so i was wandering how rogue trader compares to death watch or dark heresy would it be fun for guys that play those to play this

thanks

Rogue Trader (RT) has a much greater scale. In RT, it's rare that you have a situation in which the PCs are alone and without support. Instead, they command a starship with tens of thousands of crew. Amongst that crew, the PCs are the most capable, but they will have minions (for better or worse).

There is also the openness that can be either bane or boon. In both Dark Heresy and Deathwatch, the PCs are typically given a mission by the GM (through an NPC) and a limited degree of autonomy with which to accomplish it. In RT, the players have control of where they go and what they do. If the players are self-motivated this can be wonderful (although it can be tough on the GM to keep up) , but if they would prefer to have missions given to them, it can be a detriment.

I would also advise against mixing the various characters and mechanics from the different game lines together. The pieces don't really fit together nicely, and there are plenty of threads around all three boards that expand on this.

It depends upon your preferences. Personally I would never play Dark Heresy, it reminds me too much of Call of Cthulhu. But I still think it's nifty. Rogue Trader is my personal favorite, owing to an obsession with the age of sail, but I could be encouraged to try Deathwatch. It boils down to what kind of game you're looking for.

Dark Heresy - Conspiracies, intrigue, and possible Lovecraftian horror. Very weak PC's who are simple cogs in a galaxy-sized machine

Rogue Trader - Age of sail/exploration-oriented. Absolute freedom. Becoming a banana republic dictator. Cortez-style pillaging and conversion of natives, shipping the treasure back home in massive ships. LITERALLY "Here there be Dragons" moments. Larger than life characters who often possess the resources of a 16th century Spanish colonial governor. Sometimes the focus isn't on the characters, but much larger events such as armies clashing or world invasion or fleet engagements. Also as Happydaze pointed out, the PC's set the agenda more.

Deathwatch - "CLEANSE. PURGE. KILL." cranked up to 11 with one-man army characters who live up to the 40k backstory about Space Marines being ultimate asskicking machines.

Right now I'm finding that my players with their rank 3 characters (including an ork) are about comparable to a starting deathwatch marine in sheer killiness since they have acess to resources that a newbie DW player just can't match. I'd almost say that levels the playing field, but my group still steps lightly around the one NPC marine I've had show up.

Worth noting we've also played Deathwatch and thus have a healthy respect for the epicness of the marines in that game. Most of the group prefers DW, but are slowly coming around to Rogue Trader as they realize just how massive and free the game can be. I personally prefer RT to the other two myself just for that sense of scale and sandbox like gameplay.

I also had an eldar ranger PC in the group for a while and used the assassin career from Dark Heresy with minor adjustments. The character didn't seem to overpowering, as he didn't have the same resources as the Trader crew, but he had decided advantages in one or two specialties. I've noticed a trend of saying that the DH careers don't mesh well with Rogue trader, but I'm afraid my game mechanics fu isn't up to seeing the problems. A search on the boards should bring up threads on it.

George Labour said:

wait you can be more then a human or are those just made up races

hereticmarine4321 said:

RT Into the Storm added a playable Ork and Kroot race. Any playable Eldar are house ruled.

thanks this will help seeing as they did not like only being human

hereticmarine4321 said:

Humans generally disliking or hating xenos is a pretty big bit of 40k, however. I wouldn't suggest letting most of the PCs play aliens, only one or two at most (out of a group of 6).

As already said the only official races besides human Kroot and orks. The eldar ranger was a quicky conversions using the base characteristics from Lure of the Expanse and Creatures Anathema with the assassin career from Dark Heresy used to get his skills and talents.

Mostly it was done to 'bribe' a player into playing in our group but as soon as he read the Ork bits from Into The Storm he decided he wanted to be an ork. Which is good as I personally have a harder time justifying the use of eldar as PCS compared to the Kroot or Ork.