So, here's a question for all you GMs out there... how grimdark is your campaign? It struck me that, unlike a lot of the other Warhammer 40K situations, Rogue Trader is unique in that your characters have money, fame and freedom. It's completely possible that the crew actually lives an enjoyable life, full of adventure, humor, wit and success. So, how dark is your campaign, with 1 being GRIMDARK and 10 being "Flitting about the galaxy living the high life".

Mine currently rates at about a 7, at the moment. Plenty of humor, but high stakes at the same time.

I'm not sure at the moment. Our seems to be so far down the GRIMDARK scale that it's just turned wacky and gone the other way.For example, on of our characters witnessed the fall of his entire navigator house at the hands of the inquisition, and was forced to watch as everyone on board a ship (except him) was killed by a daemon over a period of months, and even now has this daemon following him around and waiting to kill him too. So he wears corpse-paint.

My missionary's defining moment of his past was when his ship's geller field failed and warp drive malfunctioned (well, they got sabotaged, but he doesn't know that), resulting in him leading a faith-fuelled assault on the engineering deck, allowing the ship's engineers to repair the geller field and bring them out of warp until they managed to clear the ship of daemons. As a result he's a bit deranged, believing himself to be the ultimate warrior against daemons, and wanting to craft a small army of chainsaw-wielding zealots like himself to hire out to ships as security against daemonic assaults. I'm thinking of upgrading his flamer to be vox-operated, firing every time he mentions his "ageing aunt Bessie".

Ours...Maybe a 7 as well.

Still a very GrimDark universe, life can be cheap, punishment can be harsh. The captain is more than willing to encourage the crews fanatical religious activities and witch hunts if it will root out a few mutineers. They are definately IN the 40k universe.

But for the most part it is definately a lot more high adventure and willingness to work with xenos, and since they spend most of their time outside of the imperium they don't have to deal with the worst of imperial extravegancies.

I'd say about a 6 for my group. We have plenty of laughs and the like, but the universe is a crumbling parody of what it once was, filled with mind shattering horrors and utterly inhuman evils. That being said, rather than lying down and playing dead, the players have decided to 'fix' the region in space they're in, attempting to convert it into something much closer resembling Ultramar. So despite the grimdark cthonic horror of the universe, they're still fiiled with hope and I haven't been able to beat it out of them.

They are around 9, non RT characters are around 1, they had their entire crew purged for threat of a Genestealer infestation and got a Inquisitor executed for using authority he didn't have against the RT (the punishment made by a Cardinal, one of the few individuals with enough power to boss Inquisitors around if he wants). Thousands of non-RTs can easily be sacrificed and bought at a low price, the RTs themselves use equipment worth more than most regiments of troops. The RTs have it good although they are still in risk of death during their missions, everyone around them are unimportant enough to be considered just another resource or possibly a rival.

About a four here. Things are pretty messed up, maybe because the players are semi-legal pirates.