Cromwell Bootstrap said:

Thanks, another book I definitely have to buy. Just out of curiosity, do they describe the paint schemes of the craftworld and corsairs?

Thanks, another book I definitely have to buy. Just out of curiosity, do they describe the paint schemes of the craftworld and corsairs?

The children of thorns have black hulled ships and armour

Can't find anything on the twilight swords though a picture that may be the big hat has generally darkish/grey twilighty colours.

Kaelor has apparently turned up before in GW fluff with paint schemes and everything

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Kaelor

TorogTarkdacil said:

spoiler and wild speculation alert

The marines are unstatted and only referenced obliquely as huge dudes in runed and sigiled armour that accompany Vall. Whether they are his masters/handlers or servants is unclear.

Vall is described as the 'Faceless Lord' and the word faceless is also used to describe the mysterious warriors. This puts me in mind of the first adventure trilogy for Dark Heresy where the big reveal at the end was the identity of the 'Faceless One', Eloeholth Palidius of Prospero. Could these guys be linked? Eloeholth appears to be out of favour with the ruinous powers but still a potent sorcerer and he could still have allies or pawns within Chaos. could valls faceless warriors be thousand sons or are they just keeping their helmets on? Perhaps a stretch.

I am still waiting for my copy to be made available...

... and since we are on the topic, is it just me or is the green truck been really slow this time around.

very very annoyingly slow.

GRRRRRR!

Where are you guys then? It's been out in the UK for a couple of weeks now

http://www.leisuregames.com/acatalog/Rogue_Trader__Fantasy_Flight_.html

My theory is that the Germans got the book first because the green truck can barrel down the Autobahn, then the boats got hijacked while passing through the English channel. Then, the ship crew got detained coming to the United States and Canada due to visa issues and the books have been quarantied ever since.

They have made it to Portland, Oregon. I just finished reading it today. Good enough to read front to back. Lots of great ideas. Every GM should get one. I would not want my players to read it.

One of the writers had described this as Disciples of the Dark Gods for Rogue Trader. Kinda, but I didn't find it as great as DotDG. The *evil* factor isn't as high, but you need more evil for Dark Heresy. There are hints of a dark secret moving into the Expanse. I'm hoping this will not be nailed down, and left up to the GM. EotA is very good, but DothDG blew me away.

The adventure at the back of the book is a nice horror/action scenario. I had to read the hooks twice before I realized this was a unique take on an Endeavour. Should appeal to players with criminal tendencies.

The art is nice and atmospheric, if a little "white-men-in-space" happy.

Anybody know how Unholy Aura works? The Walking Nightmare has this trait, but I missed the mechanics.

Nojo509 said:

I bought it about a week ago.

Morgaash Kulgraz and Da Wurldbreaka are insanely powerful! You'd have to be insane to go up against them at anything less than rank 4.

JudgeGrimm said:

That's deliberate. Imagine the way The Flying Dutchman was depicted in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and then make it Orky, and you'll pretty much have Da Wurldbreaka - an immense leviathan of a pirate vessel, nigh-unstoppable and with an infamous reputation.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Interesting take. Id rather save the imagery for a Chaos Vessel or Dark Eldar super raider, but still interesting.

Argh! Amazon says it won't ship Edge of the Abyss until the 26th. This makes me a sad panda. What are some of the other highlights from the book, other than Wurldbreaka and Chaos-y stuff? What are Rak'Gol like? What's their shtick? Is there any more stuff on Stryxis, maybe some of their ships?

You get a few pages on the Stryxis and stats for one of their ships. Not too much, but enough for a start. Hopefully a xenos book will add more.

Don't suppose we could get the stats for that Pulsar Lance, could we?

HappyDaze said:

Sweeeeeeeet, does it include the stats for an actual member of the race, and any gear?

Sure. It's on page 62.

The really nice part is that, while only Strength 1, it can roll to hit again following a successful hit and can score up to three hits in this manner. The ship mounts two of these nasty bits, so that's a potential 6 lance hits in one turn!

I did finally get mine a few days ago.

Great book, tho I will have to keep the Rogue Trader in my group from reading up on the other Rogues. Otherwise he will end up with a bunch of murder servitors and a titan that look just like him.....

of course, the only problem now is: I WANT MORE!

I've been reading my copy of this book over the last couple of days and must admit I'm rather underwhelmed by it.

It's not all bad by any means, but it does suffer from some of the things I often find myself complaining about re FFG's 40k rpg books.

Here's my thoughts and impressions;

Chapter 1 - Okay, not bad. Some good ideas buried amid the in-universe fluff, particularly the list of missing ships and the idea of the planet Althade's Vista.

Chapter 2 - Meh. There's nothing inherantly wrong or bad with the worlds detailed, but frankly a lot of them felt like reheated, very slightly longer, versions of write ups we've already seen elsewhere. Lucin's Breath for example, or the stations of the passage, all felt like I'd read them before and not much new was added.

Then we get to the imo intensely annoying policy of giving each location a mystery or secret ... which is never revealed or detailed! It's all up to the GM - even to the ridiculous extent of giving us a world that is apparently a Necron tomb world (probably) in Illisk, but then hedging about whether it is indeed a necron world ... and thus giving no firm Necron stats or items etc.

This policy is just plain infuriating imo. YES, before anyone says it, as an experienced GM of many long years experience of course I can make up my own answers to the mysteries. Heck, I can make up my own planets. However if I'm paying £28 for a 140 page setting sourcebook I expect the writers to have done that for me. If I don't like the official 'answers' to the mysteries, don't worry I'll just ignore them and make up my own. But by giving us no really thought through, detailed look 'behind the curtain' of each planet, we ALL have to make up our own stuff. Same old story.

Chapter 3 (Enemies) - I don't use Orks so I won't comment on them. The Eldar stuff is pretty good, I like the Eldar pirate lord, the ship, and the notes on the various Eldar factions - all pretty good.

The Kroot. I'm in the 'meh' camp on this race. I think they're okay as a sundry merc species, but I feel FFG are over-emphasising their presence in the Koronus/Calixis region. They're much rarer in my campaign than the official line. Nothing inherently wrong with the work on 'em here, it just doesn't particularly interest me above half.

The Rak'Gol. Pretty dissapointing imho. They seem a bit all over the place, they are described as being savage, brutal and beast-like, yet are apparently up to building void-ships and high-tech weaponry. Hmm, strikes me they are a not particularly inspired cross between the Orks, Tyranids, and movie 'Aliens'. I expect some excuse for how such beasts can build such high-tech stuff will be wheeled out later on ... but tbh they just don't work for me. I don't even like the way they look.

The Stryxis. Good stuff. Like it.

The Chaos Reavers section was also pretty good. I like the Saynay Clan (cool name!), and the addition of a very nasty local Chaos warlord in Karrad Vall is welcome.

Imperial Organisations - Yeah ... not terrible ... but also quite under-detailed and under-developed. The Thule-ists are good, as is Krin, and the Kasbalica imo. However the Ascelinites are rather bland missionaries when you cut through all the waffle.

The Cortelax are bafflingly piratical for the Imperial Organisations section of the book and seem more appropriately placed in the enemies section. Also the name is VERY similar to the already used Cortax (see RH) mercenary faction. Not good - did they forget they'd already used the word?

Chapter 4 (Rogue Traders) - Meh again. Winterscale, Chorda, and the others (with the exception of Trask - who I understand is the FFG house game's RT and feels inappropriately 'gameick' and out of place to me) are described okay, the ships are statted up well enough, but tbh I was left wondering really ... what are we meant to do with these guys? Again, they're not terrible, just not terribly useful imo.

Chapter 5 (the Adventure) - Not entirely awful. There's some good stuff in there. I wouldn't use it as written, but I did like the archeo-team, the maze setting itself (though God-Emperor I'd sell my soul for some thoughtful, imaginative, detail on what kind of things and encounters to fill these mazes with - what about some more detail on the lost civilisation of the Egarians - it's hard after all to make a ruin come to life without knowing almost anything about the culture that built it), the monster in the maze, the Crow Spirit chick. It's okay.

Okay, most all what strikes me about this book is that it doesn't read well. Imo. I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but the writing style all too often could best be described as being a cloud of obscuring and ultimately needless verbosity surrounding a core of largely empty vagueness.

For example; check out the Cortelax and the Ascelinites. A friend had the book before me, and I was chatting with him over the phone asking him what was in it. When he got to these factions, he ground to a halt, and clearly had to read pretty much the entire sections ... just to find out what each faction basically was! Not, to find the details mind you, just the basics. Check them yourself, the Cortelax in particular are cryptically worded for no good reason ... they seem to be kinda pirates, but the write up is so all over the place a simple paragraph long summary at the top of their section would be a big help.

The least any sourcebook should be is accessible to read. I don't think this book is. A friend of mine who reads extremely voraciously said to me he found his eyes sliding off each page, and that he had to keep going back over sections he'd just read to actually reread them to find out what was being said. I've had the same experience.

This writing style is something I've noticed in other FFG books and I HATE it. It's not like we're talking about 'in game' flavour text that can be read to players. These are write ups of settings, groups, and npcs etc for. the. GM.

I want to know immediately what a group or faction broadly speaking IS. I don't want hopelessly sprawling and turgid space wasting such as the overview of the Cortelax is a shocking example of.

On a more personal note ... am I the only person who thinks FFG's art style is woefully out of date? The paintings aren't bad per se, but these days we should be seeing much, MUCH, better imo. I'd like to see digitally altered and mastered art, photo-real art, photo-manips, and computer generated ships - like can be seen on fan sites for free (I refer you to Malleus DK). Basic painting art is ... well it feels old and out of date. Cheap even.

EDIT - I note the typos continue btw. I chuckled to see they even spelt Kobras Aquairre's name wrong this time (page 95).

Yes, the FFG writing style does occasionally grate, and I agree that sometimes leaving Big Secrets and Hints of Mysteries unresolved is unsatisfying, especially in a book explicitly for GMs, but I really don't get the complaint about art in FFG books. Yes there is some recycled art, but I personally love the paintings and don't find it out of date at all. Plus there is a number of great art pieces in RT books especially that are actually digitally altered and mastered as I understand. But that's all in the eye of the beholder and so on. What I find out of date is that FFG artists still adhere to the GW's artists' "only white people in 40k" mantra. I'd like to see more racial diversity in the art, plus more art of the strange new racial characteristics of 40k, like the voidborn, or hivers or whatnot. Personally I envision my 40k as being even more radically racially diverse, due to mutations, likely genetic engineering during the Dark Age of Technology, etc.

Adam France said:

I happen to agree almost 100% with you here. I enjoyed the ork section, but was disappointed on the lack of ork stats. Same goes for the eldar and the stryxis. However, I did enjoy the Rak'Gol more then you, but could have used more info (again stats). But I was flabbergasted by the notion that the Bloodhawk Kindred of Kroot hunt Rak'Gol for feeding/shaping. Yeah, the Kroot and what army?

But I do agree, much of the last few FFG 40K releases have been too much of the "it may be this, or that, but most likely this, or not, let the GM decide, maybe" feel to them. Some things are way too descriptive (The Implants of Space Marines) other things very vague (characters in starship combat, planetary descriptions).

I disagree on teh art. Painting style is always good, I would rather avopid computer generated art and what not. But at the same time, a different artist of style of artist would be nice. I enjoy the notion of original art, but throw us some previously used GW art in there as well now and then, to tie it in. I would also like to see at least one entry per book that is pure classic 40K that isnt already in the setting (so not new eldar, or orks, or kroot and so forth).

Just as Rogue Trader was no Dark Heresy and Into the Storm was no Inquisitor's Handbook, Edge of the Abyss is no Disciples of the Dark Gods. But hopefully we will get different and unique approaches in the near future (Battlefleet, xenos and so forth).

Peacekeeper_b said:

Yes, Into the Storm was no Inquisitor's Handbook... It was better. Well in my opinion anyway. Rather than a bajillion guns that all pretty much did the same thing, hit-and-miss advanced careers, gear that was stupid broken (I'm looking at you IH power fields), and really really really mind-boggling bad organization and layout, Into the Storm delivered exactly what I wanted and then some and was much better organized to boot, even if it did have less fluff overall.

I agree some more specifics and less "maybe this, maybe that, who knows?" would improve the line. Yet I do like a big "this mystery left to the GM." Just not one per page. The big shadow in the warp behind the Expanse? Great!

Details on what a major dead civ (Egarians, I'm looking at you) was about? Yes, I want to know. Help me set the mood for my players.

Razorboy said:

I'm in agreement with Razorboy on Into the Storm. A very useful and *usable* book.

I like Edge of the Abyss. There is enough there that is useful that will help me GM exciting RT games. My favorite bits:

• Legends, myths, and lies. Great mood setters and examples of documents your players might come across.
• "The Breaking Yards at SR-651." What a great place to make repairs, meet pirates, and do business.
• The Eldar: My players love the Eldar and Dark Eldar, even if their characters do not. They want more Eldar adventures, and these four Eldar (or 3 Eldar, 1 Dark Eldar) factions will help get that kicked off. I love the light cruiser.
• The Rok 'Gol: A chaos worshiping race that looks like the Geiger designed monsters from Alien? That shows up when the players are at any archeological dig site? Works for me.
• The Stryxis: My players are already fascinated by this race. Enough details and fluff to use them in many encounters.
• Chaos Reavers. Yes please. I'm already using the Brotherhood of the Horned Darkness as the power behind several rival rogue traders. Time to ratchet it up and bring out the big boys.
• Kasballica: Great. I've already built in a shadow war between the Kasballica and the Ameranthine Syndicate.
• Vaults of the Forgotten. I'll mod it before I use it, but it's a fun action / horror scenario. You could substitute the Ameranthine Syndicate for the Kasballica if that's the way your campaign is moving. And I really like the hooks. The PCs are minority investors with the control being in the hands of criminals.

Most of the rest isn't bad, just not as useful to *my* campaign. I wish they had cut all the space they devoted to rival rogue traders (there are enough in Lure) and really fleshed out the Disciples of Thule and the "mysteries" of the other worlds. Vehicles for each race would have been nice. Worlds that would have helped my campaign:

• a sample Pirate haven
• a high tech, but non-Imperium, planet to trade with
• a Thulian forge world

Nojo509 said:

Oh it does have some good. The orks were well written, just lacked real stats. The big bad of the orks is nice and all, but as far as Rogue Trader goes, all you have stats for is the big bad, a generic freebooter, gretchins and a squig with rules for PCs. Of course you could use Dark Heresy's creatures anathema. Im just saying, 3-4 variant ork stat entries would have gone a long way and taken only two pages.

Same goes for the Rok'Gol, an obvious combat foe for the game with only one stat line (and some alterations for a brood master).

The mysteries and rumors section was grand. But most I felt was kind of meh. I like it overall, but its not high n my shelfs of must haves and best ofs.