred per person, which still makes it impossible for other than nobles to travel in space more than once in their life. What do you think?

Not only it is a practicle problem with having such insane prices, it also makes trade across the imperium silly as it would cost alot more to transport the goods than it could possibly be worth, especially food shipments that planets such as Scintilla are dependent of.

Croma said:

I assume that it is by Warp travel. if it were STL travel, that would put Malfi no more then 2 ly from Scintilla (because Imperial ships couldn't possibly go the speed of light, it would have to be somewhat slower). Given the distance on the map of those two systems, it would make the Calixis sector incredibly small and jam packed with stars. Just remember, the closest star to us is about 4ly away and the area of the galaxy the earth is located in has a higher density of stars in comparisons to where the Calixis sector is. It is also mentioned that the major factor that kept Malfi from being the capital of the Calixis sector was tat it was too far removed from the bulk of the sector and would make communications and commerce difficult in comparisons to Scintilla. Perhaps the warp routs to and from Malfi are slow and cumbersome.

Very little travel outside of systems is undertaken without translating into the warp. it's incredibly resource intensive and painfully slow even in compared to the, what seems to be slow warp travel. That number of 800 days might also be speaking about Chartist vessels which sail without a Navigator (Navis Nobli) and, as such, go much slower the navigated ships.

Friend of the Dork said:

Divide the prices by 10?

As commerce goes, I don't think such prices would effect it. That's not the price of shipping goods, but the price of ferrying passengers about which is most definitly not the Imperium's priority unless it's settlers (pilgrim sips tend to handle those) or troops (navy handles those). As most planets ship goods out to meet their tithe, not to gain money but to meet their obligation to the Imperium and keep their governor from being killed and replaced with someone who would meet the tithe, they aren't as concerned with any kind of market value as they are with making sure they meet that tithe. As such, and given the extreme and exploitive nature of Imperial tithes, I'd imagine that most ships would be dedicated to hauling that tithe with those that have noting to do with it, and thus being unimportant, being a premium and nothing but an excessive luxury.

That being said, though, i never did agree wit the monetary system in DH. It doesn't really reflect the feudal system of the Imperium -it just seems like a fantasy adventure economy that was bolted onto the setting for no good reason. In my games, I just opted to never deal in numbers. When my group was on the run and lacking an Inquisitor, the scum got in contact with some particularly shady individuals and made some deals. Characters will do X for the smugglers if the smugglers could, well, smuggle them in their holds and get them as close to planet Z. On the next station, they'd rinse spit and repeat. So, instead of thinking earning money and paying for a voyage with it, think barter and trade.

If the assassins are doing jobs for money for passage, why not go strait to the source. Say when an assassin's looking through contacts or hunting trough the underworld for a job to get them off world, they find Fence X who deals with Ship's Manifest Officer Y. Ship's Manifest Officer Y needs Guy z taken care of and would be willing to rig some books to get the PC's a nook in a cargo-bay (they better bring some rations and a bucket with them) and make sure they get dropped off at any of the four planets on the sip's circuit if they'd take care of his problem for him. Perhaps those assassins could get a contract by a Noble to take out a rival on anouther planet and said noble will ferry the assassin and his assistants to the location to have their problem taken care of. Perhaps the PC's could get work as sort-term ratings aboard a chartist vessel in exchange for making it from point A to point B (if they survive the work) etc.

In all situations above, they might not make it to their exact destination, but a few jobs like that and they'll eventually get there and, on top of that, it would still feel incredibly expensive for all the work they had to do, still be fun (if they're jumping from point to point taking out odd targets and what-not and otherwise doing what players of assassins probably like to do), highlight the true Imperial currency (favors and possibly feilty), and be more characterful and even network building then simply earning some money and using that to pay anouther guy to go somewhere.

Friend of the Dork said:

Space travel in the Imperium is far from commonplace. Most people never leave their homeworlds their entire lives, with the biggest exception being Imperial Guardsmen (who tend never to see their homes again once they've left) and others in direct service to the Imperium. Even most nobles seldom leave the planet of their birth. The cost of it is just one reason why.

Friend of the Dork said:

Transport of goods is a different matter - massive haulers ply the Imperium for that exact purpose - but the conditions needed to transport a bulk shipment of tractors is completely different to those needed to carry people. People take up a disproportionate amount of space, add to life support requirements (food, air, water, etc). It's a different set of conditions, and private travel between worlds is so relatively uncommon that making a profit on it will be difficult at the best of times... so the prices are high.

However, as such an uncommon practice, haggling is both possible and commonplace. Beyond that, just because legitimate transport is expensive, doesn't mean that there aren't other methods aren't available. It's a group of acolytes we're talking about here... they are professional investigators into the illicit side of the Imperium. It can't be that hard for them to find a sufficiently well-connected group of criminals to get them smuggled off-world... at a cost, and not the sort that can be paid off with Throne Gelt.

One aspect of travelling I've been quick to slapped out of players is they aren't jetsetters. There are no quick ways of getting from A-B, it will take a massive amount of logistics (and luck) to get them a passage off a world, it will cost big $$$ and it will take months to get there and back. In the meantime they better find something to do to fill in that gap, x-training skill sets with elite advances and other constructive activities. Once they're there, don't expect to fix a problem quickly because in all likelyhood, the problem was big before it came to the attention of the inquisition, it took months to travel back to his/her ears and since then has probably flourished to spectacually awful levels by the time they hit dirtside again... to the point they should very cautious about walking off the landing barge because chances are whoever they're hunting has twigged to the fact they're coming. So clomping off and announcing their presence just affords me the oppertunity to frag a few of them with snipers and ambushes if they stick out too much, as is they're going to be noticed on a lot of levels just getting off a ship that's arrived in orbit, they will be officially processed by the administratum (that take notes of massive amounts of armour, obvious weapons) and even at a basic level there are just the curious warfies who know who came in with the last shower of ablative heat shields. Packing a good fake ID and disguise helps a lot.

And don't expect any help, expect to be there a long time and dont expect it to be easy. There is no hop on your phone or internet to rustle up some backup or running home to pick up the las-cannon and you're running with what you brung or can scrape up along the way, so its mostly a job for experienced operatives with a lot of field work under their belt already that know how to work as a team, look after themselves and each other. Oh and if they slip up they know to expect to be punished viciously... not by their inquisitor, he's the least of their problems when you're 400 light years away. Chances are he's already written you off as dead, went native, MIA, probably going to fail the job and already in the process of recruiting replacements to come in on the next ship to mop up whatever you've hopefully at least dented a bit before they took you out. Course if you do manage to actually do what he asked or most of it, then its bound to bring a twinkle to his eye that you're not complete duds and a waste of bus fare.

The 800 days travel is likely the time it takes outside the warp to get from Malfi to Scintilla (or the other way around). According to Rogue Trader, on average, about 12 days pass outside the warp for every day in the warp, so an 800 day trip outside the warp would only be a 67 day trip to the people in the actual ship.

So basically, whilst nearly 2 and a half years have gone by by the time you arrive, you have only spent 67 days travelling. It's essentially time travel.

MILLANDSON said:

Remember, the 1:12 ratio is for the 'open warp' - non-standard routes and uncharted territories, as I understand it. I'd imagine that the kinds of charted routes (like those that link the systems on the map inside the front and rear covers of every DH book, and those shown in the back of the Battlefleet Gothic rulebook) commonly used by most vessels would have a significantly better ratio.

I imagine the 800 day figure is a combination of objective time (time as percieved from realspace, rather than the subjective time experienced by those aboard the ship) and time between warp jumps for an un-Navigated ship (lots of short 4-5ly jumps, with realspace travel between to calculate the next jump; I don't imagine that the process is fast, nor that warp drives can be used again immediately after translating back from the warp). A vessel directed by a skilled Navigator would be able to do the whole thing in one jump and a lot faster)

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Indeed, though I was just giving a rough guess-timate as to how the time could be explained away.

But yes, that time is likely one done by a chartist captain with no Navigator. A ship with a skilled navigator on could likely do it in one jump in a fraction of the time.

Friend of the Dork said:

I on the other hand have increased the price of travel by 10, so for my Acolytes it's 22000 for one person. Why? Because off world travel is so rare. An entire family can work their whole lives saving up money so that their kids can go on a pilgrimage to a Shrine World. And that might only take them half the way, then they have to settle on some godforsaken rock and work the rest of their lives to, to save up money for their kids. It's not like going to LAX and find the cheapest tickets available to Terra. 80% of the ships in the Imperium is Merchant ships, hauling goods from one planet to another.

So those people who book passage on these ships not only do they pay the basics, life support, food perhaps but they also pay the lost net-gain from whatever goods they are replacing.

omgbambi said:

2200 that means a normal family would probably never be able to save enough to travel. 22000 means the wealthy nobles probably won't be able to save enough to travel once, which is not according to the setting as there are examples in the very module we played that many of the nobles, mercenaries, entertainers and tricksters were off-worlders come for the experience of their lifetime.

Hmm I wonder if Rogue Trader has some more reasonable prices? Not cheap, definitely, but having prices actually represent the costs by the chartist captains etc. and not some arbitrarily expensive number.

Friend of the Dork said:

How would 22000 be too much for a noble? The monthly income is disposable income, and pretty much represents the money they have immediate access to. Nobles could easily afford it, but normal people couldn't, or, at least, would need to save for generations to afford it.... which they do in the setting.

Friend of the Dork said:

I don't feel the monetary system in DH truly reflects the fluff. In general, Nobles doesn't have measurable wealth. It's beyond that. Which is shown in Rouge Trader with it's system of handling money. But if my 'fluff-gaming' makes it insanely hard for the acolytes to travel the warp, it only reflects the harsh reality of the 41st millennium.

MILLANDSON said:

The book says monthly income, not that it is disposable income. Although saying that it is almost makes the prices for lodging etc. work.

Even so, it takes a very rich noble of rank 10 22 months just to save enough money to travel by HIMSELF, something a noble will probably never do.

Friend of the Dork said:

Keep in mind that, apparently, beyond the monetary system in DH being ill suited to the setting, it also seems to have been, to a degree, used as a metagame balancer as well as one of the traits for a Noble Origin and, as such, ad to ave certain constraints to insure one Origin wasn't clearly better then all others, etc. Normal folks from the PC's various walks of life will, on the lower end, be owned by someone nine times out of ten, never receive "throne gelt", they'd just receive, at most, vouchers for food and a little fun once a month and free lodgings as long as they continue their work, and, at the higher end, have 10's of millions of thrones to tote around on special occasions. After all, just look at the amounts of thrones the auction goers were given my their masters to place bids on odd junk left over by the Haarlocks in House of Dust and Ash... and that was after their voyage to Solomon was financed.

In the end, the monetary system for PC's fails in upholding the setting. Among many problems it presents (not the least of which is the fostering of a capitalistic mindset where money is the end-all be-all) is tis artificial PC balance. In the reality of the setting, there is a MUCH larger divide between the privileged class and everyone else. Whether they are commoners of menials and low ranking members of an Adapta, they are pretty much slaved to their masters and will toil their entire lives away on one rock (unless tier master as need of them elsewhere) and are usually lucky to ave one nice bauble that they get to own all by them selves while, at the other end, the Nobles and the Officials of the Adapta have the means to go where they please when they please (well, within reason and duty and all that) and get to not only own vast swaths of God-Emperor only knows what holed-up in their mansions and keeps (can a PC afford a fortified Keep?), they also get to own all those commoners, menials, and lower ranking Adapta members and that little bauble each has as well.

The DH system just fails to reflect any of that wile it tries, at the same time to present that as the world the PC's live in.

Graver said:

Hmm all well and true. But I don't think the intended balance works either. The Noble in the group, even if the income is supposed to represent a young scion of a minor noble house (and his personal allowance to spend on enjoyment), can afford pretty much everything in the books.... except space travel.

In any case, I'm just gonna handwave it and lower the price to 300 per head for this time only, even so the only reason why the acolytes, having been stranded on Quaddis with no gear except what they have managed to loot/steal/make in Tattered Fates, the only way they can afford this is because the Noble assassin brought in 1700 gelt because of assassinations. Still full price of 2200 is well outside their reach.

The module designers have obviously thought that getting home from Quaddis was going to be easy, even if no one knows where they are and there is next to no Inquisitorial presence on Quaddis (as far as they know).

Friend of the Dork said:

tbh I think that is the wrong way to go, it will cause the logical question "Why was it so cheap there and not here?" later on in the game? I'd say, have the group perform a task that is worth enough to put them on a ship. This will end in some more playing on Quaddis but it sticks with the setting at least and later on they may realize that farming thrones takes way longer than doing favors.

But in the end it's your game.

Why is it so cheap? Well obviously because there is a lot of space for passengers since a very good portion of those asking passage are now dead. What happens when you have several ships transporting alot of people to a great festival and then there are hardly people for the return trip? Lower prices.

So yes I did the cheap thing, and my players were fine with it and didn't think it strange at all. And in the end, if the group is happy with it, then we did ok