Hey folks

I am a "Wannabe" GM hammering out a Series of adventures for a Rogue Trader game that I someday hope to run (I want to have a nice back log of stuff to throw at PCs first before I start getting really looking for players.) Anyway I wanted some advice before I throw my self face first into the meat grinder.

First off after reading some other posts here I know that with the right actions PCs can pretty much buff there Skills and Rolls so that it would be near impossible to fail so I was thinking of saying that the Hard Cap on any roll would be 75. Meaning that they PCs would never be able to push their skill rolls past 75%. Just wondering if this woulkd be fair

Second off I was thinking on pulling back the effective ness of Lances so that instead of bypassing armor they only halfed it ( 8 armor becomes 4) Again is this too much?

Third off I want to give my players a chance to make their own way, Have them tell me what their next job should be and by next game session be able to produce the wanted adventure. I am ok with Exploration challanges and Combat stuff and I can fake Trade stuff but I am honestly pretty lame at making politcal stuff (ya know the complex back ground web of alliances, factions, Power Brokers, Gelt Brokers and the like) and I for the life of me cannot get my head around pure economic stuff Like trying to set up a cold trade or setting up a Bankbranch office (Or futures) What can I do to improve my skill set?

fourth off One of the adventures I am building is inspired by the song Hotel Californa (by the eagles) and I am thinking of setting it on a space hulk with the fancy sounding name like Hotel of the state of damnation or the like. Too Much?

5th off I can do with just some genral tips on how to run "Spooky" stuff (garbled messages, Apocolypse logs, Stuff Man Was Not Meant to Know) and the like.

6th off. Any hints in general.

Any help would be muchly liked.

Lord Steel said:

It doesn't sound unreasonable if it makes you feel more comfortable to limit their ability to twink the system. As a house rule I think it's fine as long as your players are willing to accept it. I wouldn't use it myself, but that's just my personal opinion. I've learned two things in my time as a GM that pertain to issues like this: #1) players who are really, really good at one thing usually suck at a lot of other things, so being nigh-impossible to fail at, say, combat attack rolls, only really unbalances the game if all you ever do is combat. If you make a point of mixing up the challenges, people will come out roughly even. #2) Players have a funny way of rolling REALLY badly just when you were expecting them to roll well and laugh off whatever it was they were up against. So letting them be really good at something (particularly some that's apt to get them killed - like combat) can be advantageous in preventing what you thought would be a quick and easy fight from turning into an all-night drawn out affair.

Besides which, most GMs are generally telling a story in which they expect the heroes to succeed eventually, so might as well let them have their fun while they're at it. But you need to be having fun, too, so if this rule keeps your own interest peaked, that's not something to shake a stick at.

Lord Steel said:

Again, it's not unreasonable. Use it as long as everyone at the table is cool with it.

Lord Steel said:

I've tried to go this route with almost every game I've run in recent memory, and I've almost always found my players looking back at me, waiting to be told what's next. My best advice on this mark would be to have two or three "missions" of your own design prepared ahead of time and just let them pick from those. If they really want to go off on a tangent, then you can deal with that as you see fit (there's nothing I can tell you that a decent ability to improv won't fix) but I don't think they will do that too often.

As far as the complex political web and the "economic stuff," I wouldn't worry about making up too much detail. Odds are the PCs won't even notice half of it anyway. Have two or three NPCs who each want something from one another and who are each willing to entertain asking the PCs for help if the right circumstances arise. Once the PCs are finished listening to the requests, they'll choose which way to go and be perfectly happy with the results, whatever those might be. If you want a decent "political" feel to the plot line, all you need to do is not punish them for making the "wrong" choice. The whole point of a plot like that is that there is no "wrong" choice, just the choice you made. Maybe the choice is between the lesser of two evils for a nice morality hit, but either way they should walk away having made a quantifiable choice. Perhaps the NPCs they sided with (or against) will show up again later to cause more havoc.

With regards to an economic plot line, odds are your players don't know much about all that stuff either, which means you don't need to worry about getting the details right. I'll admit I don't know exactly what you mean by that, but keeping a plot line simple is always beneficial. Stuff you think is obvious isn't always so to the players, so spending too much time "getting everything right" often ends up in time wasted on details the PCs never even notice or ask about.

Lord Steel said:

It would be too much for me, personally, but lots of "official" ship names are over the top like that, too. I think it fits the 40k universe well enough.

Lord Steel said:

The spookiest encounters I've ever (successfully) run are the ones where the PCs run up against something that's probably evil, but not immediately hostile. They encounter a ship captained by a man who is very pale, who grins a lot and makes vague statements that avoid revealing why he's asking you to do stuff. He's clearly powerful, enough so that the PCs should think twice about shooting him, but he doesn't get angry very quickly. He just smiles and asks politely. He's not an obvious Chaos agent or anything that would trigger an "Evil! Kill! Kill!" response right away, but there's clearly something not right about him. Don't be afraid to use tacky cliches from horror movies rethemed for the 40k universe. Players have a way of not objecting to stuff like that in the thick of the game, I find.

Lord Steel said:

Particularly with regards to "how to make a spooky game" or "how to make a political intrigue game" I would suggest tracking down and renting a couple movies with similar themes to what you want to achieve. Watch them, then spend ten minutes or so after each one brainstorming your own ideas. don't rip off the movie directly (if your players catch on it will ruin the atmosphere) but don't be shy about grabbing a particularly entertaining character or plot device and seeing how you can fit it into your own plot.

Well what I meant by "economic stuff" should have read exploting economics for personal gain (40k style) .

For example lets say Player A is a the Broker/Spymaster type (I have NOOO hope of spelling the class name right but I think its Senchal) gets the idea to corner the Copper market in a sector and Players B through D think that sounds like a good idea since its less likely to get them shot at. So they tell me this.

Now I have very little clue on how that would work. Is the best way to try and bribe the Miners guild to work for them? Set up there own mines while hitting the other mines in secret? Discreetly direct a Ork fleet to the main mine world, let them wreck stuff and then sweep in like heros and claim spoils? A bit of everything? Then what will be the long term effects of this? How can they cover them selves if they do do dirty deeds (done dirt cheap) what mistakes can they make that would lead Imperial Law Enforcement after them? I don't need to get things perfect but I do need to figure out what kind of rolls to throw at them for any given choice of action. I am probably over doing this aspect but to Paraphase "No pre game plans survive first contact with the PC's" and I want to cover my bases.

Lord Steel said:

It's Senechal.

Frankly, you answered your own questions really; the Players would have to do those things (and others if they can think about it, like buying out mining companies with cash or intimidation) to corner the copper market. And all the long terms problems, they would need to think about them. As they are in the Expanse, the real problem would come not from Imperial autorities, but from other rogue traders, pirates, Xeno raiders and the like. As for rolls, go with logic; they want to arrange a trade deal, roll commerce or barter. Convince the miner to stop working, eihter charm or deceive or even intimidate. Command rolls to order men to sabotage other mines (that is, if the PCs don't decide to do it themselves).

Oh and for your Hotal California in space thing, if you plan on making the Space Hulk like some sort of Death Trap like the story in the song, go for it; just don't make it balantly obvious that it's what gonna happen.

Ah thanks muchly on both the spelling and pointing out that I had answered my question (*Face Palm* I am such a nerf.....ahhh Frak head)

The matter is not so much that I am leary of doing it its just I can't come up with a half decent name I want something punchie but not overt (well not till after the PC reanme the Warped Damned thing.) Its another weakness of mine, just can't think up "good" names.

Sins of Ambition.

Lord Steel said:

The major theme of Rogue Trader is exploration. If they find something that is unoccupied but named it usually means one of the following:

- The easily accessible good stuff has already been taken. While there may still be some treasure, it will be harder to get at.

- There is a very good reason why they haven't taken the good stuff.

So if it's an unnamed Space Hulk, it has a better chance of having accessible valuable treasure than a named one.

That is a very good point actually (though after they get off the **** thing alive I am so nicking the name suggested by Errant.) but thanks to a friend of mine I have at least come up with a decent name for part of the Hulk. The Pride of Aquile nick named the Hotel Aquile was the closest thing 40 k had to a Cruise liner where the Rich and very well to do traveled to Serveral major Garden worlds (and a few of the nicer Hive Worlds) in oppulent style over the course of 3 years per round trip. It was presumed lost with all hands when its Warp Drive imploded after a freak encounter with an asteroid. It is said that the Idle passangers had taken with the a good portion of their wealth with them on these trips and if anybody ever found the ship again they would be wealthy beyond there dreams. How this ship has come to the Khoronus Expanse is unknown as in the danger aboard but wealth and glory may be waiting.

Ok sorry to ramble on like that, just a little proud of the idea.

Nice history, original as well ('least according to me)

Let us know how it all went down, will'ya?

As far as your proposed Lance house rule goes, it seems from several posts that many people (myself included) feel that Lances are just fine as they are, and if anything might be slightly under- powered compared to Macrobatteries when used by characters with a high Ballistic Skill.

I'd advise against making that change and leaving things as they are. If nothing else, halving armour means that a Cruiser will have 10 points of armour against a Lance strike, meaning a better than 50% chance of it not doing any damage. Trust me, the Lance rules are fine as they are- if they seem overly vicious, they're meant to be. Compare how expensive a Lance is to install to a Macrobattery- this is where balance comes into it, not in the amount of damage done.

BTW a lance/macrobattery combo from the core rulebook, does less damage than dual Sunsear macrobatteries.

Nerfing lances means making them less than useless. Actually they are dead weight.

Giving lances 2d10+4 damage for titanforge lances, means.......still being less effective than dual Sunsears.

If aynthing they need a huge boost or suffer the fate of lasguns in 40k. Flashlights, unless taken in bulk nobody cares.

Well I had heard about how PC's would tear into ships with Lance and Bording parties and Scuttle a whole encounter but a really had not done the math on what my changes might do. Thanks for setting me straight on that, so I guess the Lance nerf is.....nerfed? De nerfedified? .... i like that last one I might make it a Ork Krooza name.

I may actually start looking for Players soon-ish after I get that Space Hulk mission more fleshed out (Creepyness needs a bit of work plus I need to actually get to work on the nuts and bolts) and I need to start work on the Intro adventure.

And while I have folks attention I may as well get feed back on the general idea.

See I want to start the PC's off with a Grand Cruiser / Low Profit factor and I have finally come up with a half decent story for this and starting adventure. The PC's were on some dirt ball Farmworld for what ever reason they want and hit the JACK POT when the discovered one of the Local hills was actually a Planet Bound ship with a Warrent of trade in a vault somewhere. Now this wouldn't mean too much BUT a Local High Muckity Muck after a REALLY close encounter with a Chaos cult's "Sacrificin Knife" wishes to do something that will protect his soul and after a Tarot reading he figures (with Priest backing) that he needs to refurbish and reconsecrate The Hermatige near the Khoronus expanse. Now this guy being RICH!!! (the !'s matter) he gives the PC's a Deal He will pay for the ship top be lifted and Pull some strings to get them the Warrent of trade IF they transport him while providing escourt for the rest of the fleet he is putting together, A Church delegation, Some Cog Boys, and a WHOLE bunch of void station parts AND he will give them what is left of his wealth. I figure this adventure will have a bit of everything in it, and will set up they whole "Go forth and be awesome" feel I want for the game.

I like it but a good third person Sanity check never hurt.

Watch out for the Teleportarium plus Murder-Servitor combo. Thats +40 to Hit&Run.

I suggest simply going with a cruiser if you want big. You still want a Battlecruiser or a Grand Cruiser for later on, so the group might still have something to upgrade to.

Personally Battlecruiser only have a Dorsal slot extra and no real bonus. Grand cruisers are really big, but then starting in an acceptably fitted Grand cruiser is really hard. Getting weapons onto that thing might even be a close call.

You can ofc do it anyway, but then you have to know, that only battleships dwarf the ships your players are using...

That was not something I had really considered. I mean I was going to be (very) nice and provide a ship fully equiped but... where is the thrill in that? hmmm much to ponder this is

Just a bad experience that I had because I (as GM) provided the ship fully upgraded.

It is not treated as another crew. No story, no hook, no honeybunny. Poor ship.

Lesson is (at least for me), even if a GM is providing the ship, each other player must also took part in building them (better yet, let them discuss and decide what's in and what's not). And leave some space for the ship to 'grow', as well as the character. Maybe you can provide a BC or GC, with just the basic essential components, and a single weapon or two? It has its own massive drawbacks though.

But then again, surely it depends on the group as well.

Do NOT halve the armor with lances instead of full penetration. Lances are already weak enough. Trust me.

oooh boy took the plung and set an add at the local Game Store to try to get some players for the game. Hopefully I can rangle enough folks at the firswt meeting to have a decent game (Small problem of where to host the game since the store is usally pretty packed BUT thats is a concern for later.) As part of trying to get ready I had a mock starship combat in my head to try and get a feel for the eb and flow of things. It was a custome built Cruiser Vs two Ork Raiders. I had it so the Raiders had ambushed the Cruiser after hiding in a Asteroid belt. Both Crews were Vets and had three actions per turn just to keep things simple. After a strong start mauling the Ork ships a bit the Cruiser failed a few Manuver Checks letting one ork raider get a bead with its prow guns and after a very good lock on roll the ork gunners got 6 hits damaging the starboard side MacroCannons. (The other ork ship could not gets its manuver checks at all and ended up waaaaay out side of optimal engament range.) After the Cruiser failed another check (even after making a decent enough Aid the Machine Spirit roll) Ork Raider 1 managed to close the distance and launch a boarding action. Cruiser and Ork made their respective Command boost rolls and cruiser won on the command check it self by 2 Next round I treated the cruiser to a Hit and Run action to harry the ork ship while the rest of the ship tryed to get away. The Command check was a 9 which blew up the Orks Retro rockets and the piloting check was a 20 So the cruiser left the orks in the dust. The Second ork ship trying to get back in the fight hit Da Big Red Button and then rolled a 100 on its manuver check,,,, I ruled that the engines exploded and I called the match there.

Later I had an Idea for a planet (Inspired by the gent asking about cystal resources.) and I came up with. System N7-36b A system where the sun glows a dark purple and is actually totally outshone by the only planet . A Orbital body made enterly out of crstal and its bodies of water a form of high energy plasma. I am thinking about adding some ruins and making the crystals very very resistant to the powers of the Warp as well as being insanly energy resistant. I am also toying with the idea of them finding a STC that makes Baneblades but that the kinda find where player retire (or get killed by the AdMech.)

I suggest more use of the "enter" button, beyond that it reads quite nicely.

Stuff to remember, if you use the Crew stats as listed, they will be vastly inferior to players stats. Players can get high 70+ stats on Rank1.

If you do not up hull integrity (Im toying with the idea of tripling), even Cruisers can be two shotted. Ive made a mock battle of 1 Lunar vs 2 comparable Imperial Navy ships (Heresy durrr), it was over before it started, lucky crits insured blind sensors for all npcs, and after 2 rounds of shooting, both ships had nothing to see (plus other stuff) and simply slipped away. The PC ship had 5 damage from a single torpedo.

A second mock battle, ended with the Rak'gol light cruiser being two shotted by a Secutor. The only time the Rak'gol could fire (60-70 to hit come on), it rolled 95+ for everything.

But that is my experiance of combat. Over before it starts.

On the planet suggestion. I suggest not having planets be more luminous than the sun. Since the planet can only reflect the light of the sun, unless you have a devious idea behind that.

Also i do not understand what you mean with the Baneblade STC. Finding one is a great idea for an endeavour. Be rewarded with lots of AdMech trinkets: 10k servitors as crew for your ship. They dont do anything, but anyone entering the ship knows who has a half protecting hand over the ship. Maybe even give the players the first Baneblade produced with that STC. Have a vehicle that needs a full company of technomats and a whole set of Techpriests to contstantly keep it in working condition. Its a bodyguard that is never where you need it: "No this is an Imperial Palace, the Baneblade is still waiting 2 kilometers away at the fron gate. No it cant shoot, it would knock out the whole building (you are standing in!)"

Note about the planet brighter tha nit's sun : on posible way to do it is to have a sun that's emiting mostly out of the visible spectrum (UV is the best bet there), with an upper atmosphere that fluoresce most of it into visible light (neon tube on steroïds). That could be antural or a deliberate tampering to both provide some much-needed light and curb down the UVs to lievable levels.

Note that STCs are complete systems and mostly archives rather than facotries - they tell you how to build stuff. Of course couple an STC with an automated factory and you coud indeed churn out finished products. So let them found the pattern for the Beneblade (or jut it's laser canon, which is the bit the Adeptus Mechanicus can no longer build if I remember the fluff right)

Its the fluff behind the STC that I am worried about. In Gaunts Ghost's first book it was said that some guys who found a intact working STC were given their own SYSTEMS and that one just made really good knifes. If the PC's find one that makes tanks with "11 barrels of HELL" The Imperium might just say "congrats have a sector."

But this concern goes to war with the mental image of the PCs putzing around a place so old that the dust has formed into a rock like substance and some guy pressing a button. The place trembles, Rock dust falls away showing ranks and banks of buttons and screens. A voice speaks in a tounge so old as to be but a legend , and still the building termbles with the noise of something being built. After a few round of the PCs being freaked out I will point them to a window where the will see a brand new BaneBlade and I will say

Gratz you now have a bouncing baby Baneblade.... I think its a girl.

To get that result you won't need a full STC installation - make it a mere maintenance facility, with one baneblade stored inside in a stasis filed. Since it's maintence facility it won't have the whole specs for building the gun, but probably enough data on it's maintenance to help the Adeptus Mechanicus to reconstruct teh design in a few decades. Informations usefull to help them to recover the knowledge of how to built the gun after lenghty experimentation. This should be neough to let them keep teh tank. though bringing it up to their ships (and won for sue) migh be a problem. those things are huge.

Thanks on the information for the planet.

Forgot fluerescence. *smack*. Dont know hoew often that would happen though.

Regarding the Baneblade, those things are big, compared to PBI. If the PCs have a warvessel with barracks, id force a small endeavour with a few aquisition checks, and be done with it. They should receive a transport by the AdMech in trade for the maintenance facility no problem id say.

Preventing them from gaining a full system? How about the AdMech is so devious to hand them a dead system full of resources to mine etc. Give them a very detailed print out of the system, tell them that this is the reward for the maintenance facility with the STC fragments. They are now free to mine said system for additional PF. And fluffwise the AdMech is happyn ernough to take any refined resources off their hands.

I could imagine an asteroid belt or two for straight shipbased mining. A gas planet for fuel harvesting. And a planet or two for basic, good old fashioned mining, if they get a colony running.

I'd say one of the planets is a mining world with little-no atmosphere and another is a low-evolution habitable planet the PCs can turn into an agri-world with enough colonists in order to feed the aforementioned stellar installations. Just my 2 cents.

@Voronesh, pardon me for introducing "real world" physics into the 40K universe, but there is at least one example of a planet with a fluorescent atmosphere: Mars. Solar radiation hits the CO2 in the upper atmosphere, excites the molecules, and so it glows. Unfortunately for us, this is in the infrared part of the spectrum so it doesn't show up to the human eye.

In the 40K-verse, what with dark age of technology and xenos strangeness, it shouldn't be too hard to justify a planet with an atmosphere that lights up. (That's not even counting daemon worlds.)

Cheers,

- V.

Voronesh said:

Yep. But in your example, is Mars actually brighter than our sun? Fluorescence istself isnt really a rare occurence no.

So *smack on forehead again* for making an incorrect statement. (Dammit my laptop broke, im really off the ropes)