The title says it all. Rogue Trader is something like my Holy Grail of gaming. Somethig I've always admired from afar, but when it comes down to actually getting it, I have more "important" things to worry about. Obviously somebody likes it or nobody would be writing here right now. But whats it really like?

For me RT picks up the game where normally Campaigns stop. It is Epic gaming where you see that even the high and mighty have big and smaller fishes. It is however not for every gaming group.

It's good. It's an ambitious RPG system with a far wider scope than your typical "dungeon crawl" type game. It's designed to give players a good deal of freedom, and as such is demanding of the GM.

The players play what are in effect billionaires, controlling a vast spaceship packed with tens of thousands of crew. They have an open ended remit to exploit a largely unknown region outside civilised human space.

Even if you know 40k background like the back of your hand, it is more than capable of throwing something totally new at you, as the system covers unknown space. As such the background is less tied to the traditional 40k setting, arguably allowing for more innovation and creativity.

Personally, it's my favourite of the three core 40k RPG lines. Not everyone feels the same: some people on these boards have expressed very different opinions, though. I would say that if you have access to a good local game shop, have a look at it and take a view. The standard edition retails for about £30, which puts it a lot cheaper than, for example, a Forge World book, and less than the price of two official Codexes. The page count just for background alone makes it worth the money, I think.

I personally think its the best of the FFG 40K roleplaying games. For me it offers more in terms of combat than the other games, including the starship combat element (although they can be added to the other games). It combines investigation, diplomacy, politics, combat, and swashbuckling fun, allowing your characters to be as humble or power hungry as you like. And personally I like the chance to give the Imperium a bloody nose any chance I get, which is far harder in the other games.

In my opinion: Rogue Trader = Dark Heresy > Deathwatch.

Rogue Trader has a much broader scope then Dark Heresy, but it's naturally not for everyone. Some folks like dungeon crawls and mystery adventures which you CAN do with Rogue Trader, though it's also a lot more. For me, Rogue Trader feeds a certain level of egomania when I'm negotiating trade franchises with alien princes and establishing resource colonies for rare minerals and chemical compounds. When I'm a Rogue Trader, I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams and in control of something larger then I can imagine. I am a merchant prince with an empire spanning numerous suns, trade pacts and colonies bind me to more worlds then the Tau have ever laid claim to, some of their less obtrusive goods might even be lining my holds depending on what sector of space the GM sends me to. The enemies of Man fear me almost as much as the Space Marines; for when I am done plundering their holdings, there is little left save scorched earth and the ruins of their life's work. As you can see, Rogue Trader is loads of fun if you have the right mindset.

If you have read Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization series, the kind of adventures a Rogue Trader can find himself on would be very familiar to you. Nicholas Van Rijn is very much a Rogue Trader as the career is described in the core book.... with a healthy bit of Seneschal thrown in.

So far, the best comparissons I've found for the 3 different games are as follows:

Dark Heresy - Cthulu, you have to face down the big bad evil, but you really don't want to know too much about it, cause the more you know, the more likely you are to lose your marbles!

Rogue Trader - 7th Seas, High Adventure, swashbuckling on a massive scale! find new and/or ancient civilizations and "appropriate" them into your bank statement. Nothing is beyond your reach.

Deathwatch - 1st Ed D&D, Dungeon Crawls,mass combat, lots of combat, very killy characters (skills are there, and roleplaying ops too but you're a space marine, you are a genetically enhanced killing machine). Some would say, the most unbalanced of the 3 systems, though this also makes it the most like a Pen & Paper RPG and less like a video game or MMO, ie, not a zero sum game where 1 player is trying to win over the rest of the party.

My personal pref is Deathwatch, then RT, then DH. This is also, I'm fair sure, the rating of least micromanagement to most heh. Each game honestly has its theme, and its space for spotlight, because each game has differences enough that really, compairing them all against each other isn't entirely fair. Mileage for what you enjoy will be up to you and your players in the same vein as do you want to play D&D? Vampire? Shadowrun? you catch my drift. Just because all 3 games use the same rules system doesnt' make one intrinsically better, that's all a matter of what's enjoyable to you at the time (some days, I'm a lazy GM and my PC's are bloodthirsty goons who just want to blow stuff up! heh, other days, they want to cruise around the galaxy and make bank they very rarely want to consider seriously being illiterate so they can't read the evil books that will make them go insane...)

Rogue Trader is "Pick a mission. Then pursue it. Heck, maybe pick 2... But don't blow them, because you can go broke."

It's all about spotting, creating, or otherwise finagling ways to improve your business model... in an abstract, let's go do stuff vaguely related to it way. It's got lots of room for in-party finagling. And for dealing with any level of the Imperium one can even vaguely justify.

It's also the one where one can turn it away from RPG into a 4X boardgame...

(4X: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate)

It's also the low-prep game of the line.

Lightbringer said:

aramis said:

Heheh, different playstyles I suppose. I've found it prep-light, but improvisation-heavy.

Rogue Trader is demanding if the GM tries to control everything, which quite frankly is the absolute wrong way of handling it.

Kalec Fash said:

I concur, even the adventures only hint at a few solutions the players can come up with to solve the troubles. It gives a setting, shows the problem and leaves it to the players to solve things. It is the players choice if they want to be subtle about things or go in gunsblazing. No two gaming groups will solve the same problem the same way. It offers loads of freedom to everyone. I don't even bother anymore to think of solutions, that's the players job, not mine.

I'd say that it is THE game of FFG's 40k RPG series. It lkeaves you more options than Dark Heresy and certainly more character roleplaying than Deathwatch. If you've ever wanted to play a 40k RPG, definitely go for Rogue Trader!

In my opion RT is everything you wanted to do with 40k but coulodn't due to the Imperuim, In RT you can become allies with terrible Xeno's, want an Orc crewmate, with Into the storm you can, want to trade with Eldar Pirates, why not if the moneys good, it basically allows you to do all the things you wanted to do, but where against the imperuim

sorry the title made me think of "nudge nudge"

a nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat...