Having finally given in to my intense desire to run a 40k campaign, I will soon be starting a rogue trader game (chargen starts tonight with several players).

I want to mainly use published adventures for my game as my prep time is a bit limited so I'm planning to interweave the above adventures, dropping hooks from one during another, etc. Hopefully for my players this will be seen as on contiguous campaign rather than a bunch of solitary adventures woven together.

So here is my plan so far (though I obviously don't have Expanse yet, and whenever it arrives it will necessitate a few modifications).

The adventures will begin with the arrival of the Rogue Trader at Port Wander. There he will either hire any PCs not already in the crew, and Into the Maw will kick off with the fight in the market.

After heading into the Maw they will arrive at the battlefield and pick possibly pick up the salvation beacons of either or both the Forsaken Bounty or the pilgrim ship. The Forsaken Bounty if not picked up now can be picked up on the return trip, also they will have the opportunity to send an astropath communication back to Port Wander for a writ of salvage for the Bounty (since it is Imperial property). If they miss the Forsaken Bounty, I will plant information on it later in the game.

Eventually they will end up at Footfall (to possibly take the map makers cargo to its destination). Upon leaving Footfall, Captain Keel (Kell?) from Whispers on the Storm will come into play. Now they have a choice, go with the captain immediately, or attempt to delay him while they finish the endeavor of Into the Maw. Their best hope is to ask to meet him soon one jump from Svard, as they have a time sensitive endeavor to finish. He will press for a quick meeting, as he fears for his brother's safety, but since he knows that having the Rogue Trader at his side will highly increase his chances in Svard, he can be convinced to wait.

Then they will finish off Into the Maw, hopefully move to Svard for Whispers on the Storm, and by then have the Writ of Salvage in place to be able to go after the Forsaken Bounty.

There are lots of ways the players can implode this plan, and in the end I plan to be flexible and just roll with whatever they decide, this is just my template for how I think it will play out.

Thoughts?

I did a similiar thing. Our campaign started with the RT-PC and Seneschal-PC in transit from 41 Pry, where the RT won his privateer in a game of regicide, towards Port Wander. The Seneschal got the Writ of Claim for the Emperor's Bounty of the Forsaken Bounty scenario on 41 Pry before he even met the RT and they 'joined forces' so to speak (the Seneschal had the Writ of Claim and the location of the Emperor's Bounty, and the RT had the ship to get there and the rank and authority to make use of the Writ of Claim).

On Port Wander the scenario Into the Maw (Part One to be precisely) started as normal. In the Battleground region within the Maw they could find the beacon of the pilgrim vessel at once, but not of the Emperors Bounty yet. After the battle with the pirates (as in Part Two of FB) was concluded and the PCs met a few survivors on the pilgrim vessel. The survivors were a couple of pilgrims (as in the scenario) as well as an Mecanicus Explorator (a PC) and a heavily wounded Missionary (a PC) who just got his arm replaced with a bionic one (as per Zealot - Blessed Scars) by the Explorator (Renegade - Free-thinker (Enemies (Eccleciarchy))) after they repulsed waves of mutated pirates that had boarded the vessel repeatedly. While the Missionary was part of the pilgrims on the ship, the (exiled) Explorator was orginally travelling onboard the Emperors Bounty towards the Koronous Expanse. When the Emperors Bounty had reacted on the pilgrims salvation beacon and had sent the Explorator on board to check out the ships Machine Spirit, they had also been attacked by the pirates and broke off, only to fell victim to the Psycharius Worm (Forsaken Bounty) after a short but futile emergency warp jump.

With the Missionary and Explorator on board (who are a little like McCoy and Spock in Enterprise:ToS) they finally also found the Forsaken Bounty and the rest of the Forsaken Bounty scenario ensued. On board the Emperors Bounty they not only found Erart and a few survivors but also the dying Janrak Spargan (telling his story before dying) and his Arch-Militant (PC).

After the conclusion of Forsaken Bounty (the Explorator stayed on the Emperors Bounty (player on vacation) with a salvage crew and the Psycharius Worm), I thought about using Dark Frontier next, but then I decided to let them reach Footfall beforehand and let them work through the rest of Into the Maw (Part Three). That is where they are now. Afterwards I will sent them into the Dark Frontier scenario (after they picked up the Explorator again of course) and after that toward Whispers on the Storm folowed by Lure of the Expanse most probably...

Where did you put in Dark Frontier btw?

I haven't yet. Last night was just character generation. I'm still thinking things through, but I want to intro the characters to each other in game, most likely, so I may steal some of your ideas. Heh.

So far we have a decent ship weak dynasty Rogue Trader, a wyrdling mutant Astropath Transcendant (psy rating 3 and 5 powers to start, yikes) and a missionary based off boondock saints. Tonight the fourth player will be making up his dual bolt pistol wielding arch-militant he has been wanting to play. We are probably going to add one more. Due to variable work schedules I doubt we will have more than three or four players per session.

I will probably start them all off in Port Wander when the RT arrives and the ambush happens (or at least whomever is there for that session).

I will likely run Forsaken Bounty in the middle of Into the Maw, to break it up a bit. Then like I said in my previous post, lay the seeds for the Whispers on the Storm during Into the Maw then spring Dark Frontier whenever I feel like it, assuming they keep the worm.

jtwing said:

You are welcome.

You could let the Missionary enter from the pilgrim vessel and/or the Astropath from the Emperor's Bounty for example. Both could be survivors as in my case and the Astropath could have 'transcended' due to the weird things happening on the Emperors Bounty so to speak. The characters Origin Path helped me a lot in finding a good way of inserting them into the campaign. Especially the second and third from bottom (Lure of the Void and Trial and Travails if I remember correctly) were of great help in this regard.

Agreed, but the first session will start off with the RT coming to Port Wander, which includes the fight at the market. Unless I move that to Footfall (which I could certainly see) some of the PCs would miss it if they start off on various other vessels.

The Missionary is lobbying to switch instead to a DH Assassin, so he may not even be there to be part of the pilgrims. Heh.

Lets see, the Arch-militant's origin path had him a criminal, as did the astropath, so perhaps those two know each other. I'll keep playing with origin paths and the plot points of the adventures and let you know how it turns out. Hoping to play next week some time.