Right, so I've managed to get a group together, and we're converging for the first time this saturday. We'll make characters (for about 4-5 players) and the ship, but I've suggested a 5-hour period, so I have time to run a little session to go over rules and what characters can do, etc. Unfortunately, as my first time GMing, I've no idea how much time will be left for the session, or how to design a self-contained scenario to cover a maximum of situations.

So, help please? Sorry I can't be any more specific.

Why not run one of the free adventures?

I suppose that's reasonable. Another possibility I thought of today was if I request that they add some archeotech to their ship. Then I can run a sort of prequel session, explaining how they got it. That would involve them possibly negotiating with some tech-priests for it (with a heavily difficult acquisition test), or they can help the priests by dealing with some bandit raiders or something, for which they are rewarded the tech as thanks.

Perhaps archeotech is a bit far-fetched, but what about one of the upgraded components?

Honestly, you will be lucky if you get to play the first session. Typically character, dynasty, ship, and group creation takes 3-5 hours, but good luck.

The adventure at the back of the book is an excellent adventures and provides lots of exposure to the different parts of being a Rogue Trader. In order:

1) the first fight demonstrates how POWERFUL they are, they will rip their enemies a new one
2) they get the opportunity to do some investigation and throw their weight around
3) next comes some space combat, and some decisions
4) some star trek style exploration
5) This combat (vs orks) shows them how much more powerful other things int he universe are. They will be running with their tail between their legs, and have developed a healthy respect for the power of the Ork!
6) finally they get to deal with a scheming rival

It is a great adventure and introduces a lot of the elements of the game.

Finally: you said this is your first time GMing. So there are 2 important things you need to be told.

1) You are not an author, a playwrite, or a movie director. a GM doesn't TELL stories, they PROVIDE stories.

#1 GMing mistake is thinking their job is to write a cool story. Really you just provide a universe, foes, interesting things that happen occasionally, and cause it to react realistically. You don't need to plan for every eventuality, you just provide situations and realistic reactions.

You don't need to come up with how they will escape from a trap, or the specific clue necessary to solve the mystery (though you can include some if you want). You just provide the mystery, the trap, etc. and let THEM figure out how to solve it.

2) Rogue Trader is a very high powered game. The sooner you come to grips with this the better your game will be!

Your players are soon going to have continent destroying ships in orbit, thousands of troops, billions in cash, lightsabers, guns that shoot miniature suns, and the influence to bring planetary economies crashing down. Realize this early on.

The first suggestion helps with the second. If you design an intricate combat scenario or diplomatic situation and they "send in the troops" or "nuke it from orbit" you are going to be an angry GM. If you just provide them with the situation and let them figure out how to handle it you will have no problem reacting to any decision they make.

Rogue Trader is a high powered, sandbox style game, which makes it a real challenge to GM, but if you can pull it off it is a very rewarding experience. Good luck.

3-5 hours? Wow, that's long. Okay, so I'll not prepare anything much, just largely ad-hocing dependant on time available.

A couple things to help speed things along: Try to make copies of any important sections. Having to share a book is a big reason why things slow down.

Give them a little bit of freedom in character creation, but no too much. Truly random isn't that fun, but full control isn't either. I use the rule: everyone gets two re-rolls or one choose the outcome. So if they really want the claws mutation, or a maxed out intelligence, they can have it. These re-rolls can also be used to "jump" on the origin path. I also let them use these as a group on the ship creation (they may hate the idea of a wolf in sheeps clothing, or really want a reliquary of mars).

They need to build a party dynamic, dynasty, and ship as a group. Use the origin chart to figure out where some of them have met, and how they know eachother.

They should be coming up with the kind of game it is going to be as a group (this goes along with building the dynasty and ship together). Crusading missionaries? Down on their luck miscreants? A special ops arm of the adeptus mechanus? Perhaps they were military officers together?

You should also work with them to come up with some specifics about their Warrant of Trade. How old is it? Is it well respected? If it was ancient and powerful, why do they only have one ship? If it is brand new, what did they do to recieve it?

What is the theme of the game, and what are their goals? You NEED this information to prepare good scenarios. Otherwise you'll provide a damsel in distress to agroup of mercenaries and rogues and complex underworld plots to crusading saints. They will blast past half of your story hooks without a second glance, and you will have wasted hours of preperation.

After character creation you should have a unique group of heroes, a ship with personality, a dynasty with history, and a tightly focused them and goal for your game. This will be invaluable to you as the GM.

Finally, if it is at all possible to get "Into the Void" BEFORE character creation, DO IT! It has some FANTASTIC additional rules, additional backgrounds, classes, ships, components, and dynasty origin path. If you can afford it, or your group can help you, get this book! The core book options are very limited.

Right, all good advice, thanks. I've done some theoretical stuff myself, making example characters etc, and a system I've found for stat rolls is that all rolls are made at once, but the players then allocate rolls to stats. So that helps prevent an arch-militant with awful WS and BS but great Fel, for example.

Re-rolls on ship creation for oddities and histories sounds a good idea, but I may only allow them one, and it's up to them which they use it for.

Incidentally, what do you mean by "jump" on the origin path? As in, they could be born on a Hive World, but use one of these to have a Scavenger birthright?

I dedided to use the premades for the first free adventure (printing the extra rules section for them as references) then ove the next few adventures they make characters and keep the earned xp. gives you and them a feel of the classes before jumping.

Then after the 1 or 2 games gave them the Warrant of trade and letting build their history a bit.

Dvil said:

Exactly. So if a Rogue Trader REALLY wants to have been a scapegrace or a scavenger, it is possible.

The only reason I made it 2 rerolls instead of one was because they had to split them between origin, stats, mutations, dynasty, and ship creation. For the most part it worked out that they spent one on themselves and one to help form their dynasty/ship.

Right, yeah. The reason I say one there is the fact that I'm thinking of adding choice to the stats, rather than re-rolls.

Also, do you tend to use models for your games? It sounds basic, but I'm indecisive about whether I should.

When it comes to using minis, always ask yourself: do you want it to feel tactical or cinematic. Do you it to be a first person shooter or a real time strategy? Half-Life or Warcraft?

As a rule of thumb if you break out minis your players will stop looking at the game from a first person, role playing perspective and start looking at it as a turn based strategy game. The world will stop being a 3d place with a sky and a horizon, and become a grid.

This isn't a BAD thing if you are after a war-game or very tactical feel for certain combats. But for me, I would usually prefer to keep my games cinematic.

Right, thanks. You've been dead helpful.