I really like Rogue Trader, and I and my group are having an excellent time with the campaign I'm currently running...but one thing I wish Rogue Trader had covered was the rules for actually building a colony. Oh, there's endeavours and the like you can build and use to set up the colony...but i'm talking about colony stat lines, 'talent's and/or 'skills' for setting up a colony...or to put this another way, you know how ships are almost like NPCs in and of themselves? something like that but for a colony or star system.

Right now i'm sort of winging it with colony rules, and at some point or other I might have to put them into a PDF for later distribution. but I was wondering if anyone else out there had a group and/or ship crew that was interested in building a colony (or string of colonies) and actually building a planetary legacy. Profit factor is one thing, but my players have really gotten into the idea of building a true home for themselves and their dynasty. it's actually been a lot of fun and something I hadn't expected but such is the life of a GM.

The group I play with was actually given the task of rebuilding/reclaiming a lost colony as part of the warrent of trade.

I'm pretty sure our GM is winging it too. Rules would have been nice since the whole coloney thing is even mentioned in the book (unless of course I'm thinking of another system ).

I'm bumping this thread out of curiousity if anyone has come up with something similar.

As in a similar thread, I recommend trying to convert Fields of Blood . Gives your players something to do on the side between their usual adventures.

I think i made a thread back on the whole "how many people does a colony need to keep going". Cant remember how it all ended, but something on the lines of at least 5000 men to be viable to continue and 500 to be self sufficient for a while (battallions are usually the onlymilitary strength formations that can be self sufficient in the field).

Plus the subdivisions of labour are interesting.

Dunbars number states that realisticly people only intimitly actually know 150 people, so you may want to bear in mind that that is how they will subvide themselves into villages/clans etc.

Then in GURPS i read somewhere that military ranks are subdivided normally where 1 person has usually somewhere between 6-15 subordiantes because thats the optimum number an average person can delegate tasks to, so the social units will have in the region of these amount of leaders. Social units generally comform to Michaels 'iron law of oligarchy', that is to say elites naturally occur when delegation of decision making in a community has to take place, so you may want to think about NPC leaders your dynasty will have to deal with and how many of them.

As to what it takes to set up a colony, you would probably need to make roleplaying surveying a priority first. A colony on a cold planet will need different needs to a hot one. However certain essentials will be needed:

Habitation/Shelter

Sustenance

Fuel

Into the storm has modular hab units that our dynasty has aquired for our colony, which give a nice initial start. Other things include a hydroponics dome and generators. These need maintenance, so unless you want your colony falling into barbarism you will require at least:

1 Tech priest -6-15 people with tech use skills, or servitors

Do you want to be able to maintain contact with your colony?

Astropath -6-15 lay Attendants

Generally per 1000 people there are 1-3 enforcers of law & order, at least according to stats on earth. This is the average around most nations.

Want to keep them into the Imperial Faith?

1 Imperial Preacher (attendants probably not ncessary if they are a missionary)

As for Trades this is tricky. I made a NPC trade generator, taking all the skills from RT and DH but clearly some of them will be more usefull according to the enviroment. The ones Ive bolded are teh ones I think will be more usefull for a starting colony

Trades roll 3d10:

1) Agri : Obvious really. It they can grow their own food so much the better
2) Apothecary: Theres usually at least 1 in the settlement with first aid skill
3) Archeologist
4) Armourer
5) Artist
6) Astrographer
7) Cartographer:

8) Chymist
9) Cook: Because one of the perks of founding a new colony is that you dont have to eat synth food or corpse starch any more.
10) Copyist
11) Cryptographer
12) Embalmer
13) Explorer: You need one person who is willing to look over the hill...
14) Linguist
15) Mason: Habitation requires maintenance and when the population grows you need someone to build more stuff...
16) Merchant
17) Miner: Staple of colony sci-fi jobs. If you cant sell food then you sell materials
18) Prospector
19) Remembrancer
20) Scrimshawer
21) Shipwright
22) Soothsayer
23) Tanner. Depends on the abbundance of animals arround. Clothing of some sort is a necessity
24) Technomat. To help the Tech Priest and nasic maintenance
25) Wright: To build masic tools
26) Valet
27) Voidfarer
28) Reroll as +10
29) Reroll as + 20
30) Roll again: get up to 2 skills (keep rerolling)

As for settlement defence that is up to you. I would go with enough arms for all of the colonists (its a big bad universe) out there, but sensibly unless you are swizerland and love the idea of a citizen militia you don't allow everyone to have a firearm in their wardrobe, because its just leads to massive social unrest so these need to be held in a secure armoury, with a faithfull attendant, allowing possibly only hand guns and firearms with a low rate of fire depending on the nature of the local threats. which probably would dictate the amount of troop.

High Level threats-500 (they expect the need to hold out and run their own affairs until relieved)

Low Level - 6-15 men (A squad of men that is roused to sort it out without much fuss. Probably double up as the enforcers)

Well my two Geld on the subject is thus.

Step 1: Locate and claim a good spot of a Colony of some odd strip. Depending on what kinda of colony its going to be there may be a bit more work included in this stage. If you mining a Airless rock, just plunk down near a Motherlode. if you are doing farming, things get complex fast

Step 2: Gather Colonists and resources needed. Again the type of colony is a big factor here. If its some fly by night Mining op that you will fold up and move when the what ever your minings crucked out, it will need much different stuff then a permanet settlement.

Step 3: Get the People and the stuff to the sight and build it up, make sure to calculate how often you will need to send supplies and replacements till colony is self sufficent if it can be made so (its **** hard to feed people on rocks and slag when your mining airless moons)

Step 4: Leave someone non vital in charge, most likely a trusted crew mate who is kinda geting up there in years. Someone you can trust, someonr who will do a good job, and someonr not DUMB enough to cross you. Also provide for the defense of the colony.

I feel the lack of rules is to show that building any kind of colony is massive project and has so many variables you need to really plan things instead of make some rolls and have everything tip top.

From what i can tell from the book and this post, setting up a colony will more than likely be run as a large sized endeavour. if you want an easier go, please acquire a Mass conveyor. 30k crew+ up to 500K of random passengers and 4 cargo holds. even in the 40k universe, U-haul still exists

LOL, That was funny Void, and I am sure you are still planning on Astropahting U-Haul (Universal Hauling) for your little project of salvage.

Has anyone actually done a conversion of the "Field of Blood" Book?I have it, but am not sure how I'd use it for a colony in 40k.

If you were able to find some Old "Traveler the new era" books; They had a whole sourcebook dedicated to the building of colonies. It is very Complex and not very 40kish but it should give you some good ideas.

I like your rules, Harlock. I think an awful lot will depend upon the type of world you're trying to colonise, though. Colonising a moon with no atmosphere is going to be far more expensive than, for example, colonising a paradise world where colonists can literally pick food from the trees.

I do think it's worth considering some rules to cover this idea...I might have a go at drawing some up...

I would love to see this developed further. I was thinking about this just the other day!

Morkalg said:

I agree. Colonization and governing planets fits the theme of RT. Plus, it would give the players a feeling of frontier life the system right now doesn't deliver.