Hi all, first post here. I just got Rogue Trader and i have to say its not quite like any other RPG ive ever played (old D+D veteran here) and i'd appreciate a little advice here.

As it is i can see my players starting off by buying a barracks for their ship and every time they are planetside bringing a whole mess of troops with them everywhere they go, most any ground or space station encounter isnt going to last long at that rate and if i just start stacking things the other way by having most every foe they meet posessing a retinue as well then battles are going to degenerate from player vs player to army vs army and thats a route i really dont want to go down. Likewise i cant see any good reason to deny them a barracks or troopers and just telling them 'you cant do that' would be as painful for me as it would be for them.

I have a few other questions bothering me but this is the big one, can anyone set me right on this?

There are numerous ways to approach this.

For some encounters, force or the threat of force isn't going to matter much. Ancient archeotech/xenos mysteries unearthed can work for this as can worlds that respond better to carrot than stick. Also, the amount of troops carried on a vessel are only enough to cause a localized presence - they can't occupy planet after planet and still be assumed to contain endless troops. Just maintaining the troops themselves might end up costing more than its worth (not every ship with a Barracks keeps troops aboard at all times for just this reason).

Sometimes the troops offer an option to do adventures that might not otherwise be possible. They can be a good thing, and the upcoming Battlefleet Koronus book will provide rules for utilizing troops.

Consider too that the troops can often just be background dressing. In almost every case, the RT PCs will be far and away more competent and better equipped. After a few (or a few score) troops are lost to the [whatever], morale issues might cause the PCs to take the vanguard again to deal with the complication.

It seems that like a lot of GMs new to Rogue Trader, you've not fully grasped the scale the game operates on. Your players aren't running a bunch of wandering adventurers. They're playing people who have more resources and political power than the typical rulers of most RPG settings.

The PCs are supposed to have retinues of troops and such. They're expected to conquer whole planets in the name of the God-Emperor. So if the adventures you come up with are ruined by the addition of a company of Naval Armsmen from the ship, then you aren't working on the right scale. Army vs. Army should be more common than just the PCs against a handful of antagonists.

Think about the encounter you have written. Then imagine how many troops the antagonist would need to give the PCs a challenge. Then move this antagonist up the power scale until that many troops are present.

For example:-

You decide that you want to PCs to go into a shady bar and negotiate with an underworld crime boss. While there, a rival gang attacks and the PCs side with the crime boss, earning his trust if they can fight off the attackers with minimal loss to the bar and staff.

A typical bread-and-butter RPG situation. But it just doesn't work with Rogue Trader.

So we scale it up to:-

The PCs need the help of a notorious Pirate Lord. They have the location of the ramshackle station he operates out of, which a couple of Raider class ships in dock and some defences. They get permission to dock and begin diplomatic overtures, but in the middle of this unknown ships appear at the edge of Auspex range and fighting erupts all over the station. A rival group is attempting to seize the station, aided by some of the Pirate Lord's own people inside the station. The PCs are caught in the middle.

The Pirate Lord's palace gets stormed, meaning the PCs must engage in personal combat in the throne room. Then they have to fight their way out to their own ship and launch it. Then they have to fight off the enemy ships while at the same time helping put down the revolt inside the station.

Tantavalist said:

And halfway through all this the Seneschal whispers to the RT, "This is all going according to the plan I set up. Now we have a few more options, and I'd like to discuss with your the possible pay offs of siding with either party."

**** sneaky-git Seneschals...

Mmm, thats quite some food for thought, thanks for the replies guys, guess scaling up is the way to go.

And Tantavist.....that Seneschal you mentioned, i can so see a particular one of my players doing just that...

If you want to keep the action on a more personal level, you can also abstract the "armies" side of things a bit.

For example, there's a battle raging on the space station between your minions and the enemy minions. The PCs themselves will be engaged in a more specific tactical objective. "Kill the boss(es)" would be the most generic, but they might also be trying to acquire/activate some kind of machine, reclaim valuable cargo the enemy is trying to steal, or simply hold a given position against whatever comes for a given period of time.

All dice rolls and mechanical condsiderations are as concerns the PCs. The minions are running around getting their combat on, but don't bother rolling dice for them, they're just "fighting." Throw out some flavour text about small squads of men having a shoot-out over here, or a melee over there as the PCs move around the battlefield, but that's about it. If the PCs decide to stop and help a given squad of minions, roll a couple rounds of combat against the enemy and then dictate the outcome. After all, this squad has been pinned down for however long now, surely they've inflicted and/or taken some casualties by now.

Think of it like a war movie where the heroes are moving around doing their plot-based thing while dozens of faceless extras stand around, shooting at random things off screen or getting brutally slaughtered as the heroes run past. There's lots of action going on all over the place, but only the PCs matter enough to actually involve the mechanics. The game mechanics exist to keep things "fair" but that doesn't mean absolutely everything needs to be rolled out randomly. You are telling a story here, so let the narrative make the easy decisions about the minions no one really cares about.

I will take a moment to second the notion that the troops contained int he barracks are not infinite. Casualties can be reasonably assumed to get replaced over time (no need to roleplay that process unless you want to.) However, if the PCs start assigning units to hold given positions, they will probably run out soon enough. There's only so many men who can be actively doing something useful at once. If the PCs make a habit of throwing troops at everything hostile and disregarding the lives of their men, you can build that into a future plot hook. Perhaps the barracks is getting close to empty because of several repeated engagements without an opportunity to replace casualties, or perhaps its getting difficult to convince new soldiers to sign on because the PCs have developed a reputation of not giving a **** about the men under their command. You can introduce some kind of quartermaster NPC who directly manages the troops on board ship (an NCO-type official) and he can bring these issues to the PCs' attention. It might even be a wise idea to introduce this NPC when the barracks is installed and then let him sink into the woodwork until he's needed for plot purposes.

I also just started my first campaign in RT. My players not only have Barracks, but they also took Cargo & Lighter Bay and Murder-Servitors. In addition to this I assume that Lord-Captians have a personal and relatively elite bodyguard force at their command seperate of the IG that come with Barracks. I am also considering the ship's armsmen to be seperate from the IG that comes with the barracks. Am I being too generous here? My theory is that the armsmen would be a seperate military unit from the IG that handles space combat and ship security, while the IG represents a ground invasion force.

My players have outfitted their ship to be a close in knife-fighter that excels at boarding actions and hit and run raids. To me this all sounds fun and it didn't present a problem during our first session.

My players have not yet engaged in space combat but will next session. The did however have two combats. Whenever the players prepare to depart the ship, I ask who they are taking with them. For the first combat they we're alone agianst an equally matched foe, that was not intent on killing them. For the second they had room on the guncutter to bring up to thirty troops plus the 5 of them, a platoon leader, and the five man crew. They chose instead to keep the cargo hold empty and crew the craft partially themselves. This ended up leaving room for four combatant NPC "red shirts" to join, which were selected from the IG, I switched to narrative combat after a few rounds to establish the actions that the players were taking. I think it went very well.

That's all very useful advice given here and has saved me making my own thread as the scale was something I was struggling with a little.

Great forum and very information rich, lots of great ideas and loads of folks appear to be willing to help out too.

Ragnar Trollskin said:

Okay. If you buy barracks, you don't get the guardsmen/mercs for free...if you did, you just gave your players a huge free aquisition considering even a frigate can hold nearly a regiment of guardsmen. :S

DarianBlood said:

Rift said:

So Rift you'd have the players start the game with empty barracks? How would empty barracks give them bonus points for military endeavors? What exactly would you charge your players for the troops? I missed the listing for IG regiment in the Armory perhaps? What would its availability be? I think we will have to disagree. The players start with a stocked starship I think they'd have troops in the barracks. Or do you make your players aquire food, water, fuel, and ammunition as well?

Ragnar Trollskin said:

Well, I would assume that the Barracks allows for the Players armsmen to be better trained and outfitted, but simply begining with an entire Regiment because they baught a barracks? That seems a bit much. My players bought a Cargo Hold and Lighter Bay for their Frigate, a component capable of holding a lot of airpower. They began plan with 12 Arvus Lighters and 18 Aquila Landers. Not one Guncutter or Fury Intercepter. Just because the component can support a hell of a lot of manpower does not mean that they should start with it at the very begining. Unless your players have a Profit Factor above 50 I would not even consider an entire Imperial Guard Regiment. Maybe a company or something, but a regiment is a hell of a lot to start with at character generation.

At any rate, this argument will hopefully have an offical answer with Battlefleet Koronus being released this month.

Psyker11 said:

How did you determine what smallcraft they had in the lighter bay? My players also have the same component. I have already run an introductory published adventure Forsaken Bounty that assumes the players have a guncutter.

Ragnar Trollskin said:

Mainly It was my Players starting Profit Factor, 21. If your players are starting in the 40's or above, then by all means let them have a few more toys at the start of the game. Until concrete rules are given, hopefully soon, it seems like something you have to do different for each group.

Ragnar Trollskin said:

Yup, I wouldn't give them a full regiment of guardsmen. Its totally possible to 'buy' a regiment of guardsmen with the aquisition rules in the book(and with the added rules from Into the Storm) for your players. Me? My players came up with a totally cool idea why they should have one on board their ship and I ran a pre-adventure for them to enlist the regiment, with failure being a real possibility.

As for resources, no, I assume that most of the supplies they need are easy to acquire unless there's reasons to assume otherwise(war, famine, or getting macrocannon shells at a feral world). But if you want 3000 trained men, with all their equipment, from the DEPARTMENTO MUNITORIUM, assigned to your RT charter you better have a **** good reason.

Mercs would be cheaper though...?

My players got their ship by saving it from being auctioned off. It was naturally stripped clean during those years that the dynasty was not present. So no crew, soldiers... nothing except for a mysterious vault they can't open. They have really struggled to get a hold of soldiers.... ended up enlisting a lot of the people stranded by the Yu'vath space station.

Filled barrack or not would depend entirely on how they start off...

People are easy to find and cheap, good quality soldier are hard.

--- "This is the Captain of the Light of Other Days to all listening frequency on hive XXXXX, we will dock at gate ZXG, the first 2000 gang members, scum, violent men or women to present them self will be offered services within House Tlalama abord the Light of Other Days, with a weekly pay of XDF creds, the next 2000 will receive half pay and will be part of the reserves.

- Captain, won't that create a massive riot at the gate?

- I sure do hope, maybe the survivors will be strong enough to make a fighting force out of them. Or even better we may have a few that know how to hold guns this time."

crisaron said:

Hahaha.... yeah That was their dilemma essentially. They could have filled the barracks, but the troops would have been poor. They wanted good or average quality, so they only got 250 men. The upside was that they actually managed to equip them with some IG gear and some sentinels, since they were relatively few in number.

crisaron said:

Yes because members of gangs from hive worlds don't know how to shoot and don't know any kind of strategy or to follow orders...

Well, in my opinion, there is a HUGE difference between a gang of armed hive-scum and a squad of trained imperial guardsmen, who know a bit about fire-drill, firing discipline, unit cohesion and so on.

GregorM1980 said:

That was my argument to the players. Sure, they can all fire guns but will they be comfortable working together? Or even bother to follow unpopular orders? Teamwork is the difference between ok and excellent troops.

My PCs have amassed a military force too large to be held in their ships barracks with some 20,000 men under arms, 5,000 of whom are well armed, trained and armoured Skitarii on loan to the dynasty for a period of 1000 years. They also hava tank regiment of 300 armoured vehicles, mostly Leman Russ tanks.

They understand though, when this is all appropriate to use. If the Rogue Trader goes to meet a shadowy contact at a bar, turning up with a few hundred troops is going to scare the contact, and everyone else off.

Where it does come in useful is in invading planets, boarding enemy ships, etc.