Hello everyone. As the title states, I am familiar with the 40K universe (I've played 40K, Necromunda, and Dark Heresy). I've also read some of the books and have a decent understanding of the fluff. I recently purchased the Rogue trader rulebook and am planning on GMing a campaign this summer.

I've been busy with school, and I haven't been able to read the rulebook for Rogue Trader as thoroughly as I would like, so I've got a few questions that hopefully someone can answer.

1. The player who is a Rogue Trader character is essentially the captain of the ship, correct? This means that essentially they can do whatever they want. While a sandbox game is great, how do nudge your players in the right direction in terms of plot? I'm not suggesting railroading, but I don't want them to venture into places I don't want them to go (aka, places I have not fully thought out).

2. Since the ship is filled with thousands of people, and the character can't be awake all the time, who takes second or even third watch?

3. Because there are so many people aboard the ship, why would a character ever leave the ship without a bodyguard? Does this mean that combat on the ground is large scale (compared to Dark Heresy)?

I have more questions, but since they are about rules of the game I'm hoping I can find them somewhere in the book.

thesavage said:

1.For every action there is a reaction.The fact that they are rogue traders doesn't make them imune from imperial justice,just the level of crime and freedom for player is greater than for dark heresy players. Present them with an enemy that could not be beaten but could be run from, or a misfortune that they must solve imeadiatly so you can delay them. Or present with complication for finding and navigating towards that objective. Fear tests,etc..

You can use rummors,requests from different organizations,letters from different employee of the dinasty,misfortunes. You can provide small and enticing clues for different mysteries to steer them to the desired path.

2. Usualy the ship can run itself while the rogue trader antourage is away or asleep. In the unusual situations(provided by the GM) it depends on the crew rating but usualy less than the players. So you can have the majordomo wake the player in the middle of the night so they will have to run to the bridge to try to solve the problem.

3. Usualy crew is crap.

There are 2 ways to doing things in the Rogue Trader but with a little luck the rogue trader can command vast armies:

a. Only the ship players with some body guards. They can be efective but cannot fight entire armies, so they have to run.

b. With the abstract representation of troops the rogue trader can sit on the command bridge of the ship and use different commands(linked with the command talent) to supervise the ground war. Each troop choice(both by size and troop quality ,armour,weapons, training,vehicles,attack craft,etc) has a abstract values and how the ground war is fought you can find in Frozen Reaches and Battlefleet Koronus.The rules for vehicles are found in Deathwatch Rites of Battle and Rogue Trader Into The Storm.So if they can afford and have time to go for all the aquisitions they can command vast armies.

Of course there are situations where a more precise operation is needed to be taken by rogue trader like a boarding action or defending from boarding action so the rogue trader and other players will have to lead the troops personally.There is the reverse situation where the enemy is too great to tackle alone and they need so to bring an army for success and let the army do the fighting so that they could concetrate to do commando style raids on the enemy, or sneak and snach the desire prize from the noses of the enemies.

One thing to know that ships and ship combat will play a great role in the future of their career so will diplomacy,trade,navigation,solving riddles,etc so make sure they don't ignore them.

Hey there, welcome to Rogue Trader!

thesavage said:

Personally, I haven't GM'ed a game of Rogue Trader yet, but I do think that you could create "situations" that the players will make use of - it's not railroading as long as it doesn't feel that way, after all. There's nothing wrong with a few hooks as long as the players still have that feeling of freedom and don't think they are forced to do something. Such gentle nudges can be as simple as rumours or knowledge amongst NPCs - the players will likely make use of all their assets instead of just blindly plotting a course through the warp. On the other hand, you could also try to set aside a few generic ideas that you can insert regardless where your players take their ship. In the end, Rogue Trader surely is a challenge on the GM in that he would have to improvise a lot, as is always the case when you have players going off on their own. But I think this is what makes the game so special and fun to play.

I'm sure others can provide more useful advice on this one.

thesavage said:

Ship crews are huge, and bridge crews are likely equally huge. In a way, this is the same thing as with various sci-fi movies, books and series that have one prominent cast of bridge officers - few people wonder how it is that they always get to see them and not another shift when stuff happens. You could "gloss over" the whole thing just like that, too, but if you and your players like a high level of detail, expand your NPC roster appropriately and get a Third and a Fourth Officer in addition to the First and the Second one.

This doesn't mean that your players would miss any of the action - just that you would have a specific NPC that would brief them of the situation when they get called to the bridge!

thesavage said:

This one really depends on the players, and I've heard of both extremes - player characters doing everything by themselves, and having everything done by servants. I think that, for Rogue Trader, the happy medium is the way to go: Combining actively engaging player characters with NPC cohorts at their beck and call. It depends entirely on your players on which option they choose, but of course you have the tools necessary to affect the results of their decisions, both in the game (every action has a reaction) as well as out of it (giving subtle advice to the players).

In regards to your question: It really depends on the situation. A Rogue Trader and his trusted "inner circle" can get caught up in combat without any of their soldiers by being surprised at a banquet, just as much as the Rogue Trader can command an entire planetary invasion and issue orders to an army of thousands. The "Battlefleet Koronus" supplement has special mass combat rules for the latter. However, in most instances, the player characters will likely opt to take a small detail (20 men or so?) of armsmen for protection - and there's really no problem with that. Should you feel that this would unbalance the encounter, modify it appropriately, but keep in mind that these armsmen are, in the end, just cannonfodder. I think you could even use the Horde rules from the Deathwatch RPG for them if you don't feel like rolling for dozens of NPCs, should fighting ensue.

Others answered most of the questions well, but I thought I'd touch on one point. Motivating Rogue Trader's is very easy. Everything is about profit. Dangle an opportunity to earn more profit and they will jump at the chance.

Also, leave some space for them to move; getting them to the next endeavour you've got planned is great, but if some unexpected event/situation/lucky roll happened and the players are quick on the button ot exploit it somehow for profit, that in itself can launch them toward a player-made endeavour, and you got to wing it.

Since there have been many great pieces of advice, I will keep my 2 cents reserved strictly for your 3rd question.

Usually a Rogue Trader would not leave his ship without a bodyguard of some description and then again, why should he? He is an important figure in a trade-empire spanning several suns. It would not do, not to have a few flak-wearing meatshields between you and any simple lowlife with a poor-quality stubrevolver.

I suppose that whether or not they go with a large detachment of bodyguards or just a small group (or none at all) depends on the characters. Did your Rogue Trader player make a bloodhungry warmonger of a captain, whose purpose in life is to line his pockets with the gold that he meticulously beats out of every new world he comes across, with his neuroflail and a 1st edition copy of the "The Emperor's Fury - the beginner's guide to self-righteous genocide". Because if he did, then in all likelyhood you should prepare for a large bodyguard detachment, including, but not limited to quite a few combat servitors and a few fanatics for flavor.

On the other hand, if your RT is a flamboyant and happy-go-lucky, sabrefencing swashbuckling explorer who is larger than life, then maybe he would limit his bodyguard to his closest friends and their personal entourages. Either way, your players will be looking to you, to breathe life into the world, as shaped by their decisions.

I think this picture is a great example of what to expect when you're playing Rogue Trader. I can easily imagine the players doing something like this for their entrance.

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w71/Nearyn/Imperium_Marches_On_by_MajesticChicken.jpg

Indeed. It depends heavily on the group. For example, someone here (Gribble_the_Munchkin? Sorry, I don't remember) posted that their PC's have an army nearly twenty thousand strong, with many of them elite troops. My group, on the other hand, is 4th - 5th level, with a high PF, and the Lord-Captain only has 100 armsmen at his disposal. Admittedly, they've all got meltaguns and stormtrooper carapace, but still, there's only 100 of them. The players are perfectly happy with this, and everyone is having fun. The RT leads from the front with the other PC's and a few armsmen; he tries his 70+ charm skill first, and if that doesn't work he switches to Powerfist & Daemon-bane sword.

The one constant is you, as gamemaster, can not railroad the players. Even a starting rogue trader group just has too much power to be pushed around. But, they can be led... have an ally ask them a favour. Drop a juicy roleplaying opportunity. (That's what character background is for.) Wave a fistful of thrones under their noses and see if they follow up on the opportunity. Or, simply have an enemy mess with them unprovoked. This works. My group started with Lure of the Expanse as level 1 newbies, finished it more than a level ago, and we're still tying up loose ends. If anything, my PC's have too many dangling plot threads to follow up on.

Cheers,

- V.

So, don't be afraid of allowing your players to do as they please with bodyguards or going places. They are 'immune' to Imperial law as long as they are outside the boundaries of the Imperium. But inside the imperium, they are just like other powerful people. Howeer the big I is watching them. If needed the RT is removed from the board. Could be an assassin or a Calaxis Sector warship or a rival.

Remember, the RT has a big group of very powerful enemies. His rivals. Every other RT in the sector to be precise. It will take some wiggling around to avoid yourself being gobbled up by more the more powerful ones. It can be dog eat dog out there.

Which brings us to an important part. Reputation. It does not matter what people think about you. If you want to be a coward letting your underlings do all the work that is fine. Except, your peers. Those Rivals I mentioned earlier. They DO matter. Do you want them to think about you as being weak, cowardly even?

I've currently got a solo game of Rogue Trader going (where I just hired my first NPC crew member. No more mono-servitor for my piloting ;D) on, so I can't comment on what would be good, as this is only my first game. However, I've always liked treating the crew like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean, or Sid Meier's Pirates!. You're making the decisions, and getting the screentime. Sometimes, you may want to take some guys with you, but they're generally for dramatic effect, in my opinion (like when you bring a couple of guardsmen with shovels while you hold the map, to do the heavy lifting/digging when you find Fel's buried treasure ;D), or for a background fight to 'even the odds' (the Orks and the Explorers do the real fighting, while the crew you brought with your are battle dressing, to fight the Ork's battle dressing, fighting the Gretchens in the background)

You could of course always decide to let no player be the holder of the Warrant. In this case the Rogue Trader will be an npc played by the GM and/or any players choosing the Rogue Trader class will be younger members of the family, training to possibly become heir to the dinasty or at least getting command of one of its ships. This will allow you as GM to decide on the general course of any campaign and might be a good way to introduce new players to the particular style of a Rogue Trader campaign.