Hi there,

I'm a long time DH-GM getting ready to run a RT campaign. I intend to start off with Into the Maw, but I must confess I'm a little underwhelmed by this scenario. I think the sentiments expressed in this thread (post #20) echo my own pretty closely.

Any advice on modding this? Or general tips on preparing a RT campaign or running this adventure in particular?

Personally I thought Into the Maw was a great little introductory adventure, mainly because it eased them into the setting and the feel pretty easily, and didn't require them to know how to utilize their full dynastic power, which many players have a hard time with. They get to do some exploration, see some cool things, dominate a fight, get doomed by a fight, and have a chance at the end to start thinking on a large scale. My tips and observations:

• First and foremost: Adjust to the scale, and reinforce it! This isn't D&D or DH, and your group isn't a party of adventurers. They are powerful Lords and business men, flying a city fortress across the galaxy with the power to destroy worlds! They have thousands of men at their disposal and are going to aquire more! Troops, tanks, contacts, and the wealth to buy whole worlds! They have weapons that can rend most known materials at a touch!
  
  Plan accordingly!!! They don't go up against villains, they go up against groups, dynasties, and empires. A locked chest or a door is not going to stop them! Politics, power struggles, daemons, and armies will be necessary. You need to change how you think and how you GM to account for the sheer power your players are going to have. Don't try to curtail them, revel in it. Forget saving the princess and overthrowing the barbarian lord, your players are going to overthrow planetary governments, perform corperate hostile take-overs, and bring the light of the Emperor to lost civilizations.
  
  If you don't adjust you will quickly find your encounters will fall apart. You give them a princess to save, they send in tanks and hundreds of troops. You present them with an evil corporations, they just buy it up. You give them a dragon to slay, they destroy a continent with a lance strike.
  
  Now onto your question:
  
• The first combat is fairly easy, and gives the players a chance to curb stomp some competant appearing enemies. Hell guns burn holes through cover, severing legs, bolters cause heads to explode, and sub-machine gun fire will bounce harmlessly off their armor. The critical relults table will come into use several times, and the players will feel like Big **** heroes. Let them revel in their power. When the guards come they should be suitable cowed by approaching a Rogue Trader, further reinforcing their power and authority.
• The second combat, against the Orks...well they are going to LOSE! Read up on the rules for Orks, all of their traits, statistics, and abilities. If the players didn't plan VERY well and come VERY well equipped the Orks will eat them up, and they will have to flee. Orks have hellish levels of toughness, unnatural strength, don't pin in groups, halve criticals, and get crazy bonuses to melee. In our group only the player with a heavy bolter was able to do any damage at all. Leave the players room to retreat and they will, very quickly. Where the first combat built of the players as Gods of War, this combat will show them how the kind of monstrosities they are going to face. They should leave fairly intimidated.
• The Ork encounter is also a good chance to introduce group skill checks and cinematic play. After they have broken off combat with the Orks they still have to escape back to their shuttle. A good way to do this is with group skill checks. Have them decide what they are going to contribute: Weapon skills, survival, tactics, sneakiness, agility, and start having them roll. They will have to get X number of successes total (16 or so) over the orks. Every round they roll against the orks, with the orks starting at a +50, and give the players a bonus based on how good their plans are. If they do particularly well, the Orks bonus by 10 to represent the players gaining the upper hand. Narrate the results. A sneak is failed but a weapons check is succeeded, so the arch-militant saves the senchal. The next round the senchal passes his sneak by 3 successes, so he is able to cause a distraction. This encounter should encourage the players to think outside the box and cooperate using their skills instead of combat abilities.
• Many players have found Hadarak Fel to be an excellent future rival (he re-appears in Lure of the Expanse), so play him up a bit, and flesh out his character and motivations. He plays the fop but is actually very confidant, that is provided. But is he noble at heart or a scoundrel? Chaos obsessed? Is he out to kill the PCs, or is it all a high stakes game where the goal is to come out on ahead of your opponents, not kill them?
• Once they get the Bounty you have a great opportunity to reinforce the scale. This isn't a treasure chest they can just add to their wallet. It is closer to an archeological site, like a pharos tomb. Don't just give the PF. They will need to set up excavation, catalogueing, shipping, and distribution. They need to aquire transports or contract them, set up guards, find business contacts, etc. Again, they aren't adventurers, and this isn't a treasure chest. They are business men, and this is a potential resource.
• Finally: put some fun stuff in the bounty to seed future adventuers. I put in 1000 genetically pure and untainted humans in cryo-stasis. They have presented an interesting moral quandry, as well as an excellent resource when they REALLY need a barganing chip.

Finally, consider getting "Lure of the Expanse". It is a FANTASTIC adventure that will provide months of content, and adventure hooks for years to come. The Rivals are excellent as well.

Good luck with your campaign.

Thanks for your very helpfull comments

I agree that there are certainly good parts of the adventure, but there are some elements that I'm concerned about.

What if the players decide not to open the gene-locked box in public? A sensible captain would take it back to his ship first, and then how would Fel learn of the location of the lost ship?

Just how can you guarantee that Fel makes it through all his encounters alive? Is running away from a ship engagement easy if the other part wishes to pursue?

I've got Lure of the Expanse, but thought I'd start out small

Darth Smeg said:

I actually ran into exactly those to problems.

I'm less happy about how how I handled the first one. I basically had the old bondsman begin to get hysterical about the importance of completing his responsability and was lucky that the captain aquiesced to his requests. Another option is to start building up Fels information gathering abilities. In "Lure of the Expanse" he is one of the captains who NEVER sees the star map, but is able to divine the locations of some of the missing pieces using his spy network and intelligence. As long as they are on the station he can track their movements. When they try to find the location of the systems he can inquire after them. If they ask around openly there is no problem, if they talk to the astro-cartographer Fel can track him down, perhaps having Lady Ash extract the necessary information. In hindsight I wish I had done it that way.

As for keeping him alive: Rogue Trader ships are HARD to kill, and Hadarak Fel never leaves his ship for this endevor. You are much more likely to cripple them.

Once my players had the upper hand I had Fel politely hail them and aquiess and congradulate them on their success and request the captured Lady Ash be returned to him. I found this to be a good opportunity to nip my players murderous tendencies in the bud as I explained OOC the nature of chivilrous feudal warfare: armies fight until one side is forced to surrender, captured officers are treated well and expected to be returned (possibly for a small ransom) once the battle is over. I established the precedent that when lawfully competing with rival Rogue Traders (and since neither the PCs or Fel actually had a claim on the treasure it was considered fair game) certain forms were expected to be followed.

I told my players they were free to ignore the forms of battle, but stated there would be significant political backlash, and possibly a profit factor penalty due to influence lost if they were to murder a fellow Lord under the white flag.

They hate him for surrendering to this day and are always looking for excuses to "lawfully" get him killed either before he can surrender (not that he has had to), or when there is no one around to report their misdeed. Of course he is a canny foe and always seems to be prepared for their murderous tendencies. Hehehe.

::sigh:: and their supposed to be the "good" guys. Seriously, sometimes players can be messed up.

I've introduced a similar setup with my players. There is a generally accepted code of behaviour amongst the Rogue Traders that hostages are ransomed rather than killed, that a captured Rogue Trader can expect to be treated well and then ransomed.

Not all Rogue Traders follow this code, especially the more piratical ones. Generally its known which RTs can be expected to hold to good behaviour and which can not.

I don't penalise my PCs with PF reduction, although thats certainly a good idea, its more that if they get known for killing hostages, they can expect never to get their own people ransomed back to them.

And yeah, isn't it amazing how players sometimes develop rabid hatreds for certain NPCs. I find that it often happens to NPCs i wasn't expecting and hence they move from occasional baddies to top villains.